Dark Origins – The Road by Cormack McCarthy, a novel set in a post apocalyptic world with a drastically altered climate #darkorigins #TheRoad #readingcommunity

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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