The Road by Cormac McCarthy – On the road in Dystopia

Cormac McCarthy has created an unusually bleak vision of the future in The Road (2006). A boy and his father travel through a burnt out landscape covered in ash where the dead sit like poor wayfaring strangers in ancient bog body fashion along the side of the road. All they have is each other, a few paltry possessions, a gun with two rounds in it and a shopping cart to haul their meager provisions. I have read quite a few dystopic tales in my day, and this is definitely one of the better ones. There is a sense that no matter how bad things get, human life will continue on some small scale no matter what the price. The father does most of the telling, the world is described through his memories and what he sees around him.

As you might well expect not all of their fellow travelers are friendly. Cannibalism, rape and plunder are definite risks to be taken into account here, as well as the many natural dangers. If you have ever been on a long trek you know that having the wrong boots can quickly become a very big problem. Having no boots at all in cold weather when you have to keep moving to stay alive is no joke. The boy and his father have little sparkling conversations that you really feel are authentic. When the father tells the boy not to look at the many dead because things you see stay with you forever the boy merely replies “okay”. That okay is the answer to a lot of complicated conversations and questions between the two and you just know deep down that nothing will ever be okay again.

This is a true version of TS Eliots “The Wasteland”. All around are the dead, watching, and everything is covered in ash. Nothing grows, no one can live. Cities and towns and farmhouses are plundered down to the bone. People have resorted to eating their own kind because there is nothing else to eat and there really is very little hope that anything can get better. Also I like the fact that we are not told what went wrong. And it really does not matter from the point of view of these two pilgrims what happened, because they are living in the aftermath. And as a reader you feel for the father trying to keep his hope up as well as keeping them both alive. As he looks at the boy and watches him grow thinner and more careworn he also begins to become sick himself.

Normally you can feel fairly certain that the lead characters are going to make it, but in this particular novel you never feel that certainty. They could go at any minute, their life is that precarious. The language is pretty stark and grim and takes on the aspect of the gray landscape. It is one of those books that you hardly want to put down for the sheer need of knowing what is going to happen next. When the pair find some little windfall, some unexpected apples in the snow of an old orchard, or a warm place to sleep, you already know that despite the brief respite they have to get moving again in the morning.

One of the interesting aspects of a novel like this is it makes you think about what you would be able to do when forced back on yourself – what cruelty and desperation could make you kill or forsake your ideals. As philosophical questions go it is a fairly basic one, but still worth asking.

Mule