Reading21: Cormac McCarthy's The Road

The cover of my kindle edition.

Note:  This is the second installment of my review of great 21st century literature.  Read my review of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize winning Gilead here.

There's ash everywhere. No electricity. No automobiles. Nothing works. No animals or insects. The trees are dying and falling. There are earthquakes. The sky is always overcast, the air unfit to breath. But the buildings are all standing, unless one of the scattered fires has burned them down. What food there is left to eat is in cans or jars. Isolated people seem to be aimlessly roaming around. They wear face masks, if they can find any. No real groups or bands. Except for the scavengers and cannibals.

Cormac McCarthy's The Road is a bleak post-apocalyptic tale of America that refuses to explain itself. Our protagonists, a father and his son, remain nameless. “The man” (also called “Papa” by his son) and “the boy” trudge through a world rendered in shades of gray where the sun never shines and ash covers everything. It's a world in which McCarthy tests the limits of human endurance in the face of utter desolation.

Early in the novel, McCarthy distills the father's purpose: "Looking for anything of color. Any movement. Any trace of standing smoke. He lowered the glasses and pulled down the cotton mask from his face and wiped his nose on the back of his wrist and then glassed the country again. Then he just sat there holding the binoculars and watching the ashen daylight congeal over the land. He knew only that the child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke."

The boy is the father's sole reason for continuing in this inescapable colorless realm. The religious language – "the word of God” – elevates their relationship to something transcendent. The boy is both the father's burden and his salvation, the only thing that matters in a world where nothing else makes sense.

Reading the novel reminded me of a future-shifted William Faulkner, whose influence on McCarthy's work is unmistakable. The prose is often fabulous, with its biblical cadence and sparse yet poetic descriptions. However, where Faulkner sprawls and fractures, McCarthy compresses. The gloomy situation and moral weight echo a sense that time has collapsed and characters are walking through the wreckage of human striving. McCarthy has stripped Faulkner's style to its essence, preserving the gravity and resonance. Although this is pushing things a bit, this apocalyptic landscape might even be read as a metaphor for Faulkner's decayed South, just abstracted to its logical conclusion.

McCarthy's narrative technique in The Road teeters on the edge of monotony. I kept wondering how long he could keep this up, this unending bleakness with very little action. There are only so many ways to describe gray, right? It is almost dull. Almost. The phrase "they went on" appears with ritualistic frequency, echoing the "they rode on" from his masterpiece Blood Meridian. This repetition is an endless movement without progress, the dirge-like cadence of survival without purpose. Yet just when the reader might grow weary of this relentless grimness, McCarthy punctuates the journey with moments that jolt us back to full attention: the discovery of a food cache, an infrequent yet menacing encounter with other survivors, or a tender, fleeting memory from the father's past.

These memories and flashbacks contrast sharply with the ashen present. The father dreams of his wife and of his former life, its colors, comforts, and small pleasures now inconceivable. These recollections provide emotional hues, a measuring stick for all that has been lost. The stark contrast between snippets of memory and the relentless present reality deepens the novel's sense of desolation while providing brief respites from the monotonous journey.

The monotony itself becomes a meaningful representation of the characters' existence, while the interruptions are the novel's heartbeat, keeping the characters and their story moving forward. McCarthy exhibits a mastery of pace, understanding exactly when to break the pattern before it becomes truly tedious.

The Road offers very little conventional plot or action. Instead, it immerses the reader in atmosphere, the constant ash, the bone-chilling cold, the perpetual gray of the sky and everything else. This atmosphere is the real antagonist, the ash gradually accumulating in the father's lungs with his persistent cough and increasing blood-flecked sputum. The physical landscape matches the emotional one, where hope has been nearly extinguished and survival itself seems increasingly pointless.

With one minor exception, the characters are simply "the man," "the boy," "the woman," and so on. In a world where civilization and its naming conventions have collapsed, individuals are reduced to their mode of survival. These people are presence without identity. But for the father's brief remembrances, who these people were before the catastrophe is irrelevant. The past has been erased as thoroughly as names and maps. What remains is only the present moment – the struggle, the journey, the relationship. The father ponders time this way: "There is no past.” and “There is no later. This is later."

The aforementioned phrase "they went on" appears 26 times in my kindle edition, But, "I don't know" occurs 78 times. This second phrase really dominates the novel, acknowledging the intellectual and spiritual uncertainty that pervades their world. It becomes stamped in the reader's mind. There is so much we don't know. Why is everything like this? What are we supposed to do next?

