The Road

In 2006, prominent American novelist Cormac McCarthy published The Road, a post-apocalyptic novel which garnered critical praise in America and went on to win the Pulitzer Prize. The book is notable for a stark, minimalist style interspersed with occasional purple metaphors. The writing is idiomatic to say the least, eschewing most punctuation (including quotes) and occasionally including one-sentence chapters of philosophical musing.

Depending on whom you ask, The Road is either a melancholic but stirringly beautiful story about the goodness of humanity in a hopeless world, or a hellish nightmare so dark that no sane person would read it. Or, it's just boring, repetitive, unpleasant, pretentious, and grammatically nonsensical. And if you enjoy breathing, never point out that this book, despite its premise, is not to be found in the science fiction section of the bookstore: McCarthy fans will get upset at the implication that High Literature would be grouped with Genre Fiction, and Genre fans will be upset because The Road is pretty tame when compared to the Post-Apocalyptic genre, as a whole.

Set after an unspecified global disaster, The Road follows two survivors, a man and his young son, who journey south through the smoking ashes of the United States, toward what they hope is a less dangerous country somewhere near the East Coast. During their ordeal, the man and the boy have only the rags on their backs and a cart of scavenged food. And one another. As they travel, they (and the audience) bear witness to a dead world, where nothing moves but the ashes in the breeze, nothing grows, and the sun is blacked out by a layer of poisonous ash. The only living beings except for them are the starving bands of men that stalk the road.

Like most of McCarthy's books, it was optioned for a film, and The Film of the Book The Road was released on November 25, 2009. It was directed by John Hillcoat, the director of The Proposition, and scored by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis (no, not that Warren Ellis), who had previously collaborated on the score for The Proposition.


 * After the End: One of the best and most harrowing post-apocalyptic novels ever written. One of the great things about this book is that it is one of the few such novels to actually have the stones to make it look like mankind is on its way out. Not just scraping by, but dying.
 * Apocalypse How: Category 4. Biosphere extinction has already occurred and the world is in the final stages of dying.
 * Arc Words: The phrase "carrying the fire" is constantly repeated by the boy, doubling as a Survival Mantra. The phrase also appeared in No Country for Old Men.
 * Beard of Barbarism: Averted and played straight. Averted by the father, whose unkempt beard is mentioned a few times (typically right before he has the chance to shave it off). Played straight when the two main characters stumbled upon the ghoulish larder of a small band of cannibals at one point. As they flee, they briefly glimpse the larder's owners, and the only adjective used to describe the men is "bearded."
 * Beige Prose
 * Bittersweet Ending:
 * Born Lucky: The man suspects this of his son - as much as anyone can be Born Lucky After the End, anyway. By all the available evidence, he's right.
 * Cannibal Clan: Most of humanity have starved to the point where they eat other humans, and it's implied that they will eventually die from sickness or starvation, or cannibalize each other until no one is left.
 * Crapsack World: Less a World Half Empty than a world almost completely drained.
 * Dan Browned: It isn't widely known, but canned food is only safe to eat for five years. The man and his son should have died of botulism by now.
 * Death World
 * Despair Event Horizon: It's arguable whether our heroes are teetering on the edge, or jumped off a long time ago. Either way, hits them both hard.
 * Driven to Suicide: Justified, given the situation.
 * Happy Flashback: The man actively tries to discourage these. They just make him want to end it.
 * Hope Spot: The father finds a still-stocked and untouched bomb shelter, giving them a short time with comfortable beds, food, and even showers. Since he knows others will find it as well, he doesn't stay long.
 * I'm a Humanitarian: The only way for most people to eat, now that the biosphere's dying out. The man and the boy are amongst the few survivors who don't indulge in this.
 * Incurable Cough of Death: We see early on that the man has one, adding an extra layer of urgency to their journey.
 * Inferred Holocaust: Pretty much one of the reasons why the ending is so bittersweet.
 * Kick the Dog: When the father and son catch up
 * No Name Given: No characters are named throughout the novel.
 * Papa Wolf: The father.
 * Pet the Dog: A couple from, showing that they're safe and trustworthy people to be around.
 * Rape as Drama: Alluded to as one of the many perils on the road - not least because it's often the precursor to something worse.
 * Scenery Gorn: So very much. In this world, ashes fall like snow.
 * Shrug of God: The author has offered a few possible explanations for the world-ending disaster, and said that he himself has no opinion on the subject. See also The Un-Reveal.
 * Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: There's a whole cottage industry that's sprung up around debating this question. As noted in the description, there's a group that believes the book is mind-shatteringly depressing. There's another group that believes The Road is, through all the death and misery, a chronicle of the strength and beauty of the human spirit.
 * Survivalist Stash: Our heroes benefit from several of these. The most spectacular example is detailed in Hope Spot, above.
 * Throw the Dog a Bone: The boy.
 * Twenty Minutes Into the Future
 * The Un-Reveal: What happened to the world and how it happened is only mentioned in bits and pieces, not enough to come to a conclusion. The novel is more about the eventual fate of its two characters more so than the mystery of the past.
 * What the Hell, Hero?: The father forces the thief who stole their gear to strip at gunpoint, then leaves him helpless beside the road. He will almost assuredly die painfully as a result. The boy lampshades this.
 * Yank the Dog's Chain: See Hope Spot, above. Also,.

The Film of the Book also provides examples of:

 * Actor Allusion: The Lonely Planet New Zealand guidebook on Viggo Mortensen's bookshelf may be reference to The Film of the Book The Lord of the Rings.
 * Arc Words: "Why are you following us?" or some variant thereof by various characters.
 * Flash Back: How Charlize Theron is able to be in this movie.
 * Hey, It's That Guy!: Aragorn fighting flesh-eaters in the woods? We've seen that before. And look, he's mugging Omar Little!
 * It's All About Me: The mother.
 * Jerkass: Arguably, the mother.
 * Never Trust a Trailer: See also Flash Back, above.
 * Nick Cave: Composed the soundtrack.
 * Only Sane Man: Some see the mother as this, since she preferred to die rather than struggle in this ruined world.
 * Ragnarok Proofing: The only intact bunker the pair find also happens to have the only functioning lights they come across... for a few seconds.
 * Since its about 10 years (more or less) After the End, a lot of stuff has long since broken down. Though there's still plenty of ammo lying around...
 * Bullets last for a remarkably long time.
 * The house in the flashbacks, if you notice closely, gradually decays as time passes, from more-or-less pristine to a dilapidated shell of its former self. It also helps that some form of EMP shut down just about everything electronic from day one.
 * Real Is Brown: Combined with relentless Scenery Gorn like woah. Much of the movie was filmed in an abandoned strip-mine, which is about as close as you can get to a Real Life post-apocalyptic wasteland.
 * Screams Like a Little Girl: The boy
 * Shout-Out: The Lonely Planet New Zealand guidebook. Australia and New Zealand are set up as possible safe havens in numerous post-apocalyptic works, including On The Beach and The Chrysalids. In addition, The Film of the Book The Lord of the Rings was filmed there. See also Actor Allusion.
 * Thousand-Yard Stare: Ye Gods.
 * Throw the Dog a Bone: On top of
 * On top of that,