Fuel and Punishment in Commissaries of Hell

Fuel.

Oil and petroleum distilled from the earth’s crust come to mind. Power stored to make cars run, lights ignite, and set the world in motion.

And in The Road we see fuel in its common form when the father is in dire need to build a fire.

But fuel is not only the physical and concrete article that powers energy, but a more figurative symbol for a trigger, motivation.

Fuel is what inspires perseverance in the man, and in turn, his son. Fuel is a symbol for the catalyst, the stimulus that keeps these two going. In the father’s case, his incentive to persist in the struggle for survival is his son while the kid himself is probably pushed by the fact that his father is a constant that regularly bleeds motivation. And we can see this when his father asks him if he believes him and the son proceeds to say, “I believe you, I have too.” Because believing in his father is the only reason he hasn't given up, the reason he's still trying.

Fuel is why they carry on.

“We carry the fire.” They carry enough drive to handle the scattered carcasses piled on a deserted and ash-strung floor that remind them of death. They carry enough fuel to handle anything.

Speaking of carcasses littered everywhere imaginable, McCarthy vividly describes the beginning of this frightful era, his beautiful words contrasting with their gruesome significance:

“The world soon to be populated by men who would eat your children in front of your eyes and the cities themselves held by cores of blackened looters who tunnelled among the ruins and crawled from the rubble white of tooth and eye carrying charred and anonymous tins of food in nylon nets like shoppers in the commissaries of hell.”


You can’t help but picture surly shadowed men sinking their teeth into the flesh of your child, their screams daunting and rendering you agonized with the memory. Cities that are only upheld by strings of robbers and evil thieves crawling out like unwanted and suspicious bats come nightfall. The nylon nets protect the mysterious and dreadful food that you might as well have gotten in the deep confines of a burning and excruciating hell.

Cormac sets the beginning of this horrendous tale as something comparable to the pits of the underworld, which is known a place of eternal punishment, torment, and anguish. And so it’s as if the people caught in this abyss are in some way being punished.

Punished for what, I have no idea.