# The Road by Cormac McCarthy



## ChristyACB (Apr 10, 2008)

This one was on someone's list somewhere here and actually got the pulitzer prize. On the Books Like Alan's list it got a good review too.


Well....I'm finishing it just this moment and I have to say that is the darkest, most unrelentingly bleak, book I have ever picked up. Good Grief...it makes prepping seem like the entrance exam into hades and that post-TEOTW, the lucky ones are the early dead.

Jiminy christmas....anyone else read this? I could get more detailed on the relationship between father and son, which is both wonderful and terrible, but at this moment, I just can't get past the bleakness of it.

Love to hear other opinions....


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## Irish Pixie (May 14, 2002)

I read "The Road" a little while ago, and while it was bleak (most of McCarthy's books are) it stayed with me a long time. A very good book and thought provoking but don't read it if you're depressed. 

Pix


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## Tiempo (May 22, 2008)

I haven't read The Road, but Blood Meridian is one of my favorite books ever.

It's verrry bleak, and verrry violent, but so amazingly written.


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## pheasantplucker (Feb 20, 2007)

I just read it this past week. Yes it is dark, but I found it interesting. It left me wondering about a lot of questions I had, that remain unanswered. You do know that he is the author of "No country for Old Men", right? The thing that I disliked most about the book was not the dark depressing sense but the choppy dialogue between father and son. Also there were no chapters to help break it up.


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## ELOCN (Jun 13, 2004)

Thanks for letting me know that it is bleak and depressing: now I won't read it. I don't like to read bleak and depressing books.


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## mldrenen (Nov 29, 2007)

it only starts out bleak and depressing. the ending is heart-breaking, beautiful, and hope-filled.


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## willow_girl (Dec 7, 2002)

I read it as an interesting Christian allegory: the father as the vengeful God of the Old Testament, and the son as Christ, who always argues for kindness and mercy.

It begs the question as to whether (accepting the Christian mythology as true) the Old Testament God forgives us because he loves us so much, or merely because the son whom He loves constantly intercedes on our behalf?

That certainly settles one of the oldest connundrums in Christianity; that is, why is the nasty God of the OT transformed into a being of loving kindness and mercy in the NT?


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## Cabin Fever (May 10, 2002)

WIHH's review of "The Road"


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## MES_1970 (Feb 15, 2008)

they're supposed to be making a movie based on the Road. Hopefully they won't mess it up like they did with no country for old men.


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## ShortSheep (Aug 8, 2004)

I loved it, my DH hated it. 

It is probably an extermely realistic story of what life in a nuclear winter would be like. (I'm assuming a nuclear winter, could be a meteor) the author leaves it to our imagination, which I like. This is no romantic and wild "Mad Max" senario. Once the canned goods run out about eight years into it....what is left for people to eat? 

Willow, I like your anology of the father and son as "Father" and "Son". 
The father is mad at the world, angry at what had been done to creation, yet expressing a fierce love. The son brings a message of mercy and hope.

Yes, it is probably one of the bleakest, most depressing books I've ever read, but...it would be a depressing time.


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## vicker (Jul 11, 2003)

Goodness, if you think this is dark you should read Outer Dark. It makes The Road seem like Winee the Poo LOL. I have never read a darker book, and I've read a few. I'm pretty sure it won't be making it to the big screen anytime soon. :cowboy:


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## Rondah (Apr 1, 2008)

Loved this book


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## bowdonkey (Oct 6, 2007)

Just finished reading this book. I'm looking for a rope. Gosh that was depressing. He's an excellent wordsmith to evoke those kind of emotions.


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## sisterpine (May 9, 2004)

I read it a while back and found it one of those books I wanted to put down and walk away from but could not. I had dreams about it for weeks afterward. I do feel, however, that I have a better idea of what the future "could" hold and I will be better able to make choices with this additional information. sis ps i cried at the ending!


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## texican (Oct 4, 2003)

I found the book to be very dreary.

However, the book is one of many possible futures. The question we should ask ourselves, is whether the book and the times it portrays is too rosy, or too glum. If there's no agriculture... everything seems to be dead, except humans, then humans will only live as long as they can find slower humans... a death spiral, if prions don't get you first from eating long pork.

Can't wait for the dvd.


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## CamM (Dec 6, 2008)

I read it when it came out and not much about it stuck. If I managed to look beyond the tedious, choppy, incomplete sentences, there wasn't much other than a kid and his dad walking down a road and finding places to stay with a bunch of dust floating around. I've read too many books about the apocalypse; the whole thing just seemed hackneyed and lacking in character. One of my professors seems to think Mccarthy is a genius of sorts, so I bought Cities of the Plain to give him another chance but haven't read it yet. 

