About Cormac McCarthy

Cormac McCarthy is a very interesting author and books are very exciting and if you don't like reading, I would suggest that you read a book that he wrote or read The Road! If you want learn a little more about Cormac McCarthy or about his books, click this link. About Cormac McCarthy

The Road Characters

In this book the two main characters, the dad and the son, it doesn't tell us their names. I looked it up online and all it talks about is the dad and the son or the little boy, it never says either of their names once. At the beginning of the book the author gives you the feel that the dad and the son have a special bond and are for each other very very much. "What would you do if I died? If I died I would want to die too. So you could be with me? Yes. So I could be with you" (McCarthy 11). Throughout the book, you can see that this special bond still exist even when times get rough they pull through and love each other very much. In the middle of the book, while they were walking down the road, they spot a gang and book it to the woods and hide in the grass. If the gang finds them, they are as good as gone. "He slung their knapsacks over his shoulder and they tore through the crumbling bracken. The boy was terrified. Run, he whispered. Run. He looked back. The truck had rumbled into view. Men standing in the bed looking out. The boy fell and he pulled him up. It's all right, he said. Come on" (McCarthy 61). While they were hiding, a gang member starts too walk over by them and you could tell he was about to turn into dad protecting mode. "He cocked the pistol and held it on the man and the man stood one hand out at his side, the dirty crumpled paint mask that he wore sucking in and out. Just keep coming. He looked at the road. Don't look back there. Look at me. If you call out you're dead" (McCarthy 63).  I think we will be seeing this side of the dad a lot more throughout the course of the book. My thematic statement for this book is, if you care for other people, often they will do the same for you. This develops the theme because the dad is always watching out for his son and other people so nothing bad will ever happen to them. "I with I was with my mom. He didn't answer. He sat beside the small figure wrapped in the quilts and blankets. After a while he said: You mean you wish you were dead. Yes. You musnt say that. But I do. Don't say it. It's a bad thing to say. I can't help it. I know but you have to. How do I do it? I don't know" (McCarthy 55). The dad cares a lot about his son and would never want anything to happen to him.

This Book is...

I don't really know where this book takes place, it never really told me. But I do know it is somewhere that is very cold. It also doesn't tell me why there is not a lot of people living or alive wherever the father and son are. And why there is so much destruction and everything is everywhere not in the right place where it should be. So what i'm guessing is that there must of been a tornado or some other natural disaster that messed up this whole town and why not a lot of people are there. But other then that the book is really good and I think a lot of other readers would like this book as well because of how the author describes certain things and how he tells the book.

The Road Analysis

"The weather lifted and the cold and they came at last into the board lowland river valley, the pieced farmland still visible, everything dead to the root along the barren bottom lands" (McCarthy 21). This is describing the conditions that the father and son are in. All they are doing is trying to find a place to get out of the cold and rest. "Their feet were wet and cold and their shoes were being ruined" (McCarthy 20).  "They squatted in the road and ate cold rice and cold beans that they"d cooked days ago. Already beginning to ferment. No place to make a fire that would not be seen. They slept huddled together in the rank quilts in the dark and the cold" (McCarthy 29). I infer that the father and the son will always stay close to each other and will find a way out of the cold together. But on the way there might be obstacles like shortage of food or gangs trying to hurt them cause they also need to survive in this freezing weather. And maybe animals will come across into the father and son's way of trying to survive.

The Road Setting

This book starts off with a lot of imagery and you could picture what everything looks like because of all the detail. It really hooks you in from the beginning of the book. "They pushed on together with the tarp pulled over them. The wet gray flakes twisting and falling out of nothing. Gray slush by the roadside. Black water running from under the sodden drifts of ash" (McCarthy 16). This is describing all the snow that was coming down and they were trying to make shelter in the dark. You can already see the author being very descriptive from the start of the book. The setting of this book includes mountains and many rivers all during a nuclear winter where there is not a lot of life and only a father and a son trying to survive. This setting is hard to survive in and I think we will see a lot of challenges and cliffhangers during this book The Road.