Resumo de The Road - Cormac McCarthy

Please Note: An abstract is a summary, not a book review. There are spoilers ahead.

Cormac McCarthy?s The Road is set in a post-apocalyptic world that roughly resembles the American South. It tells of a father and his young son following an unnamed stretch of highway, in search of better living conditions. This relatively short novel has no chapters, and none of the characters are ever named. The two protagonists are simply ?The man? and ?The boy.? The author uses stark imagery and an antiquated tone to create a consistent mood of foreboding and dread.

The exact nature of the apocalypse is never disclosed; it is simply described as a flash of light and a thundering rumble in the distance. The world is now covered in ash and the sun is hidden by a permanent cloud of haze. Heavy snow is also a constant reality. In this suggestive nuclear winter, all vegetation has died and the rest of the food chain has gone with it. Now there are very few humans left, and the ones who do exist are generally cannibals who roam about in search of victims. Human meat is basically all that is left to consume. Canned food, clothing and gasoline are precious commodities, for which people kill one another. Luckily the man has a handgun, but only two bullets.

When the novel opens, the man and the boy waken from a cold night and begin pushing their shopping cart of provisions along the road. We learn that the two of them have been on this road for quite some time, heading south for warmth and, hopefully, a safe community. We also learn that the boy?s mother had survived the original blast, but later killed herself in despair. Finally, we learn that the father is dying from a disease that resembles tuberculosis. His fear is that he will die before finding his son a new home.

In the first part of the novel, the two protagonists run short on provisions. Though they search abandoned houses and grocery stores, they are unable to find additional food. Everything edible has already been taken. There are also some harrowing encounters. The first is with a band of roving warriors. The man and the boy manage to conceal themselves but accidentally come across one of their number anyway, and the man is forced to kill him. The boy is temporarily traumatized by the event, but eventually regains his composure. Indeed, the child?s innocence is one of the novel?s major devices. On numerous occasions, the boy lapses into silence after encountering some form of human suffering that he cannot amend. In one horrific episode, they discover a cellar full of people who are being kept alive by cannibals for later use. The father is unable to help them, which proves difficult for the boy to accept.

A major turning point in the story occurs when the father accidentally discovers a fully stocked bunker behind an abandoned home. Carefully concealing themselves, the starved and exhausted father and son hole up for a few days. Then they load their cart up with as much as they can carry, and set out again. In the final part of the novel they arrive at a beachfront , only to find that it too is desolate. The boy develops a fever, and the father fears the child might die, but he soon recovers. Meanwhile, the father explores the remnants of a shipwreck, finding extra provisions and a flare gun. The next day they scour the beachfront, and return to find that everything has been stolen. They overtake the thief, and the father forces him to strip and abandons him naked in the road. Later, the father is injured by a man with a bow and arrow, but he subdues him with the flare gun.

In the very last pages of the book, they spend two days crossing a lengthy causeway above a deadened swamp. The trip is an arduous one, and the father?s health begins to flag. Once off the causeway, he announces that they must stop and rest in the woods. He becomes seriously ill, and the boy?s attempts to revive him prove fruitless. Finally, he tells the boy he is dying and that the boy is to take the pistol and continue the journey without him. The child protests, but the man finally dies in the middle of the night. When the boy wakens he finds his father dead. He sits with his father for three days before leaving. Out on the road, he miraculously meets an old man who seems to have been expecting him. The man pays him the courtesy of covering his dead father with a blanket, and then takes him to meet an elderly woman and two other young children. She hugs him and tells him how glad she is to see him. It is subtly hinted that the couple are his grandparents, and have known that he was coming. In the last scene the woman consoles the boy about his father, telling him that ?the breath of God was his breath yet though it pass from man to man for all time? (p. 241).

Resumos Relacionados