Agamben and The Road

My essay will be a reading of The Road through the lens of Giorgio Agamben's "Introduction to Homo Sacer". Although the larger portion of Agamben's piece is only indirectly relevant to my analysis, two concepts stand out as illuminating guides to the post-apocalyptic world of the novel, the relationship between the father and son, and major arch-images of fire and the highway. These are: 1) the idea of Homo Sacer - the ability to kill people without sacrificing "humanity" and 2) the distinction between zoe and bios in the ancient Greek language. In short I argue that the tension between zoe and bios is the driving force of McCarthy's novel. True to critical theory, I freely admit that Agamben's ideas are only one way of many that The Road might be meaningfully understood.