The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Synopsis

A father and his young son walk alone through burned America, heading slowly for the coast. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. They have nothing but a pistol to defend themselves against the men who stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food and each other.

My Review

To a point I really liked Cormac McCarthy’s the Road. I wouldn't rate it as the best piece of Literature I have ever read although it’s worth a 3/5. Many have different opinions on the plot, on the punctuation, the repetition and the characters.

The plot had potential although really wasn't that original. Even though this idea of a Dystopian, post-apocalyptic world was good, although it was very hard to even catch onto what was in the plot. Nearly the whole time you sit there thinking what’s happened in the past present and the future. McCarthy doesn’t write anything at all about what happened prier or at the time of the big event (which we don’t know what it was) that changed the world. Overall the plot was ok but I hated the repetition of the character’s day. I ate…. We walked… we slept. I get it was because that was all they could do in this world but you need to have something interesting in the plot to get readers not to put the book down.

At first the punctuation was so annoying that I slowly imagined that there were comers and quotation marks. I felt as if McCarthy didn't care at all about the punctuation. I found that that changed for me. Later on in the book I found that I though the lack of punctuation suited the blandness and emptiness that the story has. It made me feel as if the world they were in had forgotten about punctuation and literature.

I liked the characters so much; they were my favourite piece of the Road. I connected with the father and the son and felt empathy and sorry for the way they need to live. But they had a kind of hope they carried. Their love for each other was very strong. The only thing about the characters that was disappointing was that there was no background story to either of them apart from that their father and son and about the boy’s mother.

I would recommend The Road but not strongly.