The Road

The Road was written by Cormac McCarthy.  It was published in 2006.  The novel won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.  It was adapted into a film in 2009.  John Hillcoat was the director and Viggo Mortensen, the star.  The Road begins.  A catastrophic event has led to the extinction of animal and plant life.  A father scavenges for food with his son.  They read books while resting.  Binoculars are used to spot threats.  The son asks about death.  The father calms his child.

They take a mountain pass to avoid cannibals and find a town.  Tools are discovered and used to repair their shopping cart.  They find beans and ham and eat it over a fire.  The father dreams of his wife.  They continue on to a river town.  Blankets and a broken soda machine are decaying in a farmhouse.  The son sips and says it could be his final soft drink.  The road brings them to an intersection of highways.  The city is littered with the mummified dead.  They are shoeless.

Three nights pass.  They hear an earthquake.  The father recalls the first years of civilization’s downfall.  They reach the mountains with little food.  Campfires burn in the night.  They walk through the snow in the day with wrapped feet.  The father coughs.  The wheeze unveils blood.  The mountain pass forks south.  The road descends.  Four days down.  They break the snow line.  The pair eat wild mushrooms and pork and beans. Time passes.  The father throws his wallet into the woods.

Dreams and Despondency

The father dreams about the apocalypse and his wife.  He delivers his son in the aftermath.  His wife has a mental breakdown and elects to end her life instead of suffer further.  The son wishes he was with his mother.  Father gently tells him it is a sin to wish on death.  They sleep in the woods and marauders arrive.  One enters the trees to relieve himself and spots the duo.  A standoff begins.  The father uses one of the two remaining bullets to save his son.  The standoff ends.  They flee and return to the road at daybreak.  Two days later the food is gone.

They sleep in a car and look for food.  The son sees a boy and calls for him.  He does not answer.  The son cries.  They look in a barn for food.  They find death instead.  Another gruesome ritual preserving the fall of man.  They sleep.  The morning brings a procession of chaos.  The boy asks if they are the good guys.  The father confirms that they are.  The snow is over six inches deep. They are freezing and cold.  They search a mansion.  The basement is filled with the kidnapped.  One is half eaten.  They sprint away when the evil comes home.

The father finds an orchard and a well of fresh water.  They rest and return to the road.  The son asks his father about cannibalism.  The patriarch assures him they are the good guys who carry the fire.  Time passes.  A bomb shelter is found in a field.  It is stocked.  The two spend days relaxing and resupplying before the journey continues.  The son says a prayer of thanksgiving.  They continue on and find a man. They share a meal and some thoughts. The conversation is bleak.  They part ways.  The cough worsens.

End of the road

The father lies ill for several days.  The son fears he will die soon.  They move again and find possessions melted into the blacktop.  The road is molten.  The son is confused.  The father explains the fire and senses the presence of others.  They hide and sleep.  The morning is bright.  They see smoke from a campfire and approach.  They scare off the group by the fire.  The food is left cooking.  They find what is being spit roasted.  The son wishes he could have saved him.  The father is despondent.

Time passes and the routine continues.  More food and more walking and more rest and more cooking and more terror and more dead ends and a wheelbarrow to transport the supplies.  One night the cough wakes the father.  He assumes he is dead.  The food runs out, but they reach the ocean.  It is a gray mass.  The son is disappointed.  The father apologizes and wishes it was blue.  Millions of fishbones canvas the expanse.  They sleep on the beach.  The son falls ill.  The father contemplates depressing outcomes.  The son recovers on the seventh day.

They reach a small port town in three days.  The father is struck by an arrow.  They use a first-aid kit from a sailboat to suture the wound.  They hide in a building and the leg heals.  The cough does not.  More blood.  He cannot continue and dies in his son’s arms.  A man approaches and learns the scenario.  The son joins the man and his wife and two children.  The wife gives him a hug.  The Road ends.