Cormac McCarthy “The Road”
I’ve just finished this Pulitzer prize winning novel. It wasn’t hard to read - the type is large and even at 297 pages I suspect that there are barely 200 words on a page.
It’s a tale about a father and son in a post-nuclear winter world, going south towards a hope of salvation (perhaps) while the few other people left alive seem mostly interested in cannibalism. It’s a fable, I think; it’s a story of family love and protectiveness in a time of extremity. It has plenty of interesting observations about how and when people give up, too.
I couldn’t help noticing, though, that the structure of the tale is very similar to McCarthy’s “All The Pretty Horses”. In each case there’s a journey towards a shadowy goal, the constant threat of pursuit, the tentative and fear-laden encounters. There is a similar care of dwindling resources, and an assertion of what is personal possession, even when threatened by violence. There is even the same wound suffered (a bad gunshot/arrow wound to the leg, and the detailed discussion of the makeshift medical treatment involved, all rather ghastly) . In each case the plot is ‘resolved’ by a meeting with an avuncular figure of power, who takes over and makes things right to some extent.
In their architecture these tales are essentially the same.
In terms of character development we have to work harder to find something to take away with us, as the father is a man with only one idea - to reach the south - and the son seems to be an Orphan figure most of the time. The fact that they are on a sort of Pilgrimage doesn’t seem to register because they don’t seem to grow. They hang on, Orphans both, to a fixed idea.
Perhaps the world McCarthy sees is one in which none of us can really be more than Orphans, clinging together for what shelter we can gain?
There are occasional annoyances in this tale, too. The boy was born at the time of the nuclear attacks (at least I think he was; It’s hard to tell) but he now seems to be about 7. So did the father wait seven years before going on his road trip? And how long has everyone been in this odd world? We have references to ‘cults’ having come and gone amid the survivors, which indicates a long time having passed, and there is considerable thought put into whether or not rusted cans of food are safe to eat. Then the father doesn’t want the son to look at the bodies, but it seems almost inconceivable that they haven’t seen thousands of corpses by this time. It’s all a bit puzzling. This wouldn’t matter in a folk tale where all sorts of unlikely things can happen, and for which there is usually a symbolic reason to be found. Yet this tale relishes the physical details of an emiserated life, dwells on them, makes them a part of the fabric of the tale for no reason I can as yet fathom.
Other annoyances include a vocabulary that is often barely more than 8th grade, which is fine until McCarthy decides he wants to put in a few smart technical terms to let us know he has read a book or two. I wouldn’t mind this except it sticks out obviously, is unnecessary, and breaks the tone. Who, for instance, refers to winds as ’secular’? Who cares whether a cupboard is closed with ‘a notary lock’ (I think he got confused with that one since his description does not add up). At one point he describes a piece of ironwork as ’smeltered in Lisbon or Bristol’. Iron is not smeltered. It is smelted, or wrought, or tempered - at least it is in Bristol because I’ve spoken with iron workers there. In Lisbon it may well have a different term. Indeed the father carries a ‘pistol’ but since it is also a ‘revolver’, and the description of the moving parts (Hammer, frame, double-action, etc.,) confirms this one wonders why McCarthy doesn’t know the difference between a pistol and a revolver. He seemed clear enough on that with “All the Pretty Horses”. These are specific terms, and not interchangable, so we have a right to ask.
A writer uses words, and either knows what they mean or doesn’t. When a writer gives evidence of using words wrongly it’s hard not to question the whole narrative.
Behind this, however, there is a tale of great, even vital, interest. The father needs the son as a reason to keep living every bit as much as the son can’t physically survive without his father’s skills and love. Together they can survive because their spirits have somewhere to grow. And that’s worth knowing. In an age of crass individualism such as our can sometimes be, this is a worthy message. When the resources run out, what, actually, is it that makes us human? McCarthy has asked an important question and his answer is very basic: it’s love.
