The Road by Cormac McCarthy

The Road
Cormac McCarthy
Knopf Books
2006

Introduction

If I had to describe this novel, it would have been: "A journey of a father and his son across the ravaged abyss. No humanity remained; no hope could have survived. Grey, dark and deafening desolation. They had nothing and there was nothing to be had. The man knew: his son was all that stood between him and death": except that my Literature teacher had always told me to stay with critical text and forget recreative writing. This is a story about a dying man and his love for his son in post apocalyptic America – where man has forgotten humanity and resort to whatever means they have to survive, even if it means eating their own kind. McCarthy details a raw and profoundly emotional tale of their journey as the father seeks to keep his child alive both in body and in spirit against the most hostile odds.

Caution: Do not read if already clinically depressed.

Review

When my friend gave me a copy of this novel three years ago, he warned me of two things:

1. McCarthy has a style similar to Ernest Hemingway and seeing how I am none too fond of Hemingway, I will need to be patient with the language and see how McCarthy's style actually fits and enhances his subject in "The Road"; and
   
2. If ever I decide to do a review of this book, I should proceed very carefully with the critique, because McCarthy is a man's author and there will be many out there who will tear me to shreds should I say a single word that is not suitably deferential.
   

I figured it was well and good: if I could live with critique of Tolkien's long, often rambling sentences on an imaginary world, McCarthy's fans can live with my critique of their idol's short pithy ones.

I seldom read apocalyptic stories – because life, as it is, is depressing enough – and it is a testimony to McCarthy's sheer skill that I waded through two boxes of Kleenex to finish this book three years ago and once more today. He writes not of a fantastical world borne out of the destruction of reality as we know it, but of a return to the harsh, brutal and barbarous environment that predated the birth of humanity and civilization. He sets out to paint the basic nature of man as Thomas Hobbes saw it: "nasty, brutish, solitary and short", as post-apocalyptic America degenerates into a hellhole where every tiny morsel of food is scavenged, where man will enslave and herd their own species as a source of food, where God no longer exists and where even waking up to a brand new day is nothing to hope for.

The bleak landscape is made all the more stark by his short, crisp sentences, broken up by beautifully savage descriptions of the state of ruin and death. Just as his characters wasted not in order to survive, McCarthy cut words, sentences, punctuation down to the barest minimum. Dialogues between characters are usually simple verbal phrases, curt and devoid of human conversation. McCarthy writes prose the way good poets write poetry: the world is full of "charred and limbless trunks of trees", "[b]lack water running from under the sodden drifts of ash" "sagging hands of blind wire string from blackened lightpoles." In this landscape the reader is acutely aware: there is no future to be had; how can there be hope?

Yet the reader fervently hopes, as we walk alongside the father and the son. On surface, the novel is nothing more than descriptions after descriptions of their struggles for survival on this desperate journey to nowhere, kept alive by the fast moving plot, the relentless tension and McCarthy's superior finesse with the details that create a realistic and haunting landscape. So well did McCarthy capture his characters that by the end of the book, I have even adopted the father's paranoid worldview: no one is to be trusted, threat looms in every corner. At every step of the journey, I am deeply torn. I urge the father to overcome his terminal illness and bring his son one more step closer to safety; yet knowing just how the hopeless the future is, I find myself agreeing with the deceased mother that suicide and an early death may be the kinder mercy.

On a deeper reading however, I did think that this is rather more a story of a man's struggles to maintain his morality, his sanity, his soul intact not just against the hostile environment, but also in face of his overwhelming love for his son. How much should he be willing to do, how long can he turn his back on humanity and how low was he willing to sink to protect his son? The reader is lured onto moral ambiguity (which is my favourite catchphrase recently), as we understand and condone some of the choices the man makes. Our age and the stage of our lives we are in affect the experience: I was taken aback in this rereading, when I found myself castigating the young boy for his naiveté; in my first reading three years ago, I had pictured the child as the voice of conscience, the last remnants of Godly morality in this barren world.

For all the grey areas (pardon the pun) it is the love of a dying father for his son that offers this dark tale its only solace. My favourite passage in this book and I shall have to leave its context to your imagination and hopefully, your own reading:

"They lay listening. Can you do it? When the time comes? When the time comes there will be no time. Now is the time. Curse God and die. What if it doesnt fire? Could you crush that belived skull with a rock? Is there such a being within you of which you know nothing? Can there be? Hold him in your arms. Just so. The soul is quick. Pull him toward you. Kiss him. Quickly."

Final verdict

One of the most depressing novels I have ever read. Thought provoking, heart wrenching, it leaves this heavy, heavy weight of catharsis all bottled up inside of me after going through a full box of Kleenex.

Are you kidding? This is a seminal work of art. Go pick it up immediately and buy hardcover.

Rating: 5/5

Personal context

Christmas 2006: I had graduated not too long ago and was settling into my job, which was no walk in the park those first few months. Perry, a good friend with a sick, sick sense of humour, had just managed to score home leave after a year in the battlefields and deigned to send me a graduation package along with my Christmas presents. The Christmas presents were a sweet surprise, but the graduation present took the cake. He had included McCarthy's The Road, nearly hot off the presses, with this note: "…The end of the world is nigh. Have a read whenever you feel like running back to school – I guarantee you, any job will feel better for it."

I read it, put it back on my shelf and never spoke of it again. It was devastating.

Fast forward: January 2010. I am in the doldrums in my (new-ish) job, trapped in a meaningless cycle of disenchantment, disinterest, demotivation and demoralisation. Along came YC, who asked randomly, rather out of the blue, if I would like to attend a book club, who would be discussing The Road. Having forgotten where my copy is, I swung by the library to borrow a copy and read it between the end of the work day and the start of work night.

Perry lied: my job may look so much more bearable for it, but I don't feel better – I am depressed.