The Road

The book "