The Road

Book: The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Pages: 287
Finished: May, 2009
Challenges:
** Spring Reading Things
** A-Z Challenge
** Book Awards
** Dewey's Book Challenge
** Genre Challenge
** New Author
** Pulitzer Prize Challenge
** Read Your Name
** Read and Review
** Unshelved Reading Challenge

First sentence: "When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him."

My thoughts...

Bleak
sorrowful
gray
ashy
dusty
frigidly cold
indescribable horror
hunger
Love
Life
Hope

From Publishers Weekly
...that leaves cities and forests burned, birds and fish dead and the earth shrouded in gray clouds of ash. In this landscape, an unnamed man and his young son journey down a road to get to the sea. (The man's wife, who gave birth to the boy after calamity struck, has killed herself.) They carry blankets and scavenged food in a shopping cart, and the man is armed with a revolver loaded with his last two bullets. Beyond the ever-present possibility of starvation lies the threat of roving bands of cannibalistic thugs. The man assures the boy that the two of them are "good guys," but from the way his father treats other stray survivors the boy sees that his father has turned into an amoral survivalist, tenuously attached to the morality of the past by his fierce love for his son.

More of my thoughts...
This book drew me in from page one. As I viewed it through a parent's eyes I cried. Growing up in the 60's I have vague memories of air raid drills at school, and hearing about people who had bunkers in their yards stocked with supplies to sustain them in the even of a nuclear catastrophe. I used to think that would be a good idea. After reading this book I think I would not like to survive the initial catastrophe. I don't want to need that bunker full of supplies. Eventually those supplies are gone, and then what? Life as we know it was totally wiped out for the man in this story, and it was the only life the boy had ever known.

I have read many other reviews---which criticized many things about this book's written style--the dialogue through the first half of the book is very staccato and sparse. It helps to understand that during this first half, the two main characters are nearly starved to death and exhausted and wet and cold--I am sure there was not a lot of energy leftover for conversations-nor was there much to take about! Walking, foraging, rain, fire building, more walking....
There was other criticisms in regard to McCarthy's creative license with use/non-use of certain punctuation. Did not bother me one bit--in fact I have seen other award winning books whose authors have done interesting things with punctuation and stylistic forms and I think it just might be one of those quirky things!

Bottom line.
The man loved his son and was committed to doing what was right for him, while struggling with the battle raging within: two bullets left, how long can we make it without needing them. How can I possibly even think about that option? How do you hold on to the old way of life when that way of life is gone--those morals, and feelings, and ideas of acceptable behavior? Very powerful and thought provoking.

Passages I marked:

" He walked to the top of a rise and crouched and watched the day accrue. The chary dawn, the cold illucid world. In the distance what looked to be a pine wood, raw and black. A colorless world of wire and crepe. He went back and got the boy and made him sit up. His head kept slumping forward. We have to go, he said. We have to go."

"He tried to think of something to say but he could not. He'd had this feeling before, beyond the numbness and the dull despair. the world shrinking down about a raw core of parsible entities. The names of things slowly following those things into oblivion. Colors. The names of birds. Things to eat. Finally the names of things one believed to be true. More fragile than he would have thought."

( a conversation between father and son)
"What is it? the man said.
Nothing.
We'll find something to eat. We always do.
The boy didnt answer. The man watched him.
That's not it, is it?
It's okay.
Tell me.
The boy looked away down the road.
I want you to tell me. It's okay.
He shook his head.
Look at me, the man said.
He turned and looked. He looked like he'd been crying.
Just tell me.
We wouldnt ever eat anybody, would we?
No. Of course not.,
Even if we were starving?
We're starving now.
You said we werent.
I said we werent dying. I didnt say we werent starving.
But we wouldnt.
No. We wouldnt.
No matter what.
No. No matter what.
Because we're the good guys.
Yes.
And we're carrying the fire.
And we're carrying the fire. Yes.
Okay.