The Road

The Road is a small, but powerful, stretch for Cormac McCarthy who tends to write about the brutality and savagery of the US borderlands much like Martin Scorcese writes about the mob on the East coast. The setting is a dysmal post-apocalyptic world in which a father and son walk down the road towards an imaginary better life.

On the road, they meet bandits, cannibals, and other unsavory characters. In all this, the father is trying to teach the son the difference between right and wrong, good and bad. The conflict comes from trying to teach morality in a world that is not immoral so much as it is amoral. We all know the central ethical question of Les Miserables - is it okay to punish one who commits a crime to feed a child? But in McCarthy's twisted world, people are food for others, so the question is no longer relevant. Instead, we are left to wonder: can there be an ultimate good in a primal state of nature? And if so, can good be learned by a child?

In their quest for survival, the father and son attempt to answer these questions. And in the journey of the book, McCarthy has written something eloquent, beautiful, and ultimately redeeming about mankind.

I first read this book before my child was born. I imagined myself as the son and my father as the father in the story. The book became for me an examination of my relationship with my father. I asked myself what he taught me and what I ultimately learned. A later reading, after my child was born, had me switching characters. I empathized more with the father on the second reading, and it made me consider my own role in shaping my child's life. In both cases, I had to wonder about the decisions I make in life, just as the characters are forced to endlessly examine their own choices.