The Road

The Road by Cormac McCarthy is a Pulitzer Prize winning novel that is now a movie staring Viggo Mortensen. The movie came out last summer and I heard a review on the podcast Seen/Unseen Movie Reviews. The host said that he loved the book and was fearful that the movie would screw it up. There was something about his passionate description of the book that stuck in my mind, and made me decide that I had to read it. I purchased the book some time back, and I have a paperback that came out since the movie, so it has a picture of Viggo Mortensen and the actor who plays the boy, Kodi Smit-McPhee, on the cover. I used to be a read the book first purist, but I've relaxed on that account somewhat. I realized that in this case, it was too late, just seeing the movie trailers would have been enough to put Viggo Mortensen's face on the man when I read the book. I do like that pure book experience where you have these vague, fantasy-like visions of the characters in your mind. I'm always afraid that putting an actual face on the character distracts you from accepting the character as a pure person, whom you can relate to and understand their motivations and desires. When the movie arrived in the mail from NetFlix, I realized I had to get off my butt and read the book.

That was three days ago, and I finished the book last night. It's that good. You sit down and read it from front to back. In contrast, I've been plugging away at Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond for 2 years (with long gaps where I put it aside), but can never seem to read more than about 10 pages in a sitting (after which, I fall asleep).

The book reminds me of the perfect subject for a high school essay. The themes are numerous, and the old thesis style of finding the hidden meanings in the book is a perfect way to view the novel.

The style is almost more poetry than prose. It follows a simple pattern alternating stream of consciousness with simple dialog and spare descriptions.

I had no idea where it was going. There are a few things that you realize they have left out of the novel. They never say what part of the world the characters are in. I kept thinking they were in California, but it could just as easily been parts of Georgia. The point is that it's not important because the world has been so radically changed that nothing is recognizable anymore. The cause of the end of the world or the downfall of civilization is not clear, but I suspect it was meant to be nuclear war and the ensuing nuclear winter. However, why were there not more references to radiation? I suppose it could have been a comet or asteroid strike.

They never say the boy's name or the man's name, and it doesn't matter. He's "the man" and his son is "the boy".

The novel sets up a good versus evil theme. This is not some underlying message you have to guess at, the boy is often questioning the man about whether people they encounter are good people. Unfortunately, they do not encounter any good people, only victims and predators. The struggle between the boy and the man is to remain good and survive. The boy's watchfulness keeps the man from devolving into savagery and the man's example gives the boy a clear idea of good and evil.

You find yourself asking why they keep going on. You wonder what it is that they are hopeful for. Is there some unscarred territory where people are still normal and life is going on with something resembling order?

You get the sense that the desolation following the original conflagration went in stages. This is what makes the novel interesting. There are no explicit narrative explanations, just bits and pieces that you pick up along the way. You begin to understand that the survivors have swept over the landscape in waves, with each successive wave being diminished. At some point, people began to turn on each other, and when we see the boy and the man on their journey, they have reached the point where they can't trust anyone. They will either be attacked or robbed by anyone they meet, and some bands will slaughter them for food if they can.

You get the sense that the man was once a police officer or a soldier, but he was also well read and intelligent, so there's no telling what he might have been. One thing is clear, he's been very lucky. He was lucky to have survived the initial collapse, and then lucky to have been able to raise the boy, who it appears was born after the disaster. He was lucky to have had someone to be with him and help him survive, and he was lucky to always be able to find food or shelter or evade attackers when they came after him.

At one point in the book, they encounter an old man who is so defenseless and impoverished that he poses no threat. He turns out to be somewhat blind, and you wonder how in the world he survived for as long as he did. At the boy's insistence, they give him some of their food, even though they don't really have the food to spare. It is interesting how the man defers to the boy on these matters. He actually lets him make the decisions. In some ways, it seems that the man is realizing that many of the decisions they might make are random and there is no way to foresee where they will lead, so he might as well let the boy decide. In another view, you might say that he is using the boy as a moral compass. The old man asks about the boy and the man says that the boy is a god. When I read this, I thought that the man was being a smart ass, but then I thought that even if he was, it was a telling remark. What if the boy was somewhat of a god. What if the whole point was that the boy had to survive because some day he would be instrumental in rebuilding civilization? Or maybe the boy was a god in the sense that you don't question why you believe in him, you just do.

