The Road by Cormac McCarthy is a love story. Yet unlike many love stories, it does not overflow with cringe-inducing dialogue. In fact, the lines are very terse, the conversations sparing. There is no alpha male for a hero and a delicate beauty for a heroine. There is only a dying father and a dying son in an already dead world.
The story is set in post-apocalyptic America where ash falls like rain and where day is dark and cold. The streets are filled with mutilated bodies. People devour one another in order to survive. Father and son have nothing but each other—“each the other world’s entire.”
The Road is more than a story of a father and son struggling to keep each other alive. In a dead world like theirs, their physical doom is a certainty. But each one fights to keep death from robbing what remains of the other’s humanity. Every single day is a fight not to win against the certainty of death. Every single day is a fight to be human even in death.
I want to be with you.
You cant. You have to carry the fire.
I dont know how to.
Yes you do.
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…
______
The Wall Street Journal has an interview with Cormac McCarthy where he talked about “love, religion, his 11-year-old son, the end of the world and the movie based on his novel The Road.”
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