The Road chronicles a father and a son who tread along a forsaken patch of highway peopled by marauders and cannibals. The father and son may be the last of the “good guys” left on earth. The book certainly plays upon a parent’s worst fears, but because its father-son relationship is crafted so tenderly, the overall effect is, ironically, anything but morbid.
According to McCarthy, the key to survival in the post-9/11 world is keeping his son, "the fire," alive. We learn that the father is going to die, so his survival is not the question: he has a horrific cough because he has breathed so much ash. The boy is a personification of the fire and survival. The father is holding on to dear life to get his son on down the road, out of harm's way, toward a new family, to the coast. The entire human race may very well depend on the boy's survival: he is a kind of savior (Christ-figure) and Holy Grail. The boy is prince Hamlet to his father’s Ghost of King Hamlet. The boy is the meek and forgiving Christ to his father’s vengeful Yahweh.
The conversations they have keep the fire going as much as anything. They are a joy to read. McCarthy omits conventions (commas, quotations, and sometimes question marks) because they intrude on the poetry and prose. He's a poet novelist, and he's got a lot of e.e. cummings in him. He wants to expose the words in their bare beauty.
Since they only have each other to talk, the two resort to this Socratic method of dialogue. The boys asks, and the father answers. Toward the end, the boy arrives at a conclusion, and the father answers. The boy is the student, and the father a teacher. The Road, then, is a kind of mobile Socratic seminar, a walking discourse.
No comments:
Post a Comment