The Road by Cormac McCarthy Review: Allison, Sydney, Thomas, Ebere

The Road is a novel by Cormac McCarthy about a father and a son that survive the aftermath of the apocalypse of the world. Everything is burnt and covered in ash due to some unknown catastrophic event. In the desolation, all they have are each other, a cart of foraged food, and a couple of blankets. Their quest is to reach the southern coast, where they believe they will find other survivors. Together they face starvation, cannibals, snow and rain storms, and several near-death experiences.

The format in which McCarthy writes the novel makes it difficult to understand. Firstly, he uses nearly no punctuation. Contractions with apostrophes were rare and not a single quotation mark was used in the novel. This made it difficult to distinguish when somebody was speaking as opposed to narrating. However, it did give the novel a factual and to-the-point tone. Blunt phrasing was used and the boy usually accepted any answers to his questions with a simple "okay":

[The Boy:] It's really cold.
[The Man:] I know.
[The Boy:] Where are we?
[The Man:] Where are we?
[The Boy:] Yes.
[The Man:] I dont know.
[The Boy:] If we were going to die would you tell me?
[The Man:] I dont know. We're not going to die.

[The Boy:] Okay. (144.1-144.10)

The two had several conversations just like this throughout the novel. Phrases like "okay.", "I don't know.", "Are you scared?" are all used so often that the reader feels as though they are having the same conversation. The simplicity and repetition reflects how the two characters were concerned solely with surviving and their monotonous, repetitive life of building fires, searching for food, and finding shelter. Secondly, the narrator frequently had flashbacks, but there were no indications as to when this would happen. Using pronouns such as "she" and "he" made it a bit confusing as to who was involved in what was going on.

Overall, however, the book was interesting once you got into it. The first few dozen pages felt a little repetitive: They were on the road, they were hungry, they were alone. Despite the fact that the boy and his father remain nameless the entire story, the reader comes to understand and connect with the characters. The little boy knows nothing of the world as it used to be because he was an infant when the world "ended". His innocence evokes passion in the reader and they really want the boy to pull through the rough parts of the novel. In general, it was an interesting read and I would suggest it to a friend.