Discussion: "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy - Page 7

curtw · 01-05-2011, 07:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Laz116

I think so too.

And as I've said earlier (in this thread I believe) the poetry is the life juxtaposing the dreariness of the content.

It's a book about love and the poetic word. Both can invoke beauty in death. And that is what this book does.

In a world as dead and desolate as can be there is still love. There is still man's imagination. Breathing life into those gray mornings and hopeless forecasts.

This is exactly the reason that I see it as a simple retread of The Old Man and the Sea. I just don't get why folks are so excited about a book that doesn't cover any new ground.

kennyc · 01-05-2011, 08:22 AM

Any book is more than just the story or the plot. Virtually every plot and every story has been told. It is often in the way it is done that opens new ground.

mgrunk · 01-06-2011, 12:10 AM

First of all, I'm a mom to a bunch of kids. I read Pear S. Buck's, The Good Earth as a high school student, and then later as a mom and was struck by the quiet resignation to the reality of not being able to protect her baby. When I read The Road, I felt that same resignation - and now as a parent, it struck me to the core, I could totally imagine the absolute need to continue on and at the same time, the near futility of making the effort (the mom's suicide).

From the quote in a previous message:

The Road is not a record of fatherly fidelity; it is a testament to the abyss of a parent's greatest fears. ... It is in the audacity and single-mindedness with which The Road extends the metaphor of a father's guilt and heartbreak over abandoning his son to shift for himself in a ruined, friendless world that The Road finds its great power to move and horrify the reader.

I am still haunted by the imagery - I feel it to my core. It's like my deepest secret fear laid out in a book.

I read Alas Babylon as a teen and then again as an adult - and it was so much more focused on how to survive the catastrophe. The Road made the catastrophe unimportant - you just needed to know that there was so little hope. I kept imagining how my children would simply die - no amount of resourcefulness could keep them alive because there simply weren't any resources - just bleak, gray cold.

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01-05-2011, 08:22 AM	#92
kennyc The Dank Side of the Moon Posts: 35,892 Karma: 119230421 Join Date: Sep 2009 Location: Denver, CO Device: Kindle2; Kindle Fire	Any book is more than just the story or the plot. Virtually every plot and every story has been told. It is often in the way it is done that opens new ground.

01-06-2011, 12:10 AM	#93
mgrunk Zealot Posts: 130 Karma: 96 Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: metro Atlanta, GA Device: Sony Reader PRS-505	First of all, I'm a mom to a bunch of kids. I read Pear S. Buck's, The Good Earth as a high school student, and then later as a mom and was struck by the quiet resignation to the reality of not being able to protect her baby. When I read The Road, I felt that same resignation - and now as a parent, it struck me to the core, I could totally imagine the absolute need to continue on and at the same time, the near futility of making the effort (the mom's suicide). From the quote in a previous message: The Road is not a record of fatherly fidelity; it is a testament to the abyss of a parent's greatest fears. ... It is in the audacity and single-mindedness with which The Road extends the metaphor of a father's guilt and heartbreak over abandoning his son to shift for himself in a ruined, friendless world that The Road finds its great power to move and horrify the reader. I am still haunted by the imagery - I feel it to my core. It's like my deepest secret fear laid out in a book. I read Alas Babylon as a teen and then again as an adult - and it was so much more focused on how to survive the catastrophe. The Road made the catastrophe unimportant - you just needed to know that there was so little hope. I kept imagining how my children would simply die - no amount of resourcefulness could keep them alive because there simply weren't any resources - just bleak, gray cold.

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