The Road
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| The Road | |
 First Edition hardcover of The Road |
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| Author | Cormac McCarthy |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | post-apocalyptic fiction |
| Publisher | Alfred A. Knopf |
| Publication date | September 26, 2006 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 256 pp |
| ISBN | ISBN 0307265439 |
The Road is a 2006 novel by American writer Cormac McCarthy. It is a post-apocalyptic tale describing a journey taken by a father and his young son over a period of several months across a landscape blasted years before by an unnamed cataclysm that destroyed civilization and, seemingly, most life on earth. The novel was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 2006 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction, and was chosen as an Oprah's Book Club selection.
In his 2007 interview with Oprah Winfrey for The Oprah Winfrey Show, McCarthy said the inspiration for The Road came during a visit to El Paso, Texas with his young son, about four years prior. Imagining what the city might look like in the future, he pictured "fires on the hill" and thought about his son. He took some initial notes, but did not return to the idea until several years later while in Ireland. Then the novel came to him quickly, and he dedicated it to his son, John Francis McCarthy.[1]
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[edit] Plot summary
The Road follows a man and a boy, father and son, journeying together for many months across a post-apocalyptic landscape, some years after a great, unexplained cataclysm. The story takes place in the former United States, where civilization has been destroyed, along with most life; the precise fate of the rest of the earth is not made clear, though the implication is that the disaster has affected the entire planet. What is left of humanity now consists largely of bands of cannibals and their prey, and refugees who scavenge for canned food or other surviving foodstuffs.
Ash covers the surface of the earth; in the atmosphere, it obscures the sun and moon, and the two travelers breathe through improvised masks to filter it out. Plants and animals are apparently all dead (dead wood for fuel is plentiful), and the rivers and oceans are seemingly empty of life. The only non-human organisms they encounter are a dog, some mushrooms and apples found in an orchard.
The unnamed father is literate, well-traveled, and knowledgeable about machinery, woodcraft, and human biology (when confronting and threatening a cannibal, he is able to list several obscure portions of the brain, at which point the cannibal asks him if he is a doctor). He realizes that he and his young son cannot survive another winter in their present location, so the two set out across what was once the Southeastern United States, largely following the highways. They aim to reach warmer southern climates and the sea in particular. Along the way, threats to the duo's survival create an atmosphere of sustained terror and tension.
The father coughs blood every morning and knows he is dying. He struggles to protect his son from the constant threats of attack, exposure, and starvation, as well as from what he sees as the boy's dangerous desire to help the other wanderers they meet. They carry a pistol with two bullets, meant for suicide should it become necessary; the father has told the son to kill himself to avoid being captured. (The boy's mother, pregnant with him at the time of the cataclysm, quickly felt overwhelmed by this nightmare world and has committed suicide some years before the story begins.) The father struggles in times of extreme danger with the fear that he will have to kill his son to prevent him from suffering a more terrible fate – horrific examples of which include chained catamites kept captive by a marauding band; captives found locked in a basement and in the process of being slowly cannibalized, their limbs gradually harvested by their captors; and a decapitated human infant being roasted on a spit.
In the face of all of these obstacles, the man and the boy have only each other (McCarthy says that they are "each the other's world entire"). The man maintains the pretense, and the boy holds on to the real faith, that there is a core of ethics left somewhere in humanity, and they repeatedly assure one another that they are among "the good guys," who are "carrying the fire."
In the end, having brought the boy south after extreme hardship but without finding the salvation he had hoped for, the father succumbs to his illness and dies, leaving the boy alone on the road. Three days later, however, the grieving boy encounters a man who has been tracking the father and son. This man, who has a wife and two children of his own, invites the boy to join his family. The narrative's close suggests that the wife is a moral and compassionate woman who treats the boy well, a resolution that vindicates the dead father's determination to stay alive and keep moving as long as possible.
[edit] Geography
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This section may contain original research or unverified claims. Please improve the article by adding references. See the talk page for details. (September 2007) |
The journey passes through towns and cities whose names are known but never stated. The travelers apparently set out on their journey in the region of Eastern Tennessee, perhaps just north of there. They continue southeast across the Great Smoky Mountains—probably over Newfound Gap, which has an elevation of 5,048 feet above sea level, equivalent to that given for the unnamed pass in the book ("The pass at the watershed was five thousand feet and it was going to be very cold."[2]). The path takes them through the Piedmont region of the Carolinas and southeastward to the coast, perhaps that of South Carolina or Georgia.
