# Cormac McCarthy's The Road \[potential spoliers\] **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 2, 2007, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cormac-mccarthys-the-road-potential-spoliers/421318 "2007-10-02T23:47:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![An\_Gadai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2007, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cormac-mccarthys-the-road-potential-spoliers/421318/1 "2007-10-02T23:47:33Z")
Readers of The Road, what do you think the nature of the catastrophe was? I can’t imagine anything that could do to the earth what the book describes. (And yeah I know it’s fiction and largely unimportant what has made the world this way but I’m still curious). ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2007, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cormac-mccarthys-the-road-potential-spoliers/421318/2 "2007-10-03T02:17:21Z")
It’s fiction and nothing could do to the earth what the book describes. Whatever happened was there solely because McCarthy wanted to make a point of it, not for any rational reason. ---
**Author:** ![Baldwin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baldwin/32/7264_2.png) [@Baldwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baldwin)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2007, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cormac-mccarthys-the-road-potential-spoliers/421318/3 "2007-10-03T02:39:19Z")
Now I’m curious. ---
**Author:** ![Tristan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tristan/32/18058_2.png) [@Tristan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tristan)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2007, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cormac-mccarthys-the-road-potential-spoliers/421318/4 "2007-10-03T02:54:06Z")
I thought, based on the scene wherein he describes hearing a boom, and then going to fill up the tub, as well as the nature of the fathers illness, which closely resembles Radiation Poisoning, that the world had burned to ash by a massive nuclear exchange. It’s possible I’m on crack, however. ---
**Author:** ![AuntiePam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2007, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cormac-mccarthys-the-road-potential-spoliers/421318/5 "2007-10-03T04:09:06Z")
I thought nuclear as well. **Exapno** , why can’t it be nuclear? ---
**Author:** ![Darryl\_Lict](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7cd45c/32.png) [@Darryl\_Lict](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darryl_Lict)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2007, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cormac-mccarthys-the-road-potential-spoliers/421318/6 "2007-10-03T05:33:09Z")
[QUOTE=AuntiePam] I thought nuclear as well. **Exapno** , why can’t it be nuclear? [/QUOTE] I agree, it seemed to be a nuclear holocaust to me. The discovery of the fully equipped bomb shelter seemed to further confirm this for me (thematically, not necessarily logically). ---
**Author:** ![Busy\_Scissors](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d78d45/32.png) [@Busy\_Scissors](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Busy_Scissors)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2007, 9:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cormac-mccarthys-the-road-potential-spoliers/421318/7 "2007-10-03T09:04:06Z")
a long shear of light and then a series of low concussions…a dull rose glow in the windowglass What a book! ---
**Author:** ![An\_Gadai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2007, 11:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cormac-mccarthys-the-road-potential-spoliers/421318/8 "2007-10-03T11:07:36Z")
Just finished it last night, beautiful book. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2007, 12:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cormac-mccarthys-the-road-potential-spoliers/421318/9 "2007-10-03T12:22:19Z")
All the nuclear bombs in the world exploding would not devastate the enormous swatches of land far away from cities devastated that the book would require. You’d get a series of small concentric blast areas that would be insignificant compared to the total area of the U.S. Nobody even at the height of the Cold War believed that a full-out war could destroy the country or the world. That was for fiction writers only. It’s a parable. It’s not supposed to be rational. ---
**Author:** ![Baldwin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baldwin/32/7264_2.png) [@Baldwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baldwin)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2007, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cormac-mccarthys-the-road-potential-spoliers/421318/10 "2007-10-03T12:39:03Z")
Is it in the same kind of overwrought, metaphor-encrusted prose style that’s kept me from enjoying his work in the past? ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2007, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cormac-mccarthys-the-road-potential-spoliers/421318/11 "2007-10-03T13:33:02Z")
First paragraph: > [@](#): > > When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he’d reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before. Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world. His hand rose and fell softly with each precious breath. He pushed away the plastic tarpaulin and raised himself in the stinking robes and blankets and looked toward the east for any light but there was none. In the dream from which he’d wakened he had wandered in a cave where the child led him by the hand. Their light playing over the wet flowstone walls. Like pilgrims in a fable swallowed up and lost among the inward parts of some granitic beast. Deep stone flues where the water dripped and sang. Tolling in the silence the minutes of the earth and the hours and the days of it and the years without cease. Until they stood in a great stone room where lay a black and ancient lake. And on the far shore a creature that raised its dripping mouth from the rimstone pool and stared into the light with eyes dead white and sightless as the eggs of spiders. It swung its head low over the water as if to take the scent of what it could not see. Crouching there pale and naked and translucent, its alabaster bones cast up in shadow on the rocks behind it. Its bowels, its beating heart. The brain that pulsed in a dull glass bell. It swung its head from side to side and then gave out a low moan and turned and lurched away and loped soundlessly into the dark. Then it gets worse. He should be beaten to death with cacti. ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2007, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cormac-mccarthys-the-road-potential-spoliers/421318/12 "2007-10-03T14:18:31Z")
