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McCarthy envisions a post-apocalyptic world in which "murder was everywhere upon the land" and the earth would soon be "largely populated by men who would eat your children in front of your eyes"(page 234).

How difficult or easy is it to imagine McCarthy's nightmare vision actually happening and does it now seem that human civilisation is headed toward such an end?

Post #2 is on a totally different subject!

I'd like to believe that faced with the circumstances the novel depicts people would behave more nobly, like the man and his son. However, most likely people would become just as primitive and brutal as those in the book. The scene in which the man finds opens the trapdoor and discovers what is being kept in the cellar is horrific. But who knows what horrifying things we'll do when we're starving, and the world is burnt to ashes?

Such things have already happened on a smaller scale. The ancient Egyptians tell of a famine that was so severe that people resorted to eating vermin, carrion, and even their children. A famine in Russia in the 1920s caused people to turn to cannibalism as well. Other examples exist.

But McCarthy does give us hope for humanity in the family that agrees to take in the boy.

Absolutely. In the aftermath of similar events, there would be complete chaos and anarchy, and a fight to survive. With so little food, it would almost seem to reason that the fewer people there are, the more food for everyone else.

And, there are far too many people in this world, who only live for destruction, from world leaders toterrorists.  It's impossiblele to get rid of them all.