Adrian Rodriguez
JJ Kirley
English Composition 102
04 May 2016
The Devil’s Advocate: Uncovering the Truth of Evil
The concept of morality is something that is touched on in many forms of entertainment,
and media which often tends to point out the enemy as evil. We can look at examples in
entertainment like “The Walking Dead,” and short stories like “A Good Man is Hard to Find,”
and dissect the concept of evil. Morality is something that is often diluted into two simple
categories, good and evil. However, this over simplification of “good and evil” leaves much to
be desired as it often disallows for the recognition of groups of people. The term “evil” has a
very broad definition who philosophers like Phillip Cole, attempt to decipher in his book, “The
Myth of Evil: Demonizing the Enemy.” Authors like, Ivan Greenberg and Robert F. Worth also
tend to explore this concept through their articles, “The Dangers of Dissent: The FBI and Civil
Liberties since 1965,” and “A nation defines itself by demonizing the evil enemies,” where they
explain how some government agencies can get away with the atrocities they get their societies
to enact. While these articles try to explain real life events, the novel, “The Road,” by Cormac
McCarthy, and the TV show, “The Walking Dead,” raise questions about evil in their own way
through their respective post-apocalyptic settings as their main protagonists are always at odds
with morality and survival. Cormack McCarthy, in particular, employs the concept of “evil” to
make an “us Vs. them” argument for the father and his son to justify their journey through
survival, often painting any enemies that they encounter as subhuman or morally wrong although
they are seeking the same thing, survival. This type of rhetoric is something that is commonly
seen in post-apocalyptic fiction, however McCarthy seems to come out short in his novel as he
neglects to highlight the reasons why his protagonists are different than the people they
encounter, whereas, in shows like “The Walking Dead,” we are subtly reminded about the
protagonists’ morality. This sort of narrative poses created by the stories asks question what is
“evil” and how does it apply to our lives?
In The Road, McCarthy goes through great length to make sure he depicts any person
who shows opposition to the main protagonist of his story as unhuman or subhuman. In “The
Myth of Evil,” Phillip Cole introduces the terms of pure evil and impure evil to debunk the
concept of morality. This idea, falsifies McCarthy’s descriptions of the grotesque actions of the
antagonists to paint them as all evil beings, which leaves us with the inability to empathize, with
the antagonists of the story, and explain the reason why they did what they did. Philosopher,
