Part of our journey here at Wild City Plants is exploring the human impact of a difficult future, and the personal ramifications that come with it. The Road by Cormac McCarthy is not only a national bestseller, but is also a winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
An excellent novel set in a post-apocalyptic United States, The Road follows the path taken by a man and his son, only referred to as the man, and the boy. Just as the novel is intentionally written with minimum punctuation, so too do the man and his son encounter the bare minimum to scrape by and stave off death.
Pushing their rickety shopping cart along the decrepit road, swathed on both sides by ash and lifelessness, the man and his son make their way to the coast, hoping to find people or civilization at best, and food and shelter at the least. As they travel, they encounter great deals of violence and despair, and struggle for basic subsistence while we are provided glimpses into the past through the boy's childhood curiosity. We also see windows into futures that might be, or might have been, as the pair encounters lone and fleeting moments of beauty while they travel.
A story about the human condition in the face of the struggle for survival, the man and the boy are faced with ethical dilemmas that we all must consider as we are heading to a future where we may face their ramifications. Do we offer what little we have to another when we believe we know their fate? Do we help others or protect our own? How do we find balance between altruism and selfishness? Is there hope for us in a seemingly bleak world? What is the place of love, or hope, in a place that feels loveless and hopeless?
The Road is a novel that leads us down an uncomfortable, but important road. It helps us understand that the way in which a message is communicated is just as important as the message itself, and it illustrates that even in the darkest of darkness, light can still be found.
You can find a copy of The Road by Cormac McCarthy in paperback or hardcover on Amazon, and as an audiobook on Audible.