The Road – Book Review
Love Survives the Apocalypse in Cormac McCarthy's Novel of Survival
Oct 25, 2009
In the book, The Road by Cormac McCarthy (Vintage International 2006 ISBN 9780307387899), the reader accompanies a father and his young son along a journey of survival. The road they travel is filled with horror, danger and the unknown. Something horrific has happened to the planet, and bloodthirsty creatures are hunting the few survivors of this apocalypse.
The exact nature of the apocalypse remains a mystery, but whatever it was, it left the whole planet burnt to ashes. Windows, car frames, and human corpses have been charred and liquefied by some fiery apocalypse, leaving the air so thick with ashes that the man and boy wear wear face masks at all times.
Courage and Love After an Apocalypse
The survival of this man and his son depends on their courage. And their courage depends on their mutual love. Though every step along their journey is filled with murderous dangers and nightmarish horror, the tenderest conversations take place between them all along the way.
In this post-apocalypse world there is no such thing as stealing; there is only survival. There is no such thing as leisure; every minute is a matter of survival. Even the boy has “put away childish things,” such as a flute made for him by his father. The flute, he understands, has no survival value in this post-apocalyptic terrain.
Parenting on The Road
The Road is a survival story, but it is much more than a survival story. It is a horror story, but it is also a tender love story. It is even a book about good parenting.
The Road could almost be read as a handbook or demonstration of good parenting skills. This father knows he must absolutely teach his son absolute survival skills. And he knows how to teach those skills. He patiently transmits those skills to his son. With painstaking detail, we are shown how a father teaches determination, courage, attention to detail, and patience. The reader of The Road is privileged to get an intimate view of how this father teaches his son how to survive.
But the son has much to teach the father, amid this apocalypse, too. Given the horrific events they have already survived, they could easily lose the human capacity for compassion. McCarthy suggests that compassion might be more enduring than life itself.
Beauty Amid Horror
McCarthy succeeds at combining terrifying sights and horror of an apocalypse with tenderness and love. And from that strange and haunting combination of horror and love, in language laconic and pure, the author creates beauty.
Reading The Road is an experience in the best—and the worst—of what it means to be a human being.
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