Road
Some books are deceptive in terms of their subject matter. At first glance, for example, such books can appear simple, with a relatively straightforward story. Others are excessively uplifting or bleak, appearing to cater to only one single concept or emotion. Many times, however, the most apparently simple stories can hide deeper themes relating to the what we as human beings truly are. They contain important lessons or hold the capacity to change the lives of their readers. Indeed, as humanity, we are lucky to have the cognitive skills and understanding to enjoy such high-level works. Three prime examples of works that are deceptively simple and/or bleak include The Road by Cormac McCarthy, On the Road by Jack Kerouac, and Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. Of the three, The Road Is probably the bleakest, while Into the Wild is the most straightforward, but each of the three works offers the reader a unique perspective on life and the universe that has the potential to remain with the individual for a lifetime.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy is the extremely bleak and apparently hopeless story of a father and son, two survivors of what the reader might presume to be an apocalyptic nuclear event. The world is dark and desperate, with the father and son plodding on towards no sense of salvation and no sense of hope. There is simply nothing left to hope for. Days are greyer than the ones before and nights are increasingly dark, perhaps symbolizing the pair's inevitable plodding ever-closer towards death.
Despite the fact that the book's subject matter is quite simply bleak and straightforward, it makes for an intense read, not least because of its language. From the first page, the words the author uses are filled with a richness that contrasts starkly with the world he creates in the mind of the reader. It is as if the words are all that are left in a world that has become a "death camp." For people who have become thin and worn-out and hopeless like the poorest of the poor are in fact the richest, clinging to life in a world in which almost everybody has died. It is a world in which death is in daily evidence from the sad shapes of corpses that have used their dying breaths to escape the apocalypse to violent gangs desperate themselves for food and shelter, but robbed of any sense of humanity by the lack of these. It is in this world that the author describes, in the richest terms, things as simple as a cave:
"…he had wandered in a cave where the child led him by the hand. Their light playing over the wet flowstone walls. Like pilgrims in a fable swallowed up and lost among the inward parts of some granitic beast. Deep stone flues where the water dripped and sang." (McCarthy, 2006, p. 3).
Hence, the author uses language to create a sense of juxtaposition. What is left of humanity is its powers of description, but these powers are essentially useless and fall on deaf ears in a world where the most important commodity has become life in any shape or form. Soon, all life will be gone, because there is no way even the novel's main characters can survive the increasing darkness of the post-fallout world. If they were not to be murdered by gangs desperate for food, they will ultimately be killed by a world in which it is no longer healthier to be outdoors than indoors.
Yet, there is something exhilarating in it, according to reviewer Mars-Jones (2006), who holds that, although the road is neither a "fable" nor a "prophesy," it is an experiment in thought and feeling. Its very bleakness is also its exhilaration. It sketches a new world without making any pretence for nobility in humanity. It is this honesty within which lies its exhilaration. By using his powers of description, the author creates the contrast of language with what is being described by that very language not only to show that words are all that are left, but also to show the extremity of human despair. There is simply nothing left to hope for. Yet, the boy and the man carry on, traveling a road that can lead only to more darkness and despair. They carry on because there is simply no other choice. What makes the work exhilarating, even in its bleak despair, is its honesty. The author and characters accept absolutely and without...
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