I don’t think it is at all fair to suggest the first paragraph is in any way representative of the majority of the book, **exapno**. That paragraph is a dream - similar scenes make up maybe 5% of the book at most. (Tho I admit that bit about the “dull glass bell” had me confounded for a while before i just decided to ignore it.) All in all I thought **The Road** was pretty compelling and forthright storytelling - at least by CMc terms. Certainly lacked the dense indecipherable passages from **Suttree**. And was far more of a story than **Blood Meridian** which was little more of a recitation of the horrors men inflicted on men (tho the baby on a spit was reminiscent - and predictable…) Personally, **ATPH** is his book that I enjoyed most, with **Orchard Keeper** second. Didn’t care at all for the 2d 2 of the border trilogy. Wasn’t too impressed by **No Country** either, other than the impressive body count. Should make a bang up movie! I also imagined nuclear holocaust, tho admittedly of an extreme degree. I thought the ending of **The Road** a bit of a cop out. But the complete bleakness kept me from being entirely engaged. I mean how could there be any chance of anyone surviving in the long run, when there was not a single plant or animal alive anywhere, other than a few humans? I also was a little - um - disappointed with the relative ease with which the main characters found all their supplies. The bomb shelter, the mansion, and the ship were 3 _huge_ sources of supplies that no one else had managed to find? All in all a worthwhile quick read. I can’t imagine the typical reader of Oprah book selections would be thrilled with it tho. ---
**Author:** ![Trunk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/87869e/32.png) [@Trunk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trunk)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2007, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cormac-mccarthys-the-road-potential-spoliers/421318/13 "2007-10-03T14:51:41Z")
It was a MacGuffin Bomb what destroyed the world. ---
**Author:** ![Jodi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/7feea3/32.png) [@Jodi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jodi)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2007, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cormac-mccarthys-the-road-potential-spoliers/421318/14 "2007-10-03T15:26:47Z")
[QUOTE=Exapno Mapcase] Nobody even at the height of the Cold War believed that a full-out war could destroy the country or the world. That was for fiction writers only. It’s a parable. It’s not supposed to be rational. [/QUOTE] The true earth-destroying nuclear holocaust may be fictional, but that doesn’t make the book a parable nor does it make the book irrational. It’s not a parable, it’s a pretty straight-forward post-apocalyptic journey tale and it’s perfectly rational given the fictional world it is set in. I liked it, as much as I ever like books that bum me out. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2007, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cormac-mccarthys-the-road-potential-spoliers/421318/15 "2007-10-03T20:40:08Z")
[QUOTE=Dinsdale] I don’t think it is at all fair to suggest the first paragraph is in any way representative of the majority of the book, **exapno**. [/quote] “Ten thousand dreams ensepulchred within their crozzled hearts.” Feh. > [@](#): > > I mean how could there be any chance of anyone surviving in the long run, when there was not a single plant or animal alive anywhere, other than a few humans? There is no rational scenario that would result in this world. None. **Jodi** , I don’t understand your objection to the word parable. I’m not using it in a religious sense. _The Road_ fits under any number of the definitions of the word that can be found [here](http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2005-18,GGLD:en&q=define%3aparable). McCarthy is creating a non-world to simplify the moral environment of his characters. There is nothing wrong - or new - in doing so. His characters are no more perfectly rational than the characters in _Alice in Wonderland_. They exist merely to illustrate the points he wanted to make, unconstrained by the limitations that novels set in our supposed reality place upon their characters. His father and son are devices moving through a Device. Again, there’s nothing intrinsically good or bad about this, although it is an inherently difficult accomplishment, as the dozens of Alice imitators have discovered to their peril. I don’t know what else to properly call _The Road_ except a parable. Whatever it may be, however, rational is not one of the options. ---
**Author:** ![An\_Gadai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2007, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cormac-mccarthys-the-road-potential-spoliers/421318/16 "2007-10-04T23:37:42Z")
I do kind of wish there had been some sense of hope, no matter how grim their short term outlook was to be. In some ways McCarthy could have made a more gruesome world but one that offered more to the protagonists. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2007, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cormac-mccarthys-the-road-potential-spoliers/421318/17 "2007-11-18T15:25:15Z")
I thought it was a nuclear holocaust followed by a nuclear winter–that is, a pall of clouds covered the earth that drastically reduced both sunlight and temperature until the vegetation all died. I really enjoyed the book, but I really like overwrought prose of the sort that McCarthy writes. And I think that, had there been any hope at all, the book would have been a lot weaker: as it is, it’s a great story about humans stubbornly struggling to survive when the effort is clearly futile. Daniel ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Excellent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f19dbf/32.png) [@Mr.Excellent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Excellent)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2007, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cormac-mccarthys-the-road-potential-spoliers/421318/18 "2007-11-18T17:18:03Z")
[QUOTE=Baldwin] Is it in the same kind of overwrought, metaphor-encrusted prose style that’s kept me from enjoying his work in the past? [/QUOTE] Yup! ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2007, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cormac-mccarthys-the-road-potential-spoliers/421318/19 "2007-11-18T19:00:07Z")
I read it entirely as a parable. As a parable, I don’t enjoy it, but it does its job. As straight post-apocalyptic fiction, science fiction writers do a better job. ---
**Author:** ![AuntiePam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2007, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cormac-mccarthys-the-road-potential-spoliers/421318/20 "2007-11-18T19:00:57Z")
I disagree, about the overwrought prose. I haven’t read all of McCarthy’s books (just the Border Trilogy), but I thought the style of _The Road_ was comparatively simple and clear. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cormac-mccarthys-the-road-potential-spoliers/421318.md?page=2)