One rare specific geographical indication in the book is a barn bearing the painted legend "See Rock City." Novelist William Kennedy's review for The New York Times Book Review took this to imply that that route takes the characters through Chattanooga, Tennessee, home of "Rock City,"[3] apparently not realizing how many barns in the upper South recommend seeing Rock City.
[edit] Reception
The Road has received numerous positive reviews and honors since its September 26, 2006 release. The review aggregator Metacritic reported the book had an average score of 90 out of 100, based on 31 reviews.[4] Critics have deemed it "heartbreaking," "haunting," and "emotionally shattering."[5][6][7] The Village Voice referred to it as "McCarthy's purest fable yet."[5] In a New York Review of Books article, author Michael Chabon heralded the novel, which he insists is not science fiction but an "adventure story in both its modern and epic forms that structures the narrative."[8]
[edit] Awards and nominations
On April 16, 2007, the novel was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.[9] It also won the 2006 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction, and was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction.[10]
On March 28, 2007, the selection of The Road as the next novel in Oprah Winfrey's Book Club was announced. A televised interview on The Oprah Winfrey Show was conducted on June 5, 2007 and it was McCarthy's first, though he had been interviewed in print before.[11] The announcement of McCarthy's television appearance surprised those who follow him. "Wait a minute until I can pick my jaw up off the floor," said John Wegner, an English professor at Angelo State University in San Angelo, Texas, and editor of the Cormac McCarthy Journal, when told of the interview.[12]
British environmental campaigner George Monbiot was so impressed by The Road that he declared McCarthy to be one of the "50 people who could save the planet" in an article published in January 2008. Monbiot wrote, "It could be the most important environmental book ever. It is a thought experiment that imagines a world without a biosphere, and shows that everything we value depends on the ecosystem."[13] This nomination echoes the review Monbiot had written some months earlier for the Guardian in which he wrote, "A few weeks ago I read what I believe is the most important environmental book ever written. It is not Silent Spring, Small Is Beautiful or even Walden. It contains no graphs, no tables, no facts, figures, warnings, predictions or even arguments. Nor does it carry a single dreary sentence, which, sadly, distinguishes it from most environmental literature. It is a novel, first published a year ago, and it will change the way you see the world."[14]
[edit] Film adaptation
A film adaptation of the novel is currently in production. It is directed by John Hillcoat and written by Joe Penhall. The film stars Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee as the Man and the Boy, respectively. Production has taken place in Pennsylvania, Louisiana, and Oregon.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Conlon, Michael (June 5, 2007). "Writer Cormac McCarthy confides in Oprah Winfrey". Reuters. Retrieved September 8, 2007.
- ^ McCarthy, The Road, p. 25.
- ^ Kennedy, William Left Behind (October 8, 2006). The New York Times Book Review. (registration required)
- ^ The Road by Cormac McCarthy: Reviews. Metacritic. Retrieved on 2008-02-15.
- ^ a b Mark Holcomb. "End of the Line -- After Decades of Stalking Armageddon's Perimeters, Cormac McCarthy Finally Steps Over the Border", The Village Voice. Retrieved on 2007-04-23.
- ^ Jones, Malcolm (September 22, 2006)."On the Lost Highway" Newsweek.
- ^ "The Road to Hell", The Guardian, November 4, 2006.
- ^ Michael Chabon. "New York Review of Books review After the Apocalypse". pages= page = date =. Retrieved on 2007-04-30.
- ^ "Novelist McCarthy wins Pulitzer", BBC, April 17, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-09-08.
- ^ The National Book Critics Circle 2006 finalists
- ^ Michael Conlon. "Writer Cormac McCarthy confides in Oprah Winfrey", Reuters.
- ^ Julia Keller. "Oprah's selection a real shocker: Winfrey, McCarthy strange bookfellows", Chicago Tribune.
- ^ http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jan/05/activists.ethicalliving 50 people who could save the planet
- ^ George Monbiot. "Civilisation ends with a shutdown of human concern. Are we there already?", The Guardian, October 30, 2007.
[edit] References
- McCarthy, Cormac (2006). The Road. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0307265439
[edit] External links
| Awards | ||
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| Preceded by March by Geraldine Brooks |
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2007 |
Succeeded by The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz |
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