21
Apr
2009
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
I would like to write a post-apocalypse book one day. I can never think of a good idea that would wipe out most of the population and destroy all buildings, though. McCarthy smartly skips this burden, by simply not telling us what happened. He starts his novel a couple of years after whatever sort of disaster happened. In fact, he doesn’t even give his characters names–they are perpetually referred to as “the man” and “the boy”. And yet, it is a book based mostly on emotion.
I know that there’s a movie in post-production right now, that is due out next year. But really, I don’t know what sort of success it will have. While this book could easily be called genius, it doesn’t have much of a story arc. Like I said, it mostly based on emotion, and on transporting the reader to the post-apocalyptic dystopia McCarthy has created.
The story line, if there is one, is about a man and his son, who are trying to survive in a world where almost everything is dead. There are no more plants or animals to eat. They sometimes stumble upon caches of stored cans of food, whose owners have long since perished. In one lucky case, the man finds a can of Coca Cola and gives it to his son, knowing that this may be the last can on earth. The boy knows it too, and sits down, savoring it. When he’s done, they get up, and keep walking.
But there’s more to fear along McCarthy’s road than just starvation. The man and the boy keep all of their belongings in a shopping cart, which can be stolen at night if they aren’t careful. There are thieves all around.
And worse.
There are bands of cannibals that keep children as slaves–of various kinds. The man knows that if something happens to him, that could easily be the fate of the boy.
McCarthy writes in a pared down style that reflects the desolation his world. He doesn’t use any punctuation marks when his characters speak. And yet it also has a lyricism fitting to his fable. He mixes short sentences with longer ones, filled with succinct descriptions. For example:
“All the following day they traveled through the drifting haze of woodsmoke. In the draws the smoke coming off the ground like mist and the thin black trees burning on the slopes like stands of heathen candles. Late in the day they came to a place where the fire had crossed the road and the macadam was still warm and further on it began to soften underfoot. The hot black mastic sucking at their shoes and stretching in thin bands as they stepped. They stopped. We’ll have to wait, he said.”
I considered a couple of different paragraphs to quote here, but decided on something that focuses on scenery rather than something more gruesome. And while it does get gruesome, it is always in passing. They see something or someone, and they either hide while it moves by, or they investigate it and leave.
Day in and day out.
Which is why I say that there isn’t a story arc here. There is a conclusion of sorts, but no denouement. However, you get so riveted by this world, and by the emotion between the man and the boy, a story arc isn’t really necessary. It’s one of the few novels that can get away with just showing a part of life.
If you like this book/author, you might like:
(my reviews in blue)
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
The World Without Us by Alan Weisman
The Fate of the Earth by Jonathan Schell
World War Z by Max Brooks
Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse by Stephen King
Earth Abides by George R Stewart
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Into the Wild by John Krakauer
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel DeFoe
Foe by J.M. Coetzee
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why by Laurence Gonzales
The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life by Ben Sherwood
Other works by Cormac McCarthy
No Country for Old Men
Suttree
All the Pretty Horses
Cities of the Plain
The Orchard Keeper
Child of God
Outer Dark
Blood Meridian
The Stonemason: A Play in Five Acts
The Sunset Limited
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