On McCarthy's The Road

The Road, a novel by Cormac McCarthy, is a work of horror. I want to make this plain for the gentle reader who might otherwise read it on the strength of this review. It is not for the squeamish. Cormac McCarthy, who wrote No Country for Old Men which provided the basis for this year’s Oscar-winning movie of the same name, doesn’t stent on portraying violence, and violence is present in abundance in The Road.

The plot of The Road can be presented quite simply. The world has been devastated by nuclear winter or something very much like it. The sun is buried behind clouds. The landscape is covered by ash. Dirty, gray snow is falling from the sky. And a man is taking his son down the road to get someplace south and, it is hoped, to safety.

End-of-the-world scenarios are not new to science fiction. Indeed, in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the world comes to an end during the first couple of pages and it’s a comedy. However, too often, there is something about most of the works of this genre which render them fantastic and, as a consequence, compromise whatever service they might render the truth. For example, the recent movie I am Legend features zombies/vampires which, in spite of whatever useful metaphorical value they might have, serve to distance the audience from the work.

In The Road, that distance is lacking. Cormac McCarthy has a talent for what writers call showing. That is to say, he lays out the scene, and leaves a lot for the reader to figure out for himself. He doesn’t put much of himself in between the reader and what is being described. The overall effect of this, on me at least, is to leave an impression that this—the scene being shown the reader—is real. Having read The Road, I feel I’ve seen nuclear winter accurately portrayed, and, take it from me, it’s something we don’t want to happen.

The protagonist in the novel is known to us only as “the man” and his son only as “the boy.” Early in the book we are given a hint that this work might have a religious dimension. There is a line where the father says of his son “If he is not the word of God God never spoke.” This echoes the beginning of the Gospel of John “In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the Word was God.”

Whatever else is meant by this, it is a signal what we should look for something deeper than we might expect and should certainly look at the character of the boy, who would be the Christ-figure. Seek and ye shall find.

As the father and son trek through the post apocalyptic landscape, there are reminders of how good things were before. When one has gone for an extended period without food, a can of pears is a reminder of the Eden from which mankind has expelled itself.

One might be tempted to categorize The Road as allegory on account of that, but, in my opinion, that would unfairly limit the book. While there are types portrayed, the book does show what a good man, a good father, might do in such impossible conditions.

As a person of faith, I can ask the question, what would I do in such apocalyptic circumstances? Thou shalt not kill. I believe it. What if a man was trying to kill you? What if he was trying to kill your son? What if you knew he would rape your son before he killed him and eat him afterwards? Is it okay to kill then? Would you still be one of the good guys afterwards?

In the Christian tradition, Jesus is the new Adam. Adam was created and Jesus was born of a virgin. The Road continues this progression, or closes the circle, with the boy who has only a father, as he doesn’t remember his mother. 

While the boy does nothing that most would call miraculous, he does exhibit a miraculous sense of empathy and a miraculous power of compassion. It is made clear that the father is dying during the course of the book, but it is also made clear he will continue in his son.

Again, let me repeat this is not for the squeamish or those who shudder at horror, but it does have rewards for those who can make it to the end of The Road.

Bobby Winters is Assistant Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Mathematics at Pittsburg State University. He is pastor of the Opolis United Methodist Church.