Comments on: “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy

By: sm

sm — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 00:11:09 +0000

i read this last year and shot thru it in 24 hours - maybe not the best idea for such a dreary, bleak novel - but it’s structure just lent itself to keep going. with no chapters (just short section after short section) and my alarm up almost continually, i had a sense of urgency to finish it. plus, maybe, i knew it would be a downer and i wanted to get it over with and move on as soon as i could….
ha-
the images and emotions stayed with me for days
and, like i always do when i’m still unsettled after a book or a film is finished - i looked it up on wikipedia.
so many people are calling it an environmental novel - which i think is too superficial. the disaster has already happened; how does humnaity proceeed?
not well, apparently.
the book was beyond depressing because it showed that our instincts of self preservation are also self destructive. the whole journey is pointless - the boy ends up with the people he originally saw. they were just waiting for his father to be gone / dead. there can be no honor or moralistic purpose in that. it’s just self preservation all over again.

By: girldetective

girldetective — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 17:38:40 +0000

Steph, that’s exactly why I appreciate the ending–it’s not happy or sad, or anything other than what each reader interprets it as. I wouldnt say it’s happy, I’d say it has a glimmer of hope.

By: Steph

Steph — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 17:29:32 +0000

I am one of those people who don’t really see the ending as happy, but what’s interesting is that I was talking to a friend about this book and she was saying that she really didn’t like the book BECAUSE of the ending, which she thought was a cop-out because it was happy/hopeful. It’s funny how we can read books in such different ways!