Took me long enough, but I finally finished The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I bought this read in a local bookstore in Encinitas. I had been eyeing it for awhile, and decided what the hell, I'll get it. Keep in mind, I do this with several different books, which leads to more books, leaving me suffocating in a gigantic pile of tomes. That's actually a real nightmare I've had before. Moving on.
In a New York Times review of the book, McCarthy has stated that "death is the major issue in the world and that writers who don't address it are not serious." In The Road, death is inescapable. McCarthy overloads our senses with depictions of "corpses shrunk to the size of a child" and half eaten humans. What is even more disturbing is seeing some of these images through the eyes of a child. The man's young son is forced to walk through this world with his father, and what he endures is tragic.
What I found to be intriguing was the idea that the son was born after the world became the way it was (which, by the way, we never really get an answer as to what happened) and does not know any other world before this disgusting life. His father, on the other hand, does. We don't get many flashbacks or memories of what life was like before, the novel stays relatively focused on the present, but it is assumed that the man yearns for his dead wife, yet shames her for the choices she made after the world became uncivilized.
The world has become even more desperate since the father and son have been on the road, resulting in cannibalism, cults, and death. The man and his son stumble upon several grotesque events, such as seeing a basement full of half eaten people, a baby corpse being roasted on a spit, and decapitated heads. Basically, this book isn't for the squeamish. Surprisingly, I'm pretty squeamish but somehow I was able to make it through.
"My job is to take care of you."
This quote encapsulates the entire novel, in my opinion. The whole story is proving that simple sentence. A father protecting his son. We, as the reader, watch this man slowly become weaker and weaker while frantically figuring out how to take care of his son. Throughout the novel, we read very brief moments of dialogue where the father will leave his son to search for food, or supplies and his son will desperately say, "I want to go with you," or "Don't leave," to which the father replies, "I won't be gone long," or "I will be back." His son clings to his father's humanity throughout the entire novel, and when he begins to lose that, and his life, we see what remains of the son.
I'll admit it, I had moments in this book where I was tearing up. Seeing that the last book I cried over was the seventh Harry Potter book, it takes a lot to make me really emotional when reading. There were two different scenes that sent me into the waterworks. The first scene was when the son suddenly gets very sick and his father becomes crazed to help him. When reading those few pages, I was frantic myself. I really thought he wouldn't make it. I loved that McCarthy had me so invested in an unnamed young boy, that I was just as worried as his own father. It was the line, "I will do what I promised, he whispered. No matter what. I will not send you into the darkness alone," that really got to me. The man is referring to his sort of pact with his son that if one of them died, they would both die. They didn't want to leave each other alone in this world.
The second scene is obviously the ending scene where the man dies. I actually was very affected by the scene right before it where the man is trying to force his son to go on without him. He knows that they made that pact, but can't force himself to hold his dead son. Once the man dies, we are in the mind of the son. It was almost hopeful to see the son finally meet a "good guy" immediately after his father dies, and to be welcomed by his family. While we don't actually know if the family was good or not, the book is left on a slightly curious, and positive note. The son still talks to his father in his dreams (another part that made me emotional), so we find comfort in the fact that his death was not in vain. A man did all he could, in the life he was given, to protect his son.
I would highly recommend this book, and would really love to read more of McCarthy's other novels! I know there is a movie adaptation of The Road, but I was told by a friend that it doesn't do the book justice. When do they ever? I may give it a shot though.
Have you read The Road? What did you think?
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