A man and a young boy travel together through a dark and diseased post-apocalyptic wasteland. They follow a road that doesn’t seem to go anywhere, hiding from roadagents in gas masks who eat defenceless scavengers and take all their supplies. The man wants only to protect the boy, and the boy doesn’t want to live anymore.
The Road is a terrifying book. It’s dark and harrowing and quiet, with minimal communication between the man and the boy, who go unnamed throughout. When they do talk to each other, their conversations are always short and often without a point. They seem to be speaking only to stay sane. It’s an interesting book, too, because so much is left unsaid by the author: what happened to the world that left it in this state? Who are the “bad guys” that the man and boy are running from? Are they just normal people who have succumbed to savagery and cannibalism as a result of the apocalypse? All these questions McCarthy never answers, not even at the end of the book.
Considering there are only two main characters in the entire book, McCarthy does well at getting the reader to care about them. I found myself really wanting the little boy to be okay, and I found his rapid adaptation to seeing so many atrocities and horrors disturbing and intriguing.
[Papa]: I dont think you should see this.
[Boy]: What you put in your head is there forever?
Yes.
It’s okay Papa.
It’s okay?
They’re already there.
I dont want you to look.
They’ll still be there.
Throughout, it becomes clear that the boy is an embodiment of hope, and perhaps even God. Resilient yet sensitive, he is a slightly contradictory character. Where the man refuses to give up, the boy resigns himself to his fate emotionlessly. Where the man will go to any means necessary to protect the boy and their supplies, the boy would rather go back and help everyone they meet rather than prioritise their own survival.
The other characters are mainly just implied to exist, rather than explicitly seen. The roadagents are an ever-looming presence, rarely seen by the characters but known to be there by the evidence they leave behind – terrified men and women locked in a basement being reared for eating, a decapitated baby roasting on a spit.
As much as the main body of the book is dark and disturbing, and as much as so many questions are left unanswered, there is a glimmer of hope at the end. The boy is taken in by a good-natured family with children similar to his age to play with. We are left, then, with hope of civilisation and love, even in The Road’s post-apocalyptic world of death and suffering. But it is more than that: as long as the boy is alive, there is hope. Throughout the book, his father is, perhaps subconsciously, guiding the boy to where he needs to be in order for the rest of his hopeful fate to unfold. The man eventually dies, but not in vain – he has done his job. There is promise for the world, because the boy is still alive.