By Rafael A. Hernandez
Look at your computer. You’re surfing the web with it or chatting with friends. Look at your room. You have a cozy bed with clean sheets and pillows. Look at your kitchen. Most likely there are a number of items you can consume and be satisfied or in the least…fed. And that is what is important, wouldn’t you think?
All of the things that you take for granted such as food, shelter and simple comfort are just a few things that are cataclysmically lacking in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. The novel takes place in an undesignated era where a decimating catastrophe has occurred, doing away with all social structures and environmental integrity. A father and his son travel south through an ashy, cold and empty North America. Their journey is an agonizing drag through abandoned towns and dying forests. With scarce food (scarce, perhaps this is putting it too kindly), both the father and his son must deal with their ever dwindling strength and motivation.
What makes The Road such a triumph in literature is its ability to portray the simplicity of human survival and how in this, they still maintain their humanity. Both characters must eat so they search for food, that is all there is to it. But they still hold to some degree of normalcy. Because of this, the reader finds an underlying beauty. The characters are torn down to their most fundamental emotions during their travels. Though they are given almost nothing to cling on to in terms of hope or faith, they persevere. McCarthy’s choice in using abstract narration in certain segments coupled with his periodic retrospection gives the story shape and substance. The darkness that has overcome the two main characters becomes tangible and frightening.
McCarthy does an excellent job in creating a partition between the main characters and others whom they come across. The father and son struggle immensely with maintaining their humanity, goodness and righteousness while those around them have resorted to thievery, despair and cannibalism, thus cutting a clear line between those that are “the good guys” and those that are bad. The Road is a shining example of “darkness in the absence of light”, with everything from the surroundings, to the lack of food and internal struggles embodying the bleak world that has established itself as reality. Readers will be moved, hopeful, astonished and fearful for the two main characters as they continue their dark trek toward salvation, doing so while carrying “the fire”.
