In 2006, prominant American novelist
Cormac McCarthy published
The Road, a post-apocalyptic novel which garnered critical praise in America and went on to win the Pulitzer Prize. The book is notable for a stark, minimalist style interspersed with occasional
purple metaphors. The writing is idiomatic to say the least, eschewing most punctuation (including quotes) and occasionally including one-sentence chapters of philosophical musing.
Depending on whom you ask,
The Road is either a melancholic but stirringly beautiful story about the goodness of humanity in a hopeless world, or a hellish nightmare so dark that no sane person would read it.
Or, it's just boring, repetitive, unpleasant, pretentious, and grammatically nonsensical. And if you enjoy breathing, never point out that this book, despite its premise, is not to be found in the
science fiction section of the bookstore: McCarthy fans will get upset at the implication that High Literature would be grouped with Genre Fiction, and Genre fans will be upset because The Road is pretty tame when compared to the Post-Apocalyptic genre, as a whole.
Set after an unspecified global disaster,
The Road follows two survivors, a man and his young son, who journey south through the smoking ashes of the United States, toward what they hope is a less dangerous country somewhere near the East Coast. During their ordeal, the man and the boy have only the rags on their backs and a cart of scavenged food. And one another. As they travel, they (and the audience) bear witness to a dead world, where nothing moves but the ashes in the breeze, nothing grows, and the sun is blacked out by a layer of poisonous ash. The only living beings except for them are the starving bands of men that stalk the road.
Like most of McCarthy's books, it was optioned for a film, and
The Film of the Book The Road was released on November 25, 2009. It was directed by John Hillcoat, the director of
The Proposition, and scored by
Nick Cave and Warren Ellis (no, not
that Warren Ellis), who had previously collaborated on the score for
The Proposition.
The original novel The Road contains examples of:
- After the End: One of the best and most harrowing post-apocalyptic novels ever written. One of the great things about this book is that it is one of the few such novels to actually have the stones to make it look like mankind is on its way out. Not just scraping by, but dying.
- Apocalypse How: Category 4. Biosphere extinction has already occurred and the world is in the final stages of dying.
- Just to be clear, the biosphere is dying, but the planet isn't outright poisoned. The author has vaguely implied in further comments that the disaster was a comet impact, not nuclear war. None of the characters in the book ever express concerns about radiation poisoning. However, so much dust and ash has been blown into the atmosphere by the impact (every square inch of the world looks like the most hellish parts of the Great Depression Dust Bowl) that the sun has been blotted out, shutting off the biosphere. This is worse than the meteorite impact which killed off the dinosaurs (which might have blotted out the sun for a few months) and will probably kill all complex multi-celled life, but bacteria might survive. The narrative has jumped ahead in time a bit over a decade (the disaster happened slightly before The Boy was born), but its vaguely implied that things were at least at a Mad Max level of existence initially. The problem is that on a long enough timeline, they've used up most of the canned food in existence, all plant life has been dead for years, and thus all of the animals. The only thing alive at this point are the humans who were smart and brutal enough to acquire the last meat on the planet: the handful of other humans.
- For all we know, at the thermal vents of the ocean floor which don't rely on photosynthesis, the crabs and tube worms are laughing their asses off.
- Arc Words: The phrase "carrying the fire" is constantly repeated by the boy, doubling as a Survival Mantra. The phrase also appeared in No Country for Old Men.
- Beard of Barbarism: Averted and played straight. Averted by the father, whose unkempt beard is mentioned a few times (typically right before he has the chance to shave it off). Played straight when the two main characters stumbled upon the ghoulish larder of a small band of cannibals at one point. As they flee, they briefly glimpse the larder's owners, and the only adjective used to describe the men is "bearded."
- Beige Prose
- Bittersweet Ending: The man has died, but the boy finds a new, slightly more prosperous family to take care of him. Of course, they're still in a dying world.
- Of course, considering this is Cormac McCarthy we're talking about, this is actually a reprieve from his heavier fare.
- the last paragraph is about how fish once lived in nearby rivers, "They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculite patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery."
- Cannibal Clan: Most of humanity have starved to the point where they eat other humans, and it's implied that they will eventually die from sickness or starvation, or cannibalize each other until no one is left.
- Crapsack World: Less a World Half Empty than a world almost completely drained.
- Dan Browned: It isn't widely known, but canned food is only safe to eat for five years. The man and his son should have died of botulism by now.
- Death World
- Despair Event Horizon
- Driven to Suicide: The mother. Justified, given the situation.
- Happy Flashback
- Hope Spot: The father finds a still-stocked and untouched bomb shelter, giving them a short time with comfortable beds, food, and even showers. Since he knows others will find it as well, he doesn't stay long.
- I'm A Humanitarian
- Incurable Cough of Death
- Inferred Holocaust: Pretty much one of the reasons why the ending is so bittersweet. Even though the boy is in good hands, the biosphere is dead. No one is going to live long once what is left of food is eaten and the remaining humans have all cannibalized each other.
- Kick the Dog: When the father and son catch up to the man who stole from them, the father engages in some Disproportionate Retribution, ordering him to strip naked and throw his belongings in their cart. This, in short, gave him a death sentence by hypothermia.
- No Name Given: No characters are named throughout the novel.
- Actually, one man identifies himself as "Ely". But upon further scrutiny by the father, "Ely" admits that it's not his real name. Not that it really matters.
- Papa Wolf: The father.
- Rape as Drama
- Scenery Gorn: So very much. In this world, ashes fall like snow.
- Shrug of God: The author has offered a few possible explanations for the world-ending disaster, and said that he himself has no opinion on the subject. See also The Unreveal.
- Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: There's a whole cottage industry that's sprung up around debating this question. As noted in the description, there's a group that believes the book is mind-shatteringly depressing. There's another group that believes The Road is, through all the death and misery, a chronicle of the strength and beauty of the human spirit.
- Survivalist Stash
- Throw the Dog a Bone: The boy loses his father, his only source of joy, comfort, peace of mind, and protection. Just as the story sets him up to travel the world as The Aloner, he meets a new family to travel with.
- Twenty Minutes into the Future
- The Unreveal: What happened to the world and how it happened is only mentioned in bits and pieces, not enough to come to a conclusion. The novel is more about the eventual fate of its two characters more so than the mystery of the past.
- What the Hell, Hero?: The father forces the thief who stole their gear to strip at gunpoint, then leaves him helpless beside the road. He will almost assuredly die painfully as a result. The boy lampshades this.
- Yank the Dog's Chain: See Hope Spot, above.
- Actor Allusion: The Lonely Planet New Zealand guidebook on Viggo Mortensen's bookshelf may be reference to The Film of the Book The Lord of the Rings.
- Arc Words: "Why are you following us?" or some variant thereof by various characters.
- Flashback: How Charlize Theron is able to be in this movie.
- Hey, It's That Guy!: Aragorn fighting flesh-eaters in the woods? We've seen that before. And look, he's mugging Omar Little!
- It's All About Me: The mother.
- Jerk Ass: Arguably, the mother.
- Never Trust a Trailer: See also flashback, above.
- Nick Cave: Composed the soundtrack.
- Only Sane Man: Some see the mother as this, since she preferred to die rather than struggle in this ruined world.
- Ragnarok Proofing: The only intact bunker the pair find also happens to have the only functioning lights they come across... for a few seconds.
- Since its about 10 years (more or less) After the End, a lot of stuff has long since broken down. Though there's still plenty of ammo lying around...
- Real Is Brown: Combined with relentless Scenery Gorn like woah. Much of the movie was filmed in an abandoned strip-mine, which is about as close as you can get to a Real Life post-apocalyptic wasteland.
- Screams Like a Little Girl: The boy
- Shout Out: The Lonely Planet New Zealand guidebook. Australia and New Zealand are set up as possible safe havens in numerous post-apocalyptic works, including On The Beach and The Chrysalids. In addition, The Film of the Book The Lord of the Rings was filmed there. See also Actor Allusion.
- Thousand Yard Stare: Ye Gods.
- Throw the Dog a Bone: On top of the boy finding a new family in the end like in the book, birds and animals can be heard during the credits, assuring us that the world isn't completely dead and life will go on.
- On top of that,it was mentioned in the beginning of the movie that every animal died.But they find a beetle towards the end.Not to forget,the family in the end has a rather healthy dog.
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