The Road, the novel
A few days ago I posted something about an upcoming movie, The Road, which is based on the prize-winning novel of the same name by Cormac McCarthy. Here's some of what Wikipedia has on the plot ....
The Road follows an unnamed father and son journeying together toward the sea across a post-apocalyptic landscape, some years after a great, unexplained cataclysm has destroyed civilization and almost all life on Earth. The setting is extremely bleak: the sun is obscured by a layer of ash so thick that the pair must breathe through masks, and plants do not grow. The surviving remnants of humanity have been largely reduced to thoughtless violence and cannibalism. Realizing that they will not survive another winter in their present location, the father leads them through this desolate landscape towards the sea, sustained by a vague hope of finding other "good people" like them.
Overwhelmed by this desperate and apparently hopeless situation, the boy's mother, pregnant with him at the time of the cataclysm, has committed suicide some time before the story begins. The father coughs blood every morning and knows he is dying. He struggles to protect his son from the constant threats of attack, exposure, and starvation, as well as from what he sees as the boy's innocently well-meaning but dangerous desire to help the other wanderers they meet. They carry a pistol with two bullets, meant for protection or suicide if necessary. In the face of all of these obstacles, te man and the boy have only each other (they are "each the other's world entire") ....."
I was intrigued enough by this description to look for the book at the library and have just finished it. You can read a New York Times review of the book here - The Road Through Hell, Paved With Desperation - but I thought I'd write just a few words about it too ...
The novel is incredibly bleak in its description of the dying post-cataclysm world .... almost all plants, animals, even the oceans, are dead .... and given the global warming situation, this picture painted doesn't seem that unimaginable. It made me appreciate all the more what we still have left, and made me mourn what we're losing more and more of every day.
With civilization in shreds, the few people that are left in the story seem to polarize into the "good guys" and the "bad guys", as the father and son name them. The bad guys turn to rape, murder, and cannibalism. The man and the boy are good guys. They won't eat a dog when they come upon it, even though they're starving, and I think that's where the line gets drawn between good and bad for them (and for me too) .... when you won't do anything necessary to survive, whatever the cost to others and to your own ideals, then you have chosen to be good, even if that means also being dead.
The worst thing and the best thing about the story for me were the same thing - the relationship of genuine love between the man and his son, lived out in an environment of danger, suffering, and despair. If they hadn't cared so much, been so vulnerable, the story wouldn't have hurt so badly to read, and it also wouldn't have been so worth reading.
The Road follows an unnamed father and son journeying together toward the sea across a post-apocalyptic landscape, some years after a great, unexplained cataclysm has destroyed civilization and almost all life on Earth. The setting is extremely bleak: the sun is obscured by a layer of ash so thick that the pair must breathe through masks, and plants do not grow. The surviving remnants of humanity have been largely reduced to thoughtless violence and cannibalism. Realizing that they will not survive another winter in their present location, the father leads them through this desolate landscape towards the sea, sustained by a vague hope of finding other "good people" like them.
Overwhelmed by this desperate and apparently hopeless situation, the boy's mother, pregnant with him at the time of the cataclysm, has committed suicide some time before the story begins. The father coughs blood every morning and knows he is dying. He struggles to protect his son from the constant threats of attack, exposure, and starvation, as well as from what he sees as the boy's innocently well-meaning but dangerous desire to help the other wanderers they meet. They carry a pistol with two bullets, meant for protection or suicide if necessary. In the face of all of these obstacles, te man and the boy have only each other (they are "each the other's world entire") ....."
I was intrigued enough by this description to look for the book at the library and have just finished it. You can read a New York Times review of the book here - The Road Through Hell, Paved With Desperation - but I thought I'd write just a few words about it too ...
The novel is incredibly bleak in its description of the dying post-cataclysm world .... almost all plants, animals, even the oceans, are dead .... and given the global warming situation, this picture painted doesn't seem that unimaginable. It made me appreciate all the more what we still have left, and made me mourn what we're losing more and more of every day.
With civilization in shreds, the few people that are left in the story seem to polarize into the "good guys" and the "bad guys", as the father and son name them. The bad guys turn to rape, murder, and cannibalism. The man and the boy are good guys. They won't eat a dog when they come upon it, even though they're starving, and I think that's where the line gets drawn between good and bad for them (and for me too) .... when you won't do anything necessary to survive, whatever the cost to others and to your own ideals, then you have chosen to be good, even if that means also being dead.
The worst thing and the best thing about the story for me were the same thing - the relationship of genuine love between the man and his son, lived out in an environment of danger, suffering, and despair. If they hadn't cared so much, been so vulnerable, the story wouldn't have hurt so badly to read, and it also wouldn't have been so worth reading.
posted by crystal | 9:42 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home