I vote for hopeful. In the deepest darkness thinkable the father chooses
life and goodness for his son despite the stark realness of despair as
the he dies and everything around him appears to be dying.
This
is the dark night of the soul in our death culture. The love of the
father and his choice for good made me think this is the best book I've
read since Lord of the Rings.
Fred
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=263597
The Road, Cormac McCarthy
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Well,
I just finished this book today. Was required to read it for class. And
I cried ...boy is it depressing and is so hopeless. Does anybody have
other views of the book that I might be missing? I'm looking for hope in
it...I feel like it's wrong for something to have so little hope in
God.
Has anybody else read this book?
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#2 Aug 26, '08, 2:43 am
Sam Maloney
Regular Member Join Date: June 4, 2004
Posts: 609
Re: The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
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I'm a huge fan of McCarthy, he reminds me of Faulkner at his best.
I thought the whole point of 'The Road' was hope:
SPOILER ALERT!!!!
SPOILER ALERT!!!!
SPOILER ALERT!!!!
SPOILER ALERT!!!!
It
starts out in the worst possible world, with a father and son who love
each other, and despite everything the father is trying to teach the son
to be a decent person.
After much suffering, the son goes on
alone, but he finds aid, finds out there really are other decent people
and other children left in the world.
I thought the message was that no matter how bad things get, a shred of human decency will survive.
I'll
admit it was [literaly and figuratively] a tough journey towards a less
than triumphant ending, but compared to other post apocalyptic tales
[On the Beach, Ice Nine, There Will Come Soft Rains [a Bradberry short
story]], I felt The Road left me with some hope, and something valuable
to think about.
Certainly not a tale for everyone, though.
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#3 Aug 26, '08, 5:39 am
Layman
Banned Join Date: June 30, 2008
Posts: 1,847
Religion: Catholic
Re: The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
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Off-topic:
I've never understood why people would voluntarily read books that
arouse negative emotions. I try to filter modern culture, so I can be at
peace. Just because the Times Literary Supplement says you have to read
something doesn't mean you have to. Reviewers often plug their pals
work, or are compromised in other ways.
After, what, 20+ years of
being a culture vulture I realised that most of it was a swizz, that
artists were often ignoble, and that the bourgeoisie chattering to
itself was not something I needed to bother too much with.
You don't have to stay to the end of a bad movie. Just leave.
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#4 Aug 26, '08, 6:18 am
Scottgun
Regular Member Join Date: September 14, 2006
Posts: 2,065
Religion: Catholic Theocratic Imperialist
Re: The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
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I read the book too. I couldn't help but think the father was feeding the boy hope like a placebo. Like this passage:
We wouldnt ever eat anybody, would we?
No. Of course not.
Even if we were starving?
We're starving now.
You said we werent.
I said we werent dying. I didnt say we werent starving.
But we wouldnt.
No. We wouldnt.
No matter what.
No. No matter what.
Because we're the good guys.
Yes.
And we're carrying the fire.
And we're carrying the fire, yes.
Okay.
What
the fire is seems to be left ambiguous. It could be the light of
civilization, it could be hope in the face of hopelessness, or human
compassion and right moral conduct, it could be the Holy Spirit for all
we know. Their goal is the coast, but the father does not have any idea
what they will do once they get there. In fact at the end it is
difficult to tell if McCarthy is telling us that hope is real and
worthwhile, real but pyrrhic, or mere comforting illusion in a
meaningless universe. I fear it is the last one he is favoring.
In
the Salve Regina, we hear: "To thee do we cry, poor banished children
of Eve; to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this
vale of tears." The Road makes that vale and banishment stark and
complete. The book does not answer whether there is anyone to cry to
however.
I also recommend a look at an article Nerd Do-Wells
which describes this disturbing trend in films and novels that are
essentially saying, "the darkness shines in the light, and the light did
not overcome it."
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#5 Aug 28, '08, 1:43 am
Sam Maloney
Regular Member Join Date: June 4, 2004
Posts: 609
Re: The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Layman,
I think that's a rather harsh judgement on your part. A lot of great
art challanges us, takes us to some dark places. The gospels would be
pretty meaningless if we removed all the 'downers'.
Scott, the
passage you quote is a good one. Father and son carry the light because
they still behave ethically. They have values, and are therefore
valuable.
The father lives totally for his son, who is kind and
gentle, despite the world he lives in. Father is a great paternal role
model-- he has forged his son's personality [practically the only other
person the son has ever really known], and sacrifices himself daily for
his son's sake.
And this, in turn, is why the son is a genuinely good person: he's following in his father's footsteps.
Think
about this: the boy could have laid down beside his father's body and
starved. He was tempted. But in his very darkest hour, he chose to get
up and get going. He chose to try, and when he tried, he found help and
hope for a better life.
I find that a powerful, positive message.
In my own life, I frequently have to struggle against depression,
against the desire to lay in the dark and wait for death. So I can
identify with the boy, and the message-- never surrender, but never
surrender your values, either-- is incredibly important, even
inspirational.
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#6 Aug 31, '08, 1:25 pm
Epistemes
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Book Club Member Join Date: November 17, 2006
Posts: 1,872
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Re: BOOKS: The Road, Cormac McCarthy
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Hello,
Some very astute observations about the book have already been made.
I
agree that the father is offering the boy a great deal of hope
throughout the book -- but it is more than obvious that the father
himself seems to lack hope. He has lost hope and trust in other humans
-- whom he threatens even when they have done nothing wrong to him so
far as we can tell. Sure, one guy steals their belongings, but the
father's reaction is more than a bit overboard...all springing from his
complete and utter distrust. The father's sole purpose for living is the
boy and to see that the boy survives. His only hope is that the boy
will be a champion of what remains. In the end, I think this proves
somewhat true, but not how the father might've expected or wished it:
for the boy acts completely contrary to the father's suspicion of other
people by entrusting himself to a family of strangers.
Even if
McCarthy is trying to convey that hope is an illusion, he at least seems
to consider it a worthwhile illusion, one that man needs in order to
survive, if not to live.
__________________
"I have carefully
examined what the word heretic means, and I cannot make it mean more
than this: a heretic is a man with whom you disagree."
--Sebastian Castellio (1515 - 1563)
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#7 Sep 1, '08, 8:39 am
Cordelil
Junior Member Join Date: June 8, 2008
Posts: 195
Religion: Catholic
Re: BOOKS: The Road, Cormac McCarthy
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I
read it. I am a Cormac McCarthy fan. The ones I like the best are the
first 2 books of the Texas/Mexico trilogy: "All The Pretty Horses," and
"The Crossing." Many critics have lauded his novel "Blood Meridian." I
have read it once and will probably get around to a second in the
future.
I think that the previous replies dealing with the
positive apsects of the book are right on target. However, I think it
along with is other recent work, "No Country For Old Men," do not
measure up to the T/ M trilogy.
John
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#8 Sep 9, '08, 10:30 pm
TomPiltoff
Banned Join Date: September 13, 2007
Posts: 402
Religion: Atheist
Re: The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
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I finished The Road a few months ago (I really wanted to read the book before the movie comes out) and I think it's wonderful.
I definitely agree that the theme of the story is that human compassion will always exist.
Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Mass and the Church as
well as for the Triumph of the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and
the Immaculate Heart of Mary
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