The Road

There are many post-apocalyptic novels, but few are love stories.  Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road presents a world of unequivocal hopelessness, where nothing remains but ash, desolation, hunger and (yes) cannibalism, and the knowledge that mankind's future is a certain descent into extinction.  And yet, and yet - what remains with you is its protagonist's love for his son, and his battle to leave the boy with some sense of what humanity meant before humans committed suicide.

The narrative is simple - a man and his small son walk down the road, scavenging what they can after a nuclear war that has destroyed civilization and poisoned the planet.  Nothing grows. Nothing is safe to eat or drink that doesn't come from a can.  There is no fuel, no comfort, no safety and no hope.  Mankind is in its last days.  As they move, pushing a fragile shopping cart with their worldly possessions, they encounter horrors beyond the imagination of most writers -- although not, of course, McCarthy's, the creator of Anton Chigurh.  The father fights beyond the limits of endurance, not only to keep his son safe, but to keep his young soul intact amid the savagery.

That struggle is what raises The Road to a level of almost Old Testament revelation: If all was to end, if we do the worst and destroy everything, what will be left, if only in the best of us? What is the best of us?  Why are we worth caring about, even with all the evil we inflict on each other?  The Road is one of the few novels in my recent memory to struggle with the biggest questions of all.

Throughout the novel, the boy and his father reassure each other with these words: "We're the good guys."  Defining what that means is the true purpose of The Road.  Mission accomplished, with terrible beauty.