Dark Origins – The Road by Cormack McCarthy, a novel set in a post apocalyptic world with a drastically altered climate #darkorigins #TheRoad #readingcommunity
Posted: September 27, 2023 Filed under: Apocalyptic, Books, Dark Origins | Tags: Apocalyptic, Climate change, Cormack McCarthy, Dark Origins, Robbie Cheadle, The Road, Writing to be Read 48 Comments
Cormack McCarthy’s novel, The Road, is set in a world that has been devastated by a cataclysmic event resulting in a drastically altered climate. The story begins in the middle with a father and his son travelling along a seemingly endless road in bitterly cold conditions and pushing their limited food and other supplies in a shopping cart. The world around them is completely grey from the dull grey sky overhead to the grey, ash covered wasteland they are travelling through. All the trees, plants and crops have been burned or scorched and there are no living creatures anywhere. It gets progressively colder as the pair’s journey continues and they are always hungry. The only food available is tinned or canned food they can scavenge from the desolate and abandoned houses they pass. The repetition of the word grey in all descriptions of the environment symbolises the bareness of the landscape
The following quotes describe the landscape depicted in The Road:
““Nothing. Where all was burnt to ash before them no fires were to be had and the nights were long and dark and cold beyond anything they’d yet encountered. Cold to crack the stones. To take your life. He held the boy shivering against him and counted each frail breath in the blackness.”
“He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.”
“The soft black talc blew through the streets like squid ink uncoiling along a sea floor and the cold crept down and the dark came early and the scavengers passing down the steep canyons with their torches trod silky holes in the drifted ash that closed behind them silently as eyes.”
As the story progresses, the details of the night of the catastrophe that ended civilization, and the rapid descend of the survivors into savagery’s following the scorching of the entire planetary ecology, are shared through memories of the father. This aspect of the book is similar to the degeneration of the school boys in William Goldings book, Lord of the Flies. Survivors have gathered in groups many of which have resorted to cannibalisms to supplement limited food supplies. It quickly becomes apparent that aside from the threats presented by the cold and hunger, other people pose an even greater danger to the travelers. In addition to all these obstacles, the father is very sick. He is suffering from some sort of lung disease, possibly lung cancer or a form of tuberculosis, which may have been caused by the ash in the air. The pair wear masks to filter the air they breath.
The Road acts as a warning about the irreversible and drastic consequences of climate change. This message is continuously driven home by the them of the certainty of death in a dying world. Death lurks at the edges of the father’s and son’s lives continuously. It takes many potential forms: the terrible cold, the father’s sickness, starvation due to the lack of food, and the evil cannibals’ patrolling the countryside. All of these are inescapable dangers for the pair and they will continue for the rest of their lives. The Earth is dead and is no longer able to sustain life.
I have focused on the themes of climate change and the death of Earth for this discussion as my purpose was to examine it against the backdrop of the current extreme weather being experienced around the globe resulting in flooding, fires, droughts, earthquakes and similar catastrophes.
For completeness sake, I will also mention that although the main conflict of the book is the struggle to stay alive in the adverse circumstances, there are also themes of hope and love. The entire purpose of the journey is one of hope to survive in the expected better climate at the coast. The father also constantly expresses his belief that their are good guys like them somewhere in the world. The boy is also depicted as an extremely empathetic and kind person despite the formidable nature of his circumstances.
The book ends on a relatively uplifting note with the boy finding ‘the good guys’ his father spoke about.
There is a movie of The Road and this is the trailer:
About Roberta Eaton Cheadle
Award-winning, bestselling author, Roberta Eaton Cheadle, is a South African writer and poet specialising in historical, paranormal, and horror novels and short stories. She is an avid reader in these genres and her writing has been influenced by famous authors including Bram Stoker, Edgar Allan Poe, Amor Towles, Stephen Crane, Enrich Maria Remarque, George Orwell, Stephen King, and Colleen McCullough.
Roberta has two published novels and has horror, paranormal, and fantasy short stories included in several anthologies. She is also a contributor to the Ask the Authors 2022 (WordCrafter Writing Reference series).
Roberta also has thirteen children’s books and two poetry books published under the name of Robbie Cheadle, and has poems and short stories featured in several anthologies under this name.
Roberta’s blog features discussions about classic books, book reviews, poetry, and photography. https://roberta-writes.com/.
