The Road [Bryan]

Just got done reading The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, a fascinating and emotionally wrenching book. The story is about a father and son traveling together through post-apocalyptic devastation. McCarthy tries to imagine a world where conditions render hope an absolute impossibility. Everything is dead, nothing grows, and starving humans feed on each other, even their own children. The dim climate, cold and getting colder, is punctuated only by lightening, freezing rain, and gray snow. All that exists is the shell of the former world, burned-out cities, looted stores, and useless technologies. Even memories of the old world are beginning to fade, “the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world.” People live, shivering and wet, through either cannibalism or scavenging an ever-diminishing supply of canned food. There is no reason to believe in anything, especially that life will get any better or that a loving God exists. As one of the characters says, "People were always getting ready for tomorrow. Tomorrow wasnt getting ready for them. It didnt even know they were there... There is no God and we are his prophets." There is no looking to the future or, as the book says, “There is no later. This is later.”

The central questions this raised for me are these: Would we still have reasons to live in such a world? If everything else were taken away, even the possibility of happiness, what would make life worthwhile? Is there anything to stop us from committing suicide in such a world?

This unsentimental book seems to find at least a fleeting meaning and beauty in the relationships we have with one another. The relationship between father and son, simple and unadorned, is one of the most touching descriptions of familial love I have read. The father desperately tries to encourage his son to live and go on, even while he himself is without hope, and dying. He tries to preserve the kindness and generosity he finds in his son, while enduring the compromises he himself must make with morality to help them survive. You desperately begin to want to take care of this little boy, the lone spark of goodness (the "fire") in a murderous world. The end of the book, where the son asks his Dad to let them die together, is very sad, but profound:

I want to be with you.
You cant.
Please.
You cant. You have to carry the fire.
I dont know how to.
Yes you do.
Is it real? The fire?
Yes it is.
Where is it? I dont know where it is.
Yes you do. It's inside you. It was always there. I can see it.
Just take me with you. Please.
I cant.
Please, Papa.
I cant. I cant hold my son dead in my arms. I thought I could but I cant.
You said you wouldnt ever leave me.
I know. I'm sorry. You have my whole heart. You always did. You're the best guy. You always were. If I'm not here you can still talk to me. You can talk to me and I'll talk to you. You'll see.
Will I hear you?
Yes. You will. You have to make it like talk that you imagine. And you'll hear me. You have to practice. Just dont give up. Okay?
Okay.
Okay.
I'm really scared Papa.
I know. But you'll be okay. You're going to be lucky. I know you are. I've got to stop talking. I'm going to start coughing again.
It's okay, Papa. You don't have to talk. It's okay.