The Road

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Very Hemingway-esque in style, which may be one of the reasons the boy calls his father "Papa" throughout the novel. I enjoyed the story, as simple as it was. Very exciting in places, and very realistic throughout. The themes of God and the final image of the boy as an angel were profound and moving. The father defined himself and the boy as the "good guys", but it seemed to me that the primary elements that separated the father as Good Guy from the Bad Guys were the fact that the father killed only in self-defense and that he and the boy didn't eat other humans, an element the boy confirms at the end of the novel.

Throughout the novel, the father seemed distant from the boy, as if he were trying to understand his son. He has a few moments of connection but he also admits to a disconnect at times. The primary difference I saw was that the father cared most for himself and the boy, while the boy cared most for the whole human race, attempting to save nearly everyone they met on the road. No wonder he was angelic.

The final irony of the title was that the "veteran" tells the boy that the safest action was to get off the road, while his father was always traveling on it. I liked the ending of the novel, speaking of which. The father's death was inevitable, and the boy being saved by a family was as happy an ending as a post-apocalyptic novel can have without being maudlin.

The unnamed character is not uncommon in literature, but the authors usually have different reasons for their choices. In McCarthy's case, I think The Road contained no names (except for Ely, who lied about his anyway) because what do names matter in a world that has been nearly consumed? They don't define a person. Only the characters' actions mattered, and the love they shared. I'll probably read McCarthy's Blood Meridian at some point, though I have already begun Dracula and received The Kite Runner today. So many books, so little time.