The Road: Difference between revisions

▲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 Prose|purple metaphors]].

▲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.

▲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. [[Take a Third Option|Or, it's just boring, repetitive, unpleasant, pretentious, and grammatically nonsensical]]. The writing is idiomatic to say the least, eschewing most punctuation (including quotes) and occasionally including one-sentence chapters of philosophical musing. And if you enjoy breathing, never point out that this book, despite its premise, is not to be found in the [[Sci Fi Ghetto|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.