Work: The Road (2006)
Writer: Cormac McCarthy
Medium: Novel
You can use this to frame and navigate discussion, whether at a book club, in a seminar or in a classroom. This was made in collaboration with subscribers at patreon.com/zeroindent.
Study and Discussion Guide
1. The opening scene of this story features the main character, “the man”, dreaming of a blind creature across a lake within a vast cavern. The creature has milky white eyes, and is seemingly rotting, with alabaster horns. What kind of creature do you think this is, and why does this image recur when the man eventually dies?
2. Why do none of the characters have names? What is McCarthy hoping to achieve with this device?
3. Similarly, the novel includes unconventional dialogue formatting. Speech is not contained by speech marks, and occasionally line breaks between characters make attribution unclear - especially during instances where more than two people are speaking. Did you ever have trouble discerning who was speaking, and if so, how did this impact your reading?
4. This book is filled with strange words being used in strange ways. From obscure words like “cacogen” to “catamite”, and even invented tenses for existing words, the language produces an estrangement from our world. McCarthy does this for many reasons - try to explain two different reasons why so many words are confusing or obscure.
5. The metaphor of “the fire” is used throughout the novel by the man. What does this metaphor mean, and how does the man’s relationship to his faith complicate this metaphor?
6. The book ends with the boy joining a man and woman. What do you think happens to the boy after the end of the book? Can these strangers be trusted? Why and why not?
Plot Summary
The man and the boy live in a pale, forgotten imitation of life. The world has emptied out, some great calamity slaying most people and greying the world with ash.
The boy and man travel across the blasted landscape. Hungry. Cold. Not on the edge of death, but part of death at all times.
They visit the rotting carcass of the man’s childhood. The man wonders if he is strong enough to kill the boy, if it should come to that. Finally, on the banks of a waterfall, reprieve. They find mushrooms and have one good, warm night in the harsh winter.
The man shoots a stranger, and the pair flee toward the coast. We leave the man and the boy starving. Forced to abandon their cart as they foray into the unrelenting white snow, certain to die of exposure.
The man and boy are starving to death. It’s really bad. Like, worse than before. We know this because the boy keeps asking if they’re going to die. The man says no over and over again.
The man breaks his rule and investigates a farmhouse, something up until this point he will not do for reasons we are not privy to. As he investigates, we become privy to the reason: houses have other people in them. This house is an operating base for cannibals who keep livestock of people in their basement. The man is spotted by these cannibals and runs like hell.
In a sequence that’s a little confusing, the man and boy escape the cannibals, and now they’re starving for real for real. The man ventures off, chancing upon an underground water tank and shit loads of fresh apples.
The man and boy keep moving, the reprieve short lived, and now they’re gonna starve for real for real. The man once again breaks his rule, and they investigate a blasted suburban family home. He finds a candle and a pair of pliers, nothing else. It’s really bad. He’s walking back from the shed when he has a psychic premonition, and fetches a spade and uncovers an in-tact survival bunker! Also just kidding about the psychic thing, he’s just that delirious from hunger. They break into the bunker and it’s full of food!
They eat shit loads of canned peaches and meats and they have coffee. They even bathe and clean their clothes. The man shaves. They’re people again for five minutes. It’s like a whole different book, except that there’s something up with the kid. He’s being… weird. The origin of this weirdness is never fully resolved. The man fashions some fake bullets from wood to make his gun appear loaded. He assumes, with no real evidence, he could have reloaded one type of ammunition in the bunker into ammunition that would work in his pistol. Knowing the bunker is not safe, they make a move with a new cart full of food. The man makes a questionable choice by insisting they only take one cart of supplies with the boy on lookout. Is this the dumbest thing the man does all book? Maybe, but that’s not a judgement for this summary to make at this time.
The man and the boy are on the road once again. They come upon an old man who they help. Eventually, they narrowly avoid bandits and the man gets sick, certain to die.
The man and boy are starving. They hide from fellow travelers, and then come upon a house pregnant with meaning, and with apparently fresh supplies. Settling in for the night, they build a hearth. Share a meal at a table for perhaps the first time in their lives together. The man carves a bedhead, and over the course of four days, the house repatriates a possible future. “They ate well, but they were still a long way from the coast,” McCarthy tells us. A minor reprieve.
At last they reach the coast: this too is blasted. The ocean is gray slag. The horizon stale mist.
The man swims out to an abandoned yacht and/or frigate. He discovers a number of goods. An optimist may see this as a turning of fortune… we are not so lucky.
In a moment closer to death rites than celebration, the man agrees to fire the recovered flare gun. That same night the boy catches fever, only for their supplies to be stolen. They catch the thief and leave the thief destitute: justice, says the man.
The man and boy come upon a number of disgorged ocean towns. Scraps to be had at best. And then the entirety of The Last of Us is here: the man is shot in the leg by a bow, and responds by setting a man on fire with a flare.
Eventually, the man succumbs to his wounds. The boy is alone on the road until he is picked up by a bearded man and woman who promise they are the good guys.
Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torisonal. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.