Find Roberta Eaton Cheadle
Blog: https://wordpress.com/view/robertawrites235681907.wordpress.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/RobertaEaton17
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/robertawrites
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Roberta-Eaton-Cheadle/e/B08RSNJQZ5
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I saw the movie adaptation, but I did not read the book. It is clear from your review that this is a very important book in addition to being a very intriguing book. Avoiding climate disaster is certainly very important for our children’s sake. I can add that a very interesting bill for that purpose was just introduced in congress, the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act. This is a great review of the book and I hope to read it one day.
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Hi Thomas, I watched the trailer and the movie looks good. This book is a hard read because there isn’t much uplifting about it a lot of the time. There are some reprieves from the cold and hunger, but not the fear, at intervals in the book. The dying world McCathy creates is chilling and all politicians should have to read this book.
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I’ve always heard about this, but yet to read it
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Hi Beth, it is a very tough read, especially the bits about cannibalisms. If you can stomach it, the world McCarthy creates is a real eye opener.
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Excellent review, Robbie! Cormac McCarthy was relatively early in allegorically and not so allegorically depicting the existential threat of climate change. And his writing in “The Road” (I read the book but haven’t seen the movie) was as rich as always.
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HI Dave, thanks for your comment. I read a write up about McCarthy’s use of climate change in The Road and it was very interesting and inspired me to write this post. Some authors are visionaries. I also haven’t seen the movie as I rarely watch movies. John Wyndham’s post apocalyptic worlds in The Chrysalids (set in a post-nuclear dystopia where genetic stability is compromised and women are severely oppressed if they give birth to “mutants”) and The Kraken Wakes (the polar ice caps melt and the world is flooded although at the hands of alien sea creatures rather than through human intervention) are also very thought provoking and far reaching for their time. Whyndham died in 1969.
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Life is like this… hope peeking through hopelessness.
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Hi Annette, it can be like this. You would think we’d be making forward progress as a species.
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I didn’t realize I’ve read McCarthy’s The Road. I did! The quotes are memorable, and the plot is very familiar. Good analysis, Robbie!
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Hi VEra, thank you, I enjoyed this book – a loose usage of enjoyed as it is dark and depressing but the writing is excellent and the world building authentic and frightening.
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A wonderful review of the book. I must be honest, as I wrote that I quivered, I always suspect a lie to follow that remark, not in this case. I have not read this book. That would seem to be my loss, not Mr McCarthy’s
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Hi Danny, this book was recommended to me as I do read dystopian fiction. I thought the writing was excellent and enjoyed the authenticity of the world McCarthy created. It had a ring of possibility and I prefer that to suspension of reality. This read is dark and is certainly not for everyone.
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I hope and pray we never reach that kind of a catastrophic ending. I’m not sure I’d have the will to keep going, to survive on hope.
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Hi Jacquie, this depiction reminded me of the current thinking about the meteorite that killed the dinosaurs. The dust cloud was purported to be so big the sunlight couldn’t penetrate it and the ecosystem died. This sort of thing doesn’t really bother me but the cannibalism was a bit OTT.
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I did start reading this book but couldn’t finish it as it gave me nightmares. I left it on a bus and then felt guilty in case someone else read it and got nightmares. It’s well written of course but too heavy for me.
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Hi Darlene, I can understand that it gave you nightmares. I am very resilient to scary fiction having read many Stephen King books from the age of 10. The Road has a very probable feel to it, a bit like Lord of the Flies which I mentioned.
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I’ve read No Country for Old Men but not this one. As with Darlene, too many nightmares. Thank you for sharing this excellent review.
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Hi Donna, this is a depressing book and unfortunately, seems quite possible. I like dystopian fiction and also read a lot of historical fiction based on depressing historical events. I’m currently reading A Journal of the plague year by Daniel Defoe. It is completely fascinating to see how the plague spread and the steps that were taken to try to stop it. Especially in light of our recent pandemic.
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Hi, Robbie – Reading in my pajamas is exactly what I have been doing today. I actually just finished reading “There’s No Return to Sender.” It was so incredibly moving. My heart broke throughout.
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Sounds an interesting, but depressing, book. Great review though, Robbie.
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There are reviews out there stating that very thing. How the reviewers’ moods lifted immediately after they finished. Definitely not as accessible, but blessedly shorter than King’s “The Stand”.
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It is definitely a very depressing book although there are parts where the mood lifts. The book does end on a hopeful note. I thought this was a very good book. Its the first Cormack McCathy book I’ve read.