The nature of the catastrophe remains deliberately cryptic. McCarthy offers only the briefest glimpse of the cataclysm itself: "The clocks stopped at 1:17. A long shear of light and then a series of low concussions. He got up and went to the window. What is it? she said. He didnt answer. He went into the bathroom and threw the lightswitch but the power was already gone. A dull rose glow in the windowglass. He dropped to one knee and raised the lever to stop the tub and then turned on both taps as far as they would go. She was standing in the doorway in her nightwear, clutching the jamb, cradling her belly in one hand. What is it? she said. What is happening? I dont know."

This is sparse but all we have to work with as readers. A flash of light, concussions, clocks stopping, a rose glow in the sky, these tidbits suggest something massive and final. Online research seems to indicate most readers think this was either a massive volcanic eruption or an asteroid hit. But neither of these really satisfies me. They don't explain why all the buildings are still standing but the animals are dead, for example. It could be biological, but why all the ash? McCarthy provides no explanation, no context. The reader is as lost as the characters in the story.

I think he avoids explanation because the cause is irrelevant to the human struggle at the center of the novel. It literally does not matter what happened. The focus remains fixed on the relationship between father and son, not on the mechanics of apocalypse. The final word in the novel is “mystery.” That seems to be a purposeful clue.

The father's role in this desolate world is both simple and impossible. He has to protect his son at all costs. Early in the novel, we encounter a moment that crystallizes the terrible burden he carries: "He watched the boy sleeping. Can you do it? When the time comes? Can you?" This haunting question reveals the darkest aspect of the father's responsibility. With only two bullets available, the pistols he and the boy carry are mostly for show, they keep would-be scavengers and worse at bay, should they be encountered. He must consider whether he could kill his son and himself if faced with starvation or capture by the cannibal bands who roam the landscape. This is a terrible calculus of mercy in a world where death might be preferable to certain forms of survival. The question hangs over the entire narrative, informing every decision the father makes.

When the boy asks questions about the vanished world, the father struggles: "Sometimes the child would ask him questions about the world that for him was not even a memory. He thought hard how to answer. There is no past. What would you like? But he stopped making things up because those things were not true either and the telling made him feel bad. The child had his own fantasies. How things would be in the south. Other children. He tried to keep a rein on this but his heart was not in it. Whose would be?" The father is a pragmatist and refuses to invent comforting lies, even as he acknowledges the boy's need for hope.

Then comes one of the novel's most profound observations: "All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes. So, he whispered to the sleeping boy. I have you." This quiet, somewhat desperate affirmation, not "I love you" (which is never uttered by anybody in the novel), but the more tenuous "I have you," captures the precarious nature of their bond in a world where possession is temporary and everything is already lost. It is a declaration of the only truth he can still affirm.

McCarthy's marvelous prose reaches its most haunting heights when describing the man's experience of darkness and disorientation:

"The blackness he woke to on those nights was sightless and impenetrable. A blackness to hurt your ears with listening. Often he had to get up. No sound but the wind in the bare and blackened trees. He rose and stood tottering in that cold autistic dark with his arms outheld for balance while the vestibular calculations in his skull cranked out their reckonings. An old chronicle. To seek out the upright. No fall but preceded by a declination. He took great marching steps into the nothingness, counting them against his return. Eyes closed, arms oaring. Upright to what? Something nameless in the night, lode or matrix. To which he and the stars were common satellite. Like the great pendulum in its rotunda scribing through the long day movements of the universe of which you may say it knows nothing and yet know it must."

This extraordinary passage moves beyond mere physical description into metaphysical territory. The "cold autistic dark" (which might be my favorite phrase in the novel) suggests a sensory void that severs connection with the external world. The father's attempt to maintain balance becomes a metaphor for seeking moral orientation in a world where all reference points have vanished. His "marching steps into the nothingness" evoke both physical struggle and existential groping. Writing like this transcends the post-apocalyptic genre, transforming physical struggle into metaphysical poetry.

The novel's desolation extends beyond human society to the natural world itself. In one poignant memory, the father recalls an early sign of nature's extinction: "Once in those early years he'd wakened in a barren wood and lay listening to flocks of migratory birds overhead in that bitter dark. Their half muted crankings miles above where they circled the earth as senselessly as insects trooping the rim of a bowl. He wished them godspeed till they were gone. He never heard them again."

This brief passage captures the gradual disappearance of the non-human world. The birds, already described as moving "senselessly," become the last representatives of natural cycles and migrations. Their disappearance marks another layer of loss, the entire web of life that preceded and sustained human civilization is gone. The father's gentle blessing – "he wished them godspeed" – acknowledges something precious vanishing forever. It is also worth pointing out the phrase “in those early years” which indicates that the novel is set in a world that has become this way over extended time, a sustained catastrophe rather than a singular event. Long enough for his newborn child to become the boy who never knew his mother or anything else.

As I have said, the father and son encounter various survivors who break up the monotone of the gloom and as a grim reflection of what humanity has become in this devastated world. These encounters vary in their degree of actual danger but the father approaches each with deep-seated mistrust and protective instincts since he and the boy have little or nothing to eat most of the time.

They come across cannibals keeping human captives as food. There are a few roving bands of armed men who have embraced brutality as a way of life. More frequently, they meet solitary survivors like the old man who calls himself Ely (the only named character, though even this may be a pseudonym). There's also the thief on the beach who steals all their possessions while they explore a stranded ship. They manage to track the thief down, the man forcing him to strip naked in retribution, essentially condemning him to death.

In one particularly poignant, somewhat ambiguous encounter, the boy sees a “little boy” across the road. The little boy runs away and the boy calls to him that it is okay, he won't hurt him. He runs after him but he finds no one. The father tries to convince his son that there is no little boy but his son does not believe him. They have this conversation. It's typical McCarthy (and Faulkner, for that matter), minimal punctuation:

“What if that little boy doesnt have anybody to take care of him? he said. What if he doesnt have a papa?

There are people there. They were just hiding.

The boy was pulling at his coat. Papa, he said.

What?

I’m afraid for that little boy.

I know. But he’ll be all right.

We should go get him, Papa. We could get him and take him with us.

We cant.

And I’d give that little boy half of my food.

Stop it. We cant.

He was crying again. What about the little boy? he sobbed. What about the little boy?”

These encounters usually pit the boy's persistent compassion against the father's necessary pragmatism. The boy constantly pleads with his father to help these people that they meet, to share food, to show kindness, while the father knows they barely have enough to survive themselves. The boy's recurring question, "Are we still the good guys?" becomes a moral compass for the book, challenging the father's decisions even as he makes them to protect his son. The man assures him that they are the good guys.

The father's suspicion of others is not paranoia but realism in a world where trust can be fatal. Yet the boy's insistence on maintaining humanity, to "carry the fire" as they put it between them, is a counterweight to the father's harsh pragmatism. This begs the question of when survival requires ruthlessness, what remains of our humanity? The boy represents the possibility that compassion might survive even when everything else is lost, while the father embodies the brutal compromises necessary to protect that very possibility.

The father and son's trek south through the Appalachian mountains to somewhere on the east coast appears, on the surface, to be an arbitrary quest. It is briefly mentioned that they are seeking warmer weather but there's no rational reason to believe the sea will offer anything better than where they've been. There are no animals to hunt, no plants growing, no natural life of any kind. The coast becomes a symbol of purpose rather than an actual destination, a psychological necessity rather than a strategic one. The man needs direction to stave off despair, and he imposes it on the boy as well.

The boy hopes that the ocean will be blue, a flash of color in their gray world, perhaps representing life or hope. When they finally reach the coast, it offers no such salvation. McCarthy describes the scene in haunting terms: "Out there was the gray beach with the slow combers rolling dull and leaden and the distant sound of it. Like the desolation of some alien sea breaking on the shores of a world unheard of. Out on the tidal flats lay a tanker half careened. Beyond that the ocean vast and cold and shifting heavily like a slowly heaving vat of slag and then the gray squall line of ash."

The boy's hope for blue water, for something different, is crushed by this alien seascape. The journey itself, not the destination, provides what little meaning exists. The coast is a bitter metaphor for the human need to believe in destinations, even when they offer no real change. The directive to keep moving ("they went on") becomes the only certainty in their existence. If they stop, they face certain death.

We experience the narrative entirely through the father's consciousness. We are never inside the boy's mind, nor anyone else's. This restricted perspective shapes our understanding of both characters. The father's interior life is rich with memory, fear, and calculation. We witness his constant vigilance, his ruthless practicality, and the crushing weight of his responsibility. His perspective is shaped by knowledge of the world that was, making the present desolation all the more unbearable.

The boy, meanwhile, remains somewhat mysterious. He was born shortly after the event occurred. He is only a few years old. Seen entirely through his father's eyes, he becomes a kind of symbol of innocence, of moral purity, of the possibility that something might survive this calamity. His questions and concerns are the closest thing we have for morality, but we never access his thoughts directly.

The asymmetry of their perspectives is profound. The father carries the burden of memory, of the world before the boy was born, while the boy navigates only the immediate reality of their existence. The father struggles to reconcile the world that was with the world that is, while the boy, having known nothing else, accepts their reality more readily, even as he questions their place within it and the nature of their actions.

The word "goodness" appears just once in the novel, when the father tries to comfort his son about "the little boy" briefly encountered earlier. This singular use gives the word extraordinary weight. In a world stripped of moral and social structures, goodness becomes both rare and essential, a shared human experience rather than just a concept.

The recurring phrase "carry the fire" is the novel's central metaphor for maintaining humanity amid collapse. It's never fully explained, but it represents some shared essence unique to the father and son. Light in darkness, perhaps. When the boy asks the "good guys" encountered at the end of the novel if they "carry the fire," he's asking if they've maintained their humanity, if they can be trusted not to descend into predation and brutality. They don't know what he's talking about, it's not their shared metaphor. But, luckily, haphazardly, they are good.

Oddly enough, for all its dark and puzzling tragedy, The Road turns out to be a novel of hope. It hit me at a deeply emotional level that Blood Meridian never approaches. Without giving too much away (which has never stopped me before but in this case I want you to experience the full weight of the moment), the reader comes to appreciate “the little boy” in whole new context. It makes for a surprising gut-punch of emotion at the end, where the weight of all the bewildering tsunami of gloom and desperation comes crashing down upon the reader leaving you with a sudden, overwhelming sense of innocence and pity and, oh dear god, there's goodness, just like Papa says.

We learn that the woman of the good guys "sometimes would talk to him about God." The religious connotation is significant, though the boy shows little interest in theology. Even more telling here is the word "sometimes." This simple word does extraordinary work in the text, suggesting something the entire novel has lacked until this point: the passage of time in a relatively stable situation.

"Sometimes" implies weeks, perhaps months of living with these "good guys." It indicates a continuity absent from the rest of the narrative. In a novel where time is marked only by constant movement ("they went on") and immediate survival concerns, this single word opens up a future beyond mere survival. It is, remarkably, the longest period of time referenced in the entire novel but for “those early years” mentioned above. The woman tells him, "the breath of God was his breath yet though it pass from man to man through all of time."

What moved me to tears was not just the boy finding safety but its implied of continuation in spite of all the heavy nihilism. The boy lives on. After an entire novel of compressed time and immediate danger, McCarthy gives us this glimpse of life in extended time. It's not salvation in any grand sense, but it's the most human and heartrending moment in the novel.

While The Road affected me profoundly in its final moments, it doesn't resonate with me the way Blood Meridian does. The Road delivers an immediate, visceral emotional impact, while Blood Meridian lingers longer, forcing deeper philosophical reckoning. The unexpected emotional weight of The Road is undeniable, but it doesn't have the same mythic quality, epic richness or philosophic depth as McCarthy's earlier masterpiece.

Nevertheless, this is the novel for which McCarthy the Pulitzer Prize in 2007. Faulkner won two Pulitzer's, one in 1956 and another in 1962 for novels that no one mentions among his great works. The Road is not McCarthy's most ambitious or complex novel, but perhaps it came at a point in his career when the literary establishment was ready to acknowledge his contribution to American letters. As with Faulkner, and many other artists for that matter, it likely honors a lifetime of elevated, challenging, uncompromising work.

The Road showcases McCarthy's ability to affect readers with minimal prose and maximum restraint. There is a power in its simplicity that differs from the sprawling complexity of his earlier works. It distills his themes to their essence, focusing on the fundamental question of what remains when everything else is gone.

Civilization, nature, hope, even the sun are all stripped away. What remains is the bond between father and son, and the simple human capacity for compassion even under impossible circumstances. Simple human connection is rendered all the more precious by its rarity. The final mystery is not the apocalypse that created this world, but the goodness that somehow, tentatively, survives it.

(Assisted by Claude.)