I didn't read anything into the story, however, because it tends to make some novels better than they actually are, and any connection with biblical reference or some such thing is vague at best. Pulitzer prize or not, I didn't like it. Wasn't all that depressing to me, but then again I know depression.


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## bowdonkey (Oct 6, 2007)

I never found a rope so I went to the library and checked out "All the pretty horses" and "The Crossing".


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## Fonzie (Nov 5, 2003)

Bought the book last year from somebody here on HT. 
I loved it! It's a relatively quick read for a McCarthy book.
After you get used to his writing style {I did 20 yrs ago}, he's a great read.
"Blood Meridian" and "All The Pretty Horses" are terrific books.


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## Kari (Mar 24, 2008)

CamM said:


> I read it when it came out and not much about it stuck. If I managed to look beyond the tedious, choppy, incomplete sentences, there wasn't much other than a kid and his dad walking down a road and finding places to stay with a bunch of dust floating around. I've read too many books about the apocalypse; the whole thing just seemed hackneyed and lacking in character.


I agree with you. Also to add, the book appeared to be written at a grade 7-8 level and with all the meandering words, sentences and paragraphs, I soon lost interest in the whole concept of the book. I ended up reading and suffering through the whole book. Why? I don't really know and do not feel any better nor fulfilled from the experience....


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## PrettyPaisley (May 18, 2007)

ITA about the incomplete sentences. They drove me nuts. It was an easy read but I want the day of my life I used to read that book back. 

After I shook the desire to walk out in front of a bus I decided there are some things I don't want to live through. The author should be ashamed to write a story where a man leaves his child alone in that world. Shame on him.


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## mldrenen (Nov 29, 2007)

PrettyPaisley said:


> The author should be ashamed to write a story where a man leaves his child alone in that world. Shame on him.




yeah i know. how dare he die! the nerve!

the book was dark and depressing, but ended on a hopeful note. the son was still alive, the light of the new world, and he was taken in by a loving family. it could've ended much worse.


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## Dwayne Barry (Jan 9, 2009)

ChristyACB said:


> Jiminy christmas....anyone else read this? I could get more detailed on the relationship between father and son, which is both wonderful and terrible, but at this moment, I just can't get past the bleakness of it.
> 
> Love to hear other opinions....


One of the very few books that has emotionally moved me. Affected me for days and I still think about it from time to time. Looking forward to the movie.


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## Dwayne Barry (Jan 9, 2009)

CamM said:


> I've read too many books about the apocalypse; the whole thing just seemed hackneyed and lacking in character. One of my professors seems to think Mccarthy is a genius of sorts,



I think it is a mistake to think of The Road as a book about the apocalypse. It is not, it is a book about the human condition. The apocalyptic setting is merely to facilitate the reader experiencing the sense of fear and dread that must have tormented the father every waking minute.

I don't remember where I got this but somebody posted this quote from Faulkner's Nobel Prize speach as being very applicable to this work by McCarthy.

``Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only one question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat. He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid: and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed--love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, and victories without hope and worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands. 

``Until he learns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. ''


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## Dwayne Barry (Jan 9, 2009)

PrettyPaisley said:


> ITA about the incomplete sentences. They drove me nuts. It was an easy read but I want the day of my life I used to read that book back.
> 
> After I shook the desire to walk out in front of a bus I decided there are some things I don't want to live through. The author should be ashamed to write a story where a man leaves his child alone in that world. Shame on him.


In some sense McCarthy "chickened out" in the end.


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## mldrenen (Nov 29, 2007)

are you the same dwayne barry from roadbikereview?


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## jadedhkr (Oct 25, 2004)

I read this book recently. While I agree the writing style took a bit of getting used to, I thought it was a quick read because of that. The important thing, it made me think. 

I read hundreds of books every year, can't tell you a thing about most of them later even if they are entertaining.
This one will stay with me, and that is what makes it a good book.


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## Dwayne Barry (Jan 9, 2009)

mldrenen said:


> are you the same dwayne barry from roadbikereview?



Yes, small world isn't it?


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## mldrenen (Nov 29, 2007)

Dwayne Barry said:


> Yes, small world isn't it?




welcome aboard, moreon. nice to see a familiar face around here. 

the_dude


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## mdharris68 (Sep 28, 2006)

bowdonkey said:


> I never found a rope so I went to the library and checked out "All the pretty horses" and "The Crossing".



In 1995 or 96 I spent the longest week of my life reading The Crossing. ( I'm a slow reader) That book was able to take me in and make me hurt like the characters. I don't know if I could handle The Road.


Edit: It was All The Pretty Horses that I read, not The Crossing.


