Reading as a Father, Reading as a Fan: McCarthy's The Road Revisited

In a previous discussion of The Road, I talked about the timing of reading the novel. My first reading was before I became a father. Because of this, I connected closely with the little boy. Papa became a surrogate for my own father. And in this way I took the horrific journey that McCarthy had set out for his characters. (Since I've convinced, cajoled, and bribed everyone I know into at least attempting to read this book, I will now progress to discuss important plot points. Just so you know.) In the end, when the father died, and the little boy sat by his corpse in the woods for several days and wept, I too wept. I cried on my couch as I ceremoniously turned the final pages in the dark hours of the late night or the early morning, imagining how I someday will have to deal with my own father's death. I wondered, and still do, if I've learned enough, if I can carry the fire that drives my own family.

A completely different reading opened itself to me after my daughter was born. I finally understood the deep commitment to responsibility that drives the father in the book. All of his actions took on a clarified meaning. While I never questioned the moment when he shot a potential cannibal who grabbed his son, now I started to question why he didn't shoot him sooner. The words, the gestures, and the caresses now meant something completely different. In this most recent reading, I am no longer the passive recipient of such actions, I am speaking, doing, holding myself. There is an urgency to how I read the book. I know the father is dying. While I knew that the first time I read the book, the immediacy of it never connected with my comprehension of the narrative. Now, every cough in the day, every night spent in unsleeping agony by the father hits me on an emotional level that I never experienced before. He is absolutely aware of the world in which he will leave his son. It is Hobbesian- nasty, brutish, and short. So he must protect him as long as possible and then hope against hope that he did enough. These are the same requirements for any parent, though I didn't know with the pit of my soul about this as I read the first time. Now I know.

The angelic and messianic perspective that the father holds for his son also became much more prominent in this reading. It is no coincidence that the boy's hair is an unruly mess of golden tangles or that the light tends to hit him just so. If it is true that the father and son are carrying the mysterious "fire" of goodness, then the boy is undoubtedly a messiah or an angel. And, the father, his protector, must in turn be ruthless and cold on occasion to ensure his survival. And if there is no one to spread the fire to, then the father's agony is all the more poignant because his actions ultimately amount to nothing and his son's existence is also futile.

While McCarthy is often considered a "serious" novelist (see post on Chabon's Maps and Legends), this book is very clearly in the science-fiction / fantasy style. McCarthy uses some of the techniques from this "genre" quite effectively. I think back to Tolkien's work and how the characters routinely found a safe haven that allowed them to collectively catch their breaths for the next part of their journey. These save havens were frequently semi-magical forest realms, peopled by the immortal elves, where time seemed to stand still. McCarthy's morbid twist is that anything combustible is already destroyed or burning as his duo walk the road, yet they too find safe-havens. The most notable is an underground bomb shelter, a leftover relic from the Cold War that unfortunately did its builders no good in the nuclear holocaust that presages the events in the book. The father and son find temporary sanctuary, though they, like the hobbits of Tolkien's Middle Earth, know that their journey has not ended and that despite the temptation, they too must continue. I've always enjoyed this technique and the various ways in which my favorite writers choose to employ it. There are few authors as morbid as McCarthy, and it was intriguing to see the way he would twist this genre device.

Finally, like many readers I believe that what makes a book good is that it endures. Each reading is new. Each reading presents new interpretations and imagery and connections. The Road is a dark and twisted book. In many ways it is on par with the horror works of Stephen King or Edgar Allan Poe. It is also transcendent because it finds the common thread of humanity that connects us all - the fire it is called by the father and son - and builds on that thread, tenuous though the structure may be. Like the father and son, the book itself endures even though the world it depicts may not. I look forward to reading the book again in a few years to see what new discoveries await me.