The Road

A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other.

I’ve just finished reading The Road, by Cormac McCarthy.  Simply enough this is a postapocalyptic tale of an America that no longer exists.  Our way of life is no longer.  Our cities have burned.  The animals have all died.  No crops grow.  Ash falls from the sky like grayish snow.  Above and beyond the standard “kill or be killed” theme, I think the true message in this book is one of hope, and one of family.  What would you do, to protect those you love?  Would you be willing to steal?  Would you be willing to kill?

In a world where every person who is left alive will likely kill you on sight — or simply rob you, if you are lucky — how does one man keep his son physically and mentally safe?

This book was a bit hard to get into at first.  It is oddly written, in the fact that the dialog isn’t clearly separated from the story itself.  There are no quotation marks, and sometimes the only way to differentiate which character is talking at any given time is simply by reason of deduction:  the book is 95% made up of only 2 characters, one a man, and one a child.  So the parts that sound like a kid, are being spoken by the child.  It made the first few chapters tough going, but once I got myself into the story I found it wasn’t so strange anymore.  Much like watching a movie with subtitles.  You forget you are reading them after a time.

I did enjoy the book, but perhaps I would have anyway just by virtue of its ‘end of the world’ theme which happens to be a favorite of mine.  The world described in The Road is very stark and grey.  Very cold and merciless.

It made me stop and think about all I have, and all that could be lost.