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HI Stevie, it is very depressing because there was no indication that the world or the people would or could survive.
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Is it really this depressing? I am starting to read apocalyptic literature, but to find out how to survive it. No spoilers, but I wonder if these folks survive… 28,000 reviews on Amazon–yikes.
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Hi Jacqui, although the book does end on a positive note, I don’t think the message was that humanity would survive. I read a bit of dystopian fiction, I like the world depictions. 1984, A Brave New World (brilliant world building), Fahrenheit 451, The Circle, even some of John Wyndham’s Books are dystopian and very good (The Day of the Triffids, The Kraken Wakes and The Chrysalids)
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I started with David Saylor. His world-ending was from an EMP caused by the Sun, but lots of bad stuff people do when law breaks down. Yikes.
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PS this one was the most depressing of them all.
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Thanks for the warning!
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McCarthy has said, paraphrased, that his main intention was to express his love for his son and to focus that through through the extreme circumstances of their journey. That he wanted to convey a sense of how precious life is and to appreciate what we have. Considering the total lack of how or why mankind reached McCarthy’s desolate landscape where everything is charred, readers have brought symbolism to the story based on what they want to see. A reader’s blank canvas. Check out his interview with Oprah. I don’t post ads or links or clutter the unwillings’ comment boxes with videos, but Google is your friend here. Try writing like McCarthy without much punctuation and it’ll clean up your self editing act in a hurry.
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Hi Phil, there certainly is a very strong thread of strong love in this book. I enjoyed the part where they are in the bunker very much. The author’s intention may not have been to write about climate change but he certainly did a good job of describing a world where the sun can’t get through to make the ecosystem function. The end of the Time Travelers journey in HG Wells’ Time Machine was similar. The sun was dying and thus, the world was ending. At least as we know it. The cannibalism was a bit OTT for me.
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+1 on cannibalism. I think the literary technique takeaway from this book is how much can be said with what is unsaid. Leaving the symbolic implications to the readers. It’s interesting to see how a work’s symbolism is appropriated over time, and how (you being an accountant know this) one can pretty much make a story or a spreadsheet tell you all kinds of tales.
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HI Phil, what you say is very true. I believe people see things into books and poems that were never intended by the writer. I see this with my own work. People see something into a poem that I never intended. Sometimes they miss my actual intent completely.
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This sounds very dark, Robbie. I’m surprised you took this on. Bravo to you for reading.
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Hi Colleen, I do read dystopian fiction. I am quite fascinated by peoples ideas on what could happen if civilization ended. The cannibalisms was a bit unexpected. Reasonable actually, in the circumstances, but a bit OTT for me.
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Oh, most definitely. However, even Jacqui Murrary’s early man series dealt with that subject. I have no doubt, humans as animals, would revert to that behavior in the event of a catastrophic event. I just don’t want to be here when that happens. LOL!
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Robbie, a superb analysis of The Road. I saw the film and felt as if I’d lived it – it was so dark my husband didn’t watch it to the end but I was hooked. Your review here has me wanting to read the book!
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We have been warned by facts, but somehow a story always has more of an impact. This is a good one. (K)
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Hi Kerfe, its like reading about war. Non fiction is all about facts and figures. Fiction that brings that poor dying boy of only 18 to life – that is powerful stuff.
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That’s exactly right.
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Thank you for this excellent review of McCarthy’s classic novel. With the country of my birth on the brink of implosion, I just can’t handle dystopian books these days.
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Hi Liz, implosion might be a strong word. There are problems, some are deep rooted, but there should be solutions … I like dystopian fiction, the world building fascinates me.
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Hi, Robbie. I don’t use “implosion” lightly. Things are going from bad to worse in the House of Representatives. We’re 3 days away from the federal government shutting down.
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I haven’t read this novel, but I’ve heard a lot about it. I didn’t realize there was a movie based on it as well. It’s strange—I love books about the end times and the rapture/tribulation, but it’s hard for me to read dystopian fiction. I think because most of it is so bleak. It’s good to know this story has an uplifting ending.
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Hi Mae, I suppose the purpose of dystopian fiction is to show the worst case so it is bleak. I found The Road a hard read but it was worthy.
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I haven’t read it or even heard of it before now, but it sounds intriguing.
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I could not stop reading this book, bleak as it was. The father’s love and sacrifice for his son was very moving. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Robbie.
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I read it on your recommendation 💗
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🧡🧡🧡
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