After a while, I began to realize why the book was resonating with me so much. I was identifying with the man. His way of consulting and deferring to the boy reminds me of the way I approach my son. I often let him do or try things when it doesn't really matter one way or the other. I figure he's going to learn to be an independent and thoughtful adult quicker if he is allowed to work things out himself. The man also has a curious way of trying to tell the truth and not sugar coat bleak realities, while at the same time explaining why that's not necessarily bad to face reality, it helps to deal with reality if you are fully aware of it. Yet the man wants to give a hopeful view to his son, so he is more ready to tell him when he doesn't know what the truth and reality of the situation is, but what he hopes it is. The boy responds to the honesty and openness by accepting the bad things in life, but not being absorbed by them. They say something to the effect that once you see something, you can't unsee it, you can't make it go away. Once you let it in, it stays in. And yet they come to understand that this is better than not seeing the bad things. They see to have been able to be exposed but not tainted by all the bad things they see. Perhaps this is part of their survival. By understanding what forms of evil they will be confronting, they are able to avoid them.

Despite the fact that the story had no hope, that the world was irreparably damaged and there did not seem to be anywhere to go to get away from the cruel fate that the changed world imposed on them, you found yourself having hope for the boy and the man, wishing them well and wanting them to make it to safety.

Upon further reflection of the book, I have decided that I really relate to the man because of the way he would lose sleep worrying about and protecting the boy. He would listen late at night and his own health probably suffered in order to stay vigilant and protect his son. It was interesting how the transition to a post-apocalyptic setting changes how you raise your son. While he still spent time teaching him to read (not in the time of the novel, but there were flashback references to the fact that he had been teaching him even while they struggled to survive), he had long since come to grips with the fact that he could not shelter and protect him from the realities of life. They had a saying about how once you see something, it's in your mind. They were seeing some fearsome and gruesome things, from the overall destruction of the world to the painful and cruel ways that people suffered and died. The man decided to let the boy see these things, and then talk about them and understand them for what they were. These things were horrible, but they were reality, and should be faced if a person was going to be better able to survive.

The result was that the boy was often struggling with accepting the horrible things in life, but never accepting that these things were right. He had a keen sense of right and wrong, and in his moral universe eating other people or even just hurting or taking from them to get ahead or survive was always wrong. He lit his father know this in many ways, subtle and overt. The man refers to him as a God to one old decrepit traveller that they shared food with. I think this was a telling moment in the book because the man did use the boy as a God in the sense that he was a being that the man had to live up to, he had to please the boy that he was a one of the good people, much the way religious people seek to do good to be in the favor of God and gain entry to Heaven. In the end, I think the man made it to Heaven with plenty of room to spare. His last parting gift to his son was to give them hope, "you've always been lucky - you will find some good people to be with" was his last message to the boy before he died. This depressing novel ended with a strangely bittersweet assurance that the boy would be OK when the good people found him as he stood vigil over his dead father, wondering what to do next. It was a strange emotional mixture that I have rarely seen in a writing, where the sadness of the loss of the man is tempered with the relief that the boy would be safe and would still have a chance to hopefully find something good in life. You kept wondering if there was an untouched place out there with good people in it, shelter and a lack of hunger, and you hoped they would find it. Someone has to carry on the human race.

Another less emotionally satisfying aspect of the book was the parallels this charred and wrecked world has with our relatively pristine world. I kept thinking about the way that the people that they encountered had no problem getting ahead (or staying alive) at the expense of the boy and the man. Their entire journey was one of not letting the others capture or harm them, or at least steal their meager possessions that they owed their life to. I realized that this is how nations act toward each other, this is how governments look at other nations. How do I get on top? What does that other group have that I need? This is in some ways the essence of how capitalism works. Stick it to the other guy and get ahead. This type of gain at the expense of others is shown in stark relief in the world of The Road, but really, it's present in the world around us today. Sure, we're well fed and dry and warm in the cold winter, but we still claw to the top of the pack standing on the backs of others. I've always felt that this was not right, in some way. I'm not a communist, one who thinks that all things go into a big community pot and then everyone pulls back out from it equally. I just believe that a higher form of success would be possible if we thought about ways to get ahead that pulled those around us or those we are dealing with up with us. Why can we not find mutually beneficial solutions to the problems we all face? Why must my success come at your expense? Why would I deserve to succeed if I knew it was hurting you? While The Road shows this in stark relief, I believe that in life, this is the road we are all travelling.