The Road was one of the most unique and interesting novels I have read, and probably my favorite book I have read in school. Cormac McCarthy offers a fresh and depressing take on the post-apocalyptic genre, and creates an original piece out of a unoriginal genre. The type of book that any lover of the genre should read, in order to explore the spectrum of what kind of material the genre can create.
The greatest aspect of the book is probably how underwhelming the book is. While that may bring about some negative connotations, it's what sets it apart. The characters are nameless and mysterious, they where their hearts on their sleeves. The world is gray and broken, not a colorful mutated wasteland. The underwhelming nature of the story creates a gruelingly realistic story. It makes all the hyper realistic problems that the Man and Boy run into feel that much more impactful and hard.
The story is sad from beginning to end. This is one thing that may turn some readers off, but again it makes the story feel that much more realistic. A broken world doesn't create hope or heros, but brings a need for survival and basic instinct, both of which the story offers plenty of. The death of the Man, and the abandonment of the boy is the crown jewel on the story and was a fitting ending in my eyes.
The Road is a unique take on a very popular genre. It gives a hyper realistic spin to an unrealistic situation and plays it off perfectly. Each page paints a grey and grueling journey of two nameless travelers looking for a mysterious sense of hope. I greatly enjoyed the story and it's fresh perspective, and deemed it AP worthy, and highly recommend it to fellow readers.
Greetings Gedrek!
ReplyDeleteI quite simply love this post and think that what you wrote about is very true and you bring up some awesome points. I have never been a fan of the post-apocalyptic genre, and you hit the nail on the head as to why. It always seems unrealistic: the wondrous strange beauty of a destroyed world, the unbreakable spirits of the only people left on it, and the almost guaranteed happy ending just make it a cheese-fest for this reader! However, with your description of "The Road," I make give it a quick read, because it does seem to blow all of those stereotypes out of the water. It sounds like a heartbreaking tale of survival, which is what trying to live in a post-apocalyptic world would inevitably be. For those reasons, I commend the author of this work.
Happy living!
Kenny