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Zakiya Harris
March 21, 2012
ENGL 150
Katrina and The Road: Societies in Ruin
Katrina. Before August 29, 2005, this was more or less a name. After August 29, 2005,
however, the name “Katrina” became synonymous with “destruction.”
Hurricane Katrina was a tragic event that forever shook the lives of Americans,
particularly those in New Orleans, Louisiana. It raised many political issues such as how the
government should approach these kinds of situations, as well as questions about racial
discrepancies. But even more interestingly, in my opinion, is the question it raised about human
nature as a whole. What really keeps us in check as a society? What happens when disaster of an
unexpected caliber strikes, and chaos overrides order? What do we do?
Cormac McCarthy posed this last question in an interview, and I think it gets to the heart
of the matter. In The Road, there is not a specific reason as to why the world has reached its
end—when asked what has happened, McCarthy says, “A lot of people ask me. I don’t have an
opinion…But it could be anything—volcanic activity or it could be nuclear war. It is not really
important.”1
And it isn’t. We like to think that we as humans are sophisticated enough to react
rationally when faced with sticky situations; we don’t need laws to keep us moral. However, it is
rare that we will ever get the opportunity to verify this notion, although I would say that those
living in a post-Hurricane-Katrina society got pretty darn close.
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While the society that emerged after Hurricane Katrina struck and Cormac McCarthy’s
post-apocalyptic society that he paints for readers in The Road have quite a few differences, I
would argue that they both put across an important idea about human nature as a whole: People
are willing to do almost anything it takes to survive, and cannot be expected to uphold morals
that would have been deemed appropriate prior to a catastrophic event.
Of course, one must realize that the two events are obviously dissimilar in many ways.
Firstly, The Road depicts a world that has been completely obliterated, while Hurricane Katrina
physically affected a specific area (although it mentally affected much more than that). This of
course highly affects the caliber to which I can really compare the two. The characters in
McCarthy's novel can be seen as being in a much more "desperate" situation, because there really
isn’t an “after.” The father does not know whether or not by the time his son is grown,
everything will be back to the way it was—it is more than likely that this will not be the case. On
the other hand, after the hurricane hit, the area began to build itself back up again, and still is in
the process of doing so to this day. I feel that because the people were able to fathom that there
was something that would follow after the hurricane, their level of hope was much greater than
that of the characters of The Road (of course, there are all kinds of debates as to whether or not
the speed of FEMA's response was quick enough, but that is a whole other issue in itself.).
Another difference that would somewhat tip the scale between the two societies in comparison is
the ability to explain the events that cause the societies to turn into the way they are in the first
place. Katrina, on the other hand, was traced from its beginning to its end.
This difference between specificity and ambiguity is important because it affects how we
perceive things. Since we aren’t able to exactly pinpoint the cause of the situation—McCarthy
mentions that there is “dust and ash everywhere” (7) and a few other hints, but it could be
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anything--this "anything" adds to the anxiety, making my argument that comparing the two
events seem like quite a stretch.
However, I would say that, in fact, all of these things make my argument stronger. As
mentioned earlier, there is more of a “life after” with the hurricane than with the novel. But the
main focus, as McCarthy states, is the “what do you do?” and not the "what happened?" Panic is
panic, and we certainly see it in both scenarios. To the people of Katrina, life as they knew it was
over, and it didn’t take a post-apocalyptic event (or whatever that mysterious event was) to make
them appreciate what they’d had before. While there was an “after,” it still wasn’t known how
long the after would take for many people, which can be just as bad. Like the father and the son
in The Road who are pushing for a goal--to go South--the people of Katrina were pushing for
getting help, and then, getting their houses rebuilt. The nightmare didn't end overnight, but they
had to keep hoping good things would keep coming their way, much like in the novel.
This hope is propelled by the desire to survive, a desire so strong that it presents itself in
both situations as a threat to the moral integrity of humans. Interestingly enough, both cases also
try to make a firm line between good and bad. In The Road, the father tells his son that there are
either “good guys” or “bad guys.” The “bad guys” are anyone that tries to hurt them in any way,
whether it is by eating them or stealing from them. The father defends himself and his son with
his pistol, ready to shoot pretty much whoever gets in his way, as well as eat whatever they can
find. However, before the event, none of these things would have been allowed.
This same issue arose from the hurricane’s aftermath. If it meant holding out until real aid
came, people looted whatever they could find and stole when they could from abandoned shops.
It got so bad that police in New Orleans issued an order saying they had to do what they had to
do and "take back the city" by shooting looters.2 I would argue that although all civilization was
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not gone on the rest of the planet, as in The Road, it might as well have been to the hurricane’s
victims. Only those that have been put in such situations would understand the extent to which
rules that made sense earlier sometimes must be bent in order to work later on. The father tries to
explain this to his son, who asks him when they find all of the canned food if “it is okay for us to
take it” (139). He says that of course it is. There is no question about it.
The problem with excusing the behaviors of “doing what one has to do” is that if
everyone feels this way, it is hard to decide what is right and what is wrong. One could argue
that the cannibalists were living by any means necessary, just as the man was. If the latter
individual is cleared from judgment in all of his actions, then so should the cannibals. In both
cases, rules that would have been applicable pre-apocalypse have been broken—stealing and
murder.
This is similar to Katrina. After the hurricane, people looted other things besides just
food. People used the lack of rules to justify stealing televisions and other things that weren’t
necessary for survival. My personal gut reaction would be that this is wrong, because it signifies
corrupted intentions. But how much do intentions really matter? For example, people who fall
asleep at the wheel and hit a pedestrian do not do this intentionally; however, they are still
charged with manslaughter. In the end, someone has been killed, or after Katrina, stolen from.
All of these things just prove that it’s hard to judge what is right and what is wrong when
disaster strikes. Instinct takes over, because that is how we are programmed. Human nature is not
either good or bad; it is not that simple. It bends and twists to accommodate changing ideals and
outside forces. To a certain extent, one cannot count on morals to be the prime source of reason,
and even though the society in The Road seems so fantastical to be applicable to today, the same
messages it evokes about human nature can be applied to those of Hurricane Katrina's
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aftermath—that in the blink of an eye, everything can quickly be swept from under our feet. But
as McCarthy says, it's the subsequent "what do you do?" that is the most important.
1
Jurgensen, John. "Hollywood's Favorite Cowboy." The Wall Street Journal.
<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870457620457452970357727457
2
Jennings, Tom, Laura Maggi, Brendan McCarthy, Sabrina Shankman, A.C. Thompson. "After Katrina, Cops
Given OK to Shoot Looters." CBS News.
<http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/08/25/national/main6804049.shtml>
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