The Road...

Once a upon an Armageddon Week on Discovery, I learned something devastating. We consider the human race to be a civilized, mostly caring group of folks. However, when everything is stripped away, you don't have to go very deep to find we are not that much different from the animals. Can this really be true? I don't like to think about such things, but in reading this book one doesn't have much of a choice.

Cormac McCarthy's The Road won the Pulitzer in 2007 and, in true Pulitzer fashion, was made into a major motion picture in 2009. I was hoping that reading this novel would redeem my opinion of McCarthy as a writer. Until now, I have only read two of his works: Child of God and All the Pretty Horses. I remember too much about Child of God (and not in a good way) and I remember very little about All the Pretty Horses. This one, however, I think I will remember for months and years to come. It will haunt me as I lay awake at night, my thoughts unwilling drifting to the post-apocalyptic chaos that possibly awaits us.

The Road is about a man and his son (they could be any man and child for they are not given a name) walking down the road to the coast after a seemingly global apocalypse. Trusting no one in this dog-eat-dog world, father and son sneak through the day, scavenging necessities from wherever they can. Also on the road are bands of carnivores, searching for their next meal.

Pull the civil band-aid off humanity, and you find the basic need to survive. By any means necessary. Even the "good guys" (here the father and son duo) abide by Darwin's survival of the fittest, saving themselves instead of the lives of others. The toughest part of the book for me was a scene about halfway through in which the father and son enter a house looking for supplies and food. They stumble across a trapdoor in the floor and, after breaking the lock and entering, find a huddled mass of people, naked and cold. Waiting to die. Hoping to be rescued. A rescue attempt is impossible when the father sees the bad guys (for lack of better terms) returning to the house. They must choose. I hope I never find myself in a situation of similar terms.

Despite the depressing depiction of humanity, McCarthy does give a few glimmers of hope, glimmers of a world destroyed but not defeated (as Michener would say). One of my favorite moments in the book is when the father puts the boy in the grocery cart they use for storage and runs up and down the hills of road with him. The boy feeling the exhilarating breeze of speed and childhood on his face.

How does this book end you ask? Is there salvation at the coast? Well, my friends. I can't say. McCarthy left the ending so ambiguous, the reader can interpret it how he chooses. Honestly, it comes down to whether you are an optimist or a pessimist. Is there hope? Or are we all doomed in the end?

For me... there is always hope.

Up next, Beloved by Toni Morrison, winning the Pulitzer in 1988.

Actually, if I was honest, I would tell you that I have already finished Beloved and that I am slightly behind on my blogging. And if I was really honest, I would tell you that I am taking a quick detour from the Pulitzer list to read The Last Novel by David Markson. But I will keep that to myself lest you think my resolve is weakening.

Until then... Happy reading.