Desolate Terrain and Capitalist Echoes: Eco-Marxist Analysis of The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Abstract

The research aims to explore the capitalistic echoes and ecological degradation in McCarthy’s The Road (2006). The novel enriches contemporary discourse through reflecting interconnectedness of the ecological degradation and capitalist materialism shaping everyday lives of its characters. The present research is qualitative and the text has been explored through Eco-Marxist theoretical framework. The study dissects symbolic interactions between nature and economy, using J.B. Foster’s Eco-Marxist lens to shed light on the wider ramifications of environmental and economic crises in modern literature by examining the contracting behaviors of diverse characters in comparable situations in his work Marx Ecology: Materialism and Nature (2000). This research advocates for the critical study of dystopian fiction through the lens of Eco-Marxism in order to underscore ironic aspects of ecological deterioration, crises created by capitalism, and socio-economic disparities of the depleted world. The scholarship also proposes an examination of the interrelation between literary fiction and critical global challenges extensively from the point of view of the Sustainable Development Goals SDGs and Anthropocene. This work suggests further exploration of the novel through theoretical lenses such as alienation, psychoanalysis, and survival of the fittest for future scholarly studies.

Keywords: Eco-Marxism, capitalist exploitation, environmental degradation, survival, post-apocalyptic literature, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).