Some unknown catastrophe has destroyed the Earth. The world now consists of burnt earth, ashes, ever-present clouds, ashy rain and ashy snow. Most human life and all non-human life is dead.
Several years after the catastrophe, a father and a son make their way through the devastation towards the sea. Not really expecting to find anything different there, they keep walking because they need something to aim for. With a shopping cart to hold their possessions, they scavenge whatever small scraps they can find, and hide from “the bad guys”. The only food to be had is tinned.
It is late autumn / early winter. Some days it rains, other days it snows. The two are thin and cold and filthy and hungry, frequently hovering near death.
The son, born days after whatever cataclysm caused this devastation, is young enough to not question things. He has learnt to be afraid of everything, and yet he has a child’s innocence and unconditional love for his father – and anyone else who is not a “bad guy”. The father knows what has been lost but is slowly forgetting what life used to be like.
The father keeps going only because he knows that he needs to keep his son alive. (The mother gave up years ago and took her own life. In a world like this, suicide is the sane choice.) Both are only kept alive by their love for each other – neither can imagine a life without the other.
That’s Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. A dark and grim book. The world he describes is depressing, brutal and miserable. A world without hope, and without hope of hope. But nevertheless there is so much love and tenderness in this book that the enduring feeling is one of love. A heartbreaking book, to be sure, but at the same time also strangely uplifting.
In any case it’s a powerful and compelling book. It’s stark and minimalistic in language and description and plot. In fact there isn’t much plot, just repetition of the same few activities: walk, hide, scavenge, shiver, sleep. No chapters, just moments. Little punctuation, and as few words as possible. Things and people have no names, even: there is “the man” and “the boy”. But when the world has ended, who can care about punctuation?
The Road should ideally be read in a day or two, so you can immerse yourself in the feelings, and let the book take hold of you. As soon as I had finished it, I wanted to re-read it, but didn’t, because it would have been too much. It’s one of those unforgettable books that will stay with you forever.
Best review: NY Review of Books.
What emerges most powerfully as one reads The Road is not a prognosticatory or satirical warning about the future, or a timeless parable of a father’s devotion to his son, or yet another McCarthyesque examination of the violent underpinnings of all social intercourse and the indifference of the cosmic jaw to the bloody morsel of humanity. The Road is not a record of fatherly fidelity; it is a testament to the abyss of a parent’s greatest fears. The fear of leaving your child alone, of dying before your child has reached adulthood and learned to work the mechanisms and face the dangers of the world, or found a new partner to face them with. The fear of one day being obliged for your child’s own good, for his peace and comfort, to do violence to him or even end his life. And, above all, the fear of knowing—as every parent fears—that you have left your children a world more damaged, more poisoned, more base and violent and cheerless and toxic, more doomed, than the one you inherited.
[…] read The Road a few years back and loved it. Knowing that, Eric gave me this one as a Christmas […]