The Road By Cormac McCarthy - One Of The Greatest Post-Apocalyptic Stories I Have Ever Read!

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

One morning at work, I was visiting with one of my co-workers about good books. My coworker is not a sci-fi fan, but we were discussing one of my favorite post-apocalyptic books. She asked me if I had ever read The Road, and I said I hadn't. She just told me I needed to read it and left it at that.

I bought it for the Kindle and started reading and was hooked from the first line, and I read the entire book in a day. It is one of the best books I have ever opened, and I will read it again.

It took me several pages to get into it because I was temporarily distracted by the writing style. There were no quotation marks to set the dialog apart from the prose, and no apostrophe in the contractions. The punctuation was absolutely minimalist. After a few pages, I got used to that and the text flowed well. As I think back, this aspect of the writing added to the way the story felt. 

I enjoyed this take of post-apocalyptic adventure and survival. It was terrifying, triumphant, depressing, and intense all at the same time. The relationship between the man and the boy was great and so well written. Their feelings for each other were always at the surface of the story.

A man and his young son take to the road on a journey of survival in a world that has gone all wrong. It is cold, and they follow the roads to find a more habitable place. Along the way, they run into various things that can either help or harm them. Unfortunately, there is far more that can harm them, mostly the other people, or as the boy thinks of them, the "bad guys," who will not only take what little they have for survival but will also take their lives.

The principal characters are the man and the boy. We never get their names because names are no longer important in the world of The Road. The thing that keeps them going is they are carrying "the fire," which I took as meaning the living spirit. The man is knowledgeable of the ways of survival, which he teaches to his son as they move along. The man is sick and tries to get the boy to understand they must do whatever it takes to continue living, but the boy will not set his innocence aside. He holds on to his compassion and caring for others. When the pair encounter those less fortunate than they are, the boy wants to share what they have, even when they are faced with having almost nothing for themselves. This creates a compelling dynamic between the two characters to create tension between the two.

My favorite point of the plot is how this tale unfolds with almost no background given on the characters or what created the situation they live in. One can guess what it might have been given the described conditions, but there aren't many clues how widespread the catastrophe is. Assuming this story is set in the US, there are hints that, at least, our country has been hit hard. Background on the characters is sparse and mostly as flashback scenes of the man's life before his and the boy's time on the road.

While the overall theme of the story is survival against impossible odds, there are other supporting themes. One is how one must be as ruthless as one's enemies to ensure their own survival. Another theme is how one needs to hold on to their compassion to remain human. Therein is my takeaway from The Road - no matter how bad the situation is, one should never let go of one's humanity lest we degenerate to the level of being subhuman.

I recommend The Road as one of the best stories I have ever read. As a matter of fact, I downloaded the audiobook to listen to as I drove back and forth from work, enjoying it a second time. Were I to rate all the books I have read, I would number this in at least the top ten, if not the top five greatest modern stories I have ever read.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Cormac McCarthy is an American novelist and playwright. He has written ten novels in the Southern Gothic, western, and post-apocalyptic genres and has also written plays and screenplays. He received the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for The Road, and his 2005 novel No Country for Old Men was adapted as a 2007 film of the same name, which won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. His earlier Blood Meridian (1985) was among Time Magazine's poll of 100 best English-language books published between 1925 and 2005 and he placed joint runner-up for a similar title in a poll taken in 2006 by The New York Times of the best American fiction published in the last 25 years. Literary critic Harold Bloom named him as one of the four major American novelists of his time, along with Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, and Philip Roth. He is frequently compared by modern reviewers to William Faulkner. In 2009, Cormac McCarthy won the PEN/Saul Bellow Award, a lifetime achievement award given by the PEN American Center.