The Road Revisited

So, as a start of a new quarter I will be going from the tales of the worlds most famous super spy ( whose new movie comes out friday) and be moving on to a different tale. The story I decided to read was The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Now I've read this book before about two years ago, but at the time I felt lost in McCarthy's writing style, till the point where I would sometimes skip paragraphs because they confused me. I still got the overall message of the book but I can't help but feel as if I missed something. Since then I have read two more McCarthy novels and have studied his style more closely. And after two years I decided to , re-walk  The Road.

In the novel we follow the story of two people , a son and his father. They go unnamed through the whole book but yet, even in the first few pages, we get a distinct image of their personalities. The father and son's story is set is post apocalyptic America, and it is unclear where they are or how the world became this way. That also is never told to us, all we know is what the father and son see. The cities are emptied , bodies are dried husks, roads are destroyed, ash rains from the completely gray sky. I personally assume that there was a nuclear attack mainly because of the ash raining from the sky and all the dead life. Anyway the father and son seem to be the only two left in the entire world, but we know that is not so, for the father often checks over his shoulder for others who he seems to be afraid of. The two are heading south to the coast where we can only assume life will be better. All they have is a shopping cart full of the essentials, two back packs, and a pistol. They are following a state road and its is always eerily empty and quiet. The father takes care of the son, because as he sees it, the son is the only reason he has to live. Once when asked by his kid what he would do if the kid died he responds " I would want to die to.... So I could be with you ". This kind of emotion inhabits the whole book and gives a very dark book some much needed heart. I really enjoyed it the first time and I imagine I will even more the second time around.