For all its intents and purposes, The Road is not a bad book. What the main focus in the book is is really the setting and mood, showing how stark, terrifying and lifeless the world has become through the unvoiced, but clearly hinted at, aftermath of a massive nuclear war. Everything is dying and people have become reduced to the barest of beings in order to survive. The characters don't matter and neither does the story; there is only one true character and one true story: the survivor and the end of the world. Because this is it, a realistic and chilling vision of the absolute and utter end of the world and those who are experiencing it. We don't get a macho, improvised-vehicle-riding gunslinger or a plucky band of survivors hoping to wait out the storm. What we do get is a stream of conscious travelogue of two people wandering the dying Earth, as the Man tries to fool himself into believing that he can scrape out a meaningful existence for the Boy in this gray, ashy shell of a planet. Of course, that was one of the reasons this book bugged me at first: why anyone would want to live in this kind of world for much longer than they had to. But I realized that in this situation there would be some who would cling to the last bit of hope that something, anything, could go right after the end. Of course, being Cormac Mc Carthy, the author does everything in his power to crush that bit of hope beneath his heel (a fact I found out after reading No Country For Old Men). Yes there's barely any story to speak of, but that's the thing: the story's over. We only had the misfortune to enter it at this point. Like it or not, the world is dead, the end.
Bleak and gritty
For all its intents and purposes, The Road is not a bad book. What the main focus in the book is is really the setting and mood, showing how stark, terrifying and lifeless the world has become through the unvoiced, but clearly hinted at, aftermath of a massive nuclear war. Everything is dying and people have become reduced to the barest of beings in order to survive. The characters don't matter and neither does the story; there is only one true character and one true story: the survivor and the end of the world. Because this is it, a realistic and chilling vision of the absolute and utter end of the world and those who are experiencing it. We don't get a macho, improvised-vehicle-riding gunslinger or a plucky band of survivors hoping to wait out the storm. What we do get is a stream of conscious travelogue of two people wandering the dying Earth, as the Man tries to fool himself into believing that he can scrape out a meaningful existence for the Boy in this gray, ashy shell of a planet. Of course, that was one of the reasons this book bugged me at first: why anyone would want to live in this kind of world for much longer than they had to. But I realized that in this situation there would be some who would cling to the last bit of hope that something, anything, could go right after the end. Of course, being Cormac Mc Carthy, the author does everything in his power to crush that bit of hope beneath his heel (a fact I found out after reading No Country For Old Men). Yes there's barely any story to speak of, but that's the thing: the story's over. We only had the misfortune to enter it at this point. Like it or not, the world is dead, the end.