"The Road" by Cormac McCarthy

Above: "The Road," Cormac McCarthy. 287 Pages. I completed reading this book today.

"Steve, all your preparations for "doomsday" are all well and good, but do you really think that you'll be able to resist, or keep at bay, "The Book of Eli People?"

I thought I had read this book. When I came across it while browsing at Frost's Books on 2000 East and 2700 South in Salt Lake City (just after noshing on a pastrami sandwich at Feldman's Deli across the street), I tried to recollect its plot. I couldn't. "I'll read it again," I said to myself. So, I purchased the paperback copy of "The Road." Turns out that after reading it this time, I have no recollection of having read it before. This lapse in memory gives support to the practice I started a few years ago to do book reviews on the books that I read. I can now refer to the reviews I did in order to remember what I read and what impact it had on me.

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.

The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, "each the other's world entire," are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation (Amazon Prime Review Plot Summary).

"The Road" is written in short, vivid sentences or paragraphs only a few lines long. It reads easily and quickly. McCarthy's punction is unorthodox. For example, he doesn't use apostrophes in contractions. "Dont," not "don't." In a search I found that there is a whole body of comment on this. The best explanation I saw was that by not including punctuation and other grammatical structures, Cormac McCarthy creates a narrative that is starkly bare, stripped to nothingness like the novel's setting. By choosing this style for his writing, McCarthy is employing an additional vehicle, besides the content he presents, by which to communicate to the reader the emptiness of the post-apocalyptic world of "The Road."

The exchanges between the father and son are poignant. The father remembers pre apocalypse, but the boy does not. Sometimes the boy's innocent questions frustrate the father, but, in such instances, the father checks himself and comes forth with an outpouring of love for his son as he patiently answers his son's questions. "Dad, are those guys good guys or bad guys?" "They're bad guys son. We have to get away from them."

Reading 'The Road," I'm reminded of "The Book of Eli," a film starring Denzel Washington, is also a post-apocalyptic coastal quest, but this time by a single man carrying a Bible to the coast. The unnamed protagonist is a man of destiny, a critical catalyst, because he has the only remaining Bible, to civilization's renewal. Where "The Book of Eli" offers promise of civilizational renewal should the nameless man reach his objective, "The Road" offers no such hope. A reader of "The Road" will also be reminded of the streaming series, "The Walking Dead," where "good guys" must resist the attacks, not of roving groups of "bad guys," but of zombies. But the message is the same. In post-apocalyptic times, there will be good guys and evil doers.

Recently I was discussing with a good friend the preparations I was making for bad times. I have never expected to have to use my emergency supply of food or ammo. Odds are that I won't have to face a disaster or a post-apocalyptic experience. But preparations for disaster are like insurance. Disaster preparations buy peace of mind. The US government gives citizens guidelines to prepare for disasters. Interestingly, though, the US government guidelines say nothing about firearms. Anyway, my friend told me, "Steve, all your preparations for "doomsday" are all well and good, but do you really think that you'll be able to resist, or keep at bay, "The Book of Eli People?" Good question. Preparation for doomsday is one thing; fending off marauding Vandals is quite another.

In "The Road" the father did a good job protecting his son from "The Book of Eli People," but succumbed in the end, leaving his boy to fend for himself. Fortuitously, shortly after his father's death, the boy came upon a group of "good guys." We are left to wonder about the fate of the boy, but the novel suggests, that unlike "The Book of Eli," hope for civilizational renewal will be elusive, even for the "good guys.

The fellow who runs Frost's Books told me that "The Road" is part of the reading curriculum for Utah high school students. I think it's a good choice. Good and evil are explicitly delineated in the book. But for McCarthy's punctuation affectation, the writing is grammatically correct; the sentences are not complex. McCarthy's prose reminds a bit of Hemingway's spare writing style. Student readers are forced to introspect about the value of goodness in a world where evil doers have what might appear also to be a viable survival methodology. Why one (teamwork) and not the other (kill, plunder, pillage)?

I enjoyed reading "The Road." I hope the book's forecast for civilizational future remains a figment of Cormac McCarthy's imagination, though the battle between good and evil will forever be with us in some form.