The Road- Hopeless?

Having said what I have said about hope in the above post, it might seem strange to turn to a book review of a Cormac McCarthy novel. If ever there was an American novelist seemingly infused from start to finish with hopelessness it is McCarthy. And The Road may be the most hopeless of all his books. If he weren't such a great writer no one would be able to take it. But his amazing, peerless prose compels you to turn the page even as you want to close your eyes and dream pastel dreams of hope or bold Technicolor dreams of life.

The Road is a path through a post-apocalyptic world where gray and ash and death are the hallmarks. A nameless man and his son are traveling to an unnamed coast. That's the story. They are in constant fear- and ever-present danger. They see things that no one should ever have to see. They are, we know as we read, in a win-less world. It is a lose-lose-lose world. No one, it appears, will get home safe for there is no home left.

It is a haunting book. Even more haunting than his now famous No Country for Old Men. (That book and movie are still haunting my thoughts. The Coen Brothers movie a perfect capture of the book's power and hopelessness.) But, if it is so hopeless, why does it haunt? Unlike No Country with its narrations and reflections by the sheriff trying to find meaning, The Road depends on the spare narration.

And in that narration we find shards of hope. While the world may have been destroyed by fire, the man and boy talk about carrying "the fire." They never tell us what that is. They both seem to have some intuitive understanding for themselves. But as they travel to water (which kills fire) for safety, they carry the hope in the very thing that destroyed them and the world.

The book becomes a series of bleak miracles that move them to the next one. Until there is only the final miracle left.

In that perhaps, McCarthy is telling us that there is always hope. It may only be in miracles that we can live. Whether they come from some God or gods or who knows what, is beyond the point. When they happen they touch the human heart- and thus is hope born.