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## Dwayne Barry (Jan 9, 2009)

mdharris68 said:


> In 1995 or 96 I spent the longest week of my life reading The Crossing. ( I'm a slow reader) That book was able to take me in and make me hurt like the characters. I don't know if I could handle The Road.



The Crossing is part of the trilogy series, no?

I started All The Pretty Horses, and while I recognize the quality of the writing the book just didn't grab me. I got about half way thru but haven't picked it up in a couple of months now. Keep meaning to go back but other things seem more interesting to read at the moment.


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## mdharris68 (Sep 28, 2006)

Yes, I think it is part of a trilogy. I was mistaken that I read The Crossing, it was actually All The Pretty Horses that I read. The part when they're in the prison seemed so dismal, it was almost depressing. Had to quit there.


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## CamM (Dec 6, 2008)

Dwayne Barry said:


> I think it is a mistake to think of The Road as a book about the apocalypse. It is not, it is a book about the human condition. The apocalyptic setting is merely to facilitate the reader experiencing the sense of fear and dread that must have tormented the father every waking minute.
> 
> I don't remember where I got this but somebody posted this quote from Faulkner's Nobel Prize speach as being very applicable to this work by McCarthy.
> 
> ...


Thanks for the insight; it's something I wouldn't've considered. It still doesn't change my opinion of the book, though.


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## Dwayne Barry (Jan 9, 2009)

CamM said:


> Thanks for the insight; it's something I wouldn't've considered. It still doesn't change my opinion of the book, though.



You're welcome. A good bit of the bad rap The Road gets is from folks who think they're reading a sci-fi book. It's fine if you don't care for literature, or even if you don't think this is good literature, but I think one should at least start out with the right frame of mind.

I don't think one should read a Stephen King book and then say it's ----e because it doesn't do more than tell a good story, either. King falls heavily on the entertainment end of the spectrum while McCarthy falls heavily at the literature end. I think in The Road he is examining what it means to be human; the nature of good and evil, the source of hope when faced with hopelessness, and the love of a father for his son.


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## Remy (Jan 21, 2009)

If you want to be confounded by a McCarthy work, read 'Outer Dark', it's akin to a dream one endures in which he's rendered immobile and the world exists only for his torture.

'The Road'. I thought it was a great story. Without knowing much of Cormac, he undoubtedly has a son, which I think was evidenced in the dialougue between father and son. Something about the end that left my eyes wet, I think it was the feeling a man (Cormac maybe) was wrestling with God and was left submitted.


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## Shygal (May 26, 2003)

mldrenen said:


> yeah i know. how dare he die! the nerve!
> 
> the book was dark and depressing, but ended on a hopeful note. the son was still alive, the light of the new world, and he was taken in by a loving family. it could've ended much worse.


................Well THANKS for that.....so much for me reading the book. Yeesh :grump:

I was reading this to see if people liked it, and theres the whole ending of the thing!


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## mldrenen (Nov 29, 2007)

Shygal said:


> ................Well THANKS for that.....so much for me reading the book. Yeesh :grump:
> 
> I was reading this to see if people liked it, and theres the whole ending of the thing!




sorry. i should'nt have divulged that much detail regarding the ending. however, if you'd read Cabin Fever's link in this thread, you would've already had the ending spoiled a few times over by the time you got down to my post.


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## Shygal (May 26, 2003)

I didnt read the link on purpose just in case there was something there  Usually people post spoiler warnings when they are going to give away the whole ending of a book. 

This was a book I was thinking of reading and was looking for people's reaction to it, not the ending spelled out for me already =/


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## mldrenen (Nov 29, 2007)

Shygal said:


> I didnt read the link on purpose just in case there was something there  Usually people post spoiler warnings when they are going to give away the whole ending of a book.
> 
> This was a book I was thinking of reading and was looking for people's reaction to it, not the ending spelled out for me already =/




i'm really sorry. i hate spoilers, and i'm usually pretty good about keeping my trap closed. i goofed.

fwiw, i still think it's worth the read.


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## Dwayne Barry (Jan 9, 2009)

Shygal said:


> I didnt read the link on purpose just in case there was something there  Usually people post spoiler warnings when they are going to give away the whole ending of a book.
> 
> This was a book I was thinking of reading and was looking for people's reaction to it, not the ending spelled out for me already =/


IMO, knowing what happens to the boy in the end is largely irrelevant to the enjoyment of this book. This books stands out for its writing and what McCarthy is trying to convey about the human condition.


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## mamakatinmd (Aug 21, 2005)

I thought this was a thought provoking book. I enjoyed reading it and did not find it depressing. Knowing the end is irrelevant. It was what happened in the journey on the way. You lived it with them. McCarthy made you feel it.


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## Irish farmer (Dec 21, 2007)

I thought The Road was ok. I liked No Country For Old Men better though.


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