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 it snows 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.
The book that started it all in the post-apocalyptic genre of novels. My god. I am HERE for this book. I loved it the first time I read it in one of my first year English courses (Truth, Lies and Storytelling), but I think I love it even more after reading it on my own terms. The atmosphere and world (or lack thereof) that Mr. McCarthy creates in this tense, weary, dead America after the end of the world is amazing. I love his simplistic way of storytelling. This is one of the best-written books I've read in a while. While it is simplistic in its storytelling method, it is a very dire situation that the two characters find themselves in. And there is a lot of grim moments throughout the book (the cannibal house scene alone is nightmare fuel) which adds to the direness and the realness of the apocalypse and survival methods that the few left have to employ in order to see tomorrow. Cormac McCarthy creates what could be a very realistic post-apocalyptic world, filled with grim scenes of death, lawlessness and situations that would be unimaginable in normal situations. But these are not normal situations that the Man and the Boy find themselves in.
I think, at its core, The Road can be seen as a love story between a father and son in a life-or-death, man-eat-man world. "Is the love they share the only love they have?" was one of the questions on the exam, and my response was, "After everything that has happened between the apocalypse and now, yes." While the Boy does have compassion for other people they come across, I think the only person he loves is his father.
One of the things that I enjoyed is the isolated tone that the novel employs. Even when the Man and his son come across people, there is still the feeling of isolation. Have they gone crazy from being alone for so long? What I'd really love to see in a novel, is a sole survivor of an apocalypse or plague come across other survivors after an undisclosed amount of time. That would be really interesting to see. I love how there's not really a singular man-vs-x theme in this. It sort of employs all three: man-vs-nature, -self, -man. It's mostly man-vs-nature, which works well, but it also employs the other two quite frequently as well, mostly man-vs-self. I really enjoy it when novels don't stick to just one.
The best thing that Cormac McCarthy does in this book is create the atmosphere. As I mentioned earlier, his end-of-the-worldbuilding is amazing, and really believable. I could totally picture the descriptions he has as being real in a world beyond ours. I think this book really helped the post-apocalyptic genre start to take off. I wish there were more books like this, as I love this genre, something that is not a secret on this blog.
I adore this book and I give it 5/5 stars. I'm very happy that I have my own copy in my collection now (the one I had in first year was very well-used and falling apart - but the bookstore still took it back at the end of the year).
Happy Thanksgiving to all my Canadian readers!
