The Road by Cormac McCarthy

The Road is yet another book I stubbornly refused to read for awhile, even after a glowing recommendation from an intelligent former student.  I listened to him describe it and downloaded it that very night - but after a couple of pages, I grew bored, stopped reading, and forgot all about it.

Then, the book started getting attention in the world of AP English.  I kept hearing the title from other teachers and my curiosity piqued.  I decided to try it again.  Man, am I glad I did.  

But you wanna talk about depressing?  Read this book.  Better yet, watch this movie.  You may not smile for days.  The book is worth it.  The movie? Eh, not as much.  But that review is for someone else to write...

The book is a post-apocalyptic novel focusing on a father and son's journey to the south.  Although it is never revealed what destroyed most of the earth, and killed almost everyone, the setting is described as covered in ash and it seemed to happen over night.  The father and son are two of the only "good guys" left in the world, as most humans have resulted to cannibalism in order to survive.  They are headed south in order to find warmer weather because the father does not think they can survive another winter in their current location.  

Some of the scenes described in this book are so haunting - and the fact that it is 2012 makes the book even more troubling.  Although the entire book is about these two people walking down a road, right when you think you've read too much description, BAM, you are smacked in the face with a horrific even that carries you through the next few pages and makes you desperate for another, simpler paragraph.  

McCarthy's style is very unique.  He pays no attention to proper sentence structure (although the short, incomplete sentences seem to fit right along with the tone).  He does not use any punctuation except commas and periods, and a very occasional colon.  He does not even use quotation marks.  

I watched an interview with McCarthy about this novel and he said it was a love story to his son.  If you do read it, keep that in your mind.  He did not write this book to describe how he envisions the end of the world - he wrote to describe a beautiful relationship between a father and his son.  That is the shining light in this dark novel.

I reread the book this past year when my AP class read it and found an even greater appreciation for it.  I started to notice the frequent use of biblical language, I paid more attention to the changes in the son, and I relished some of the language he uses.  For all the ugliness described, it is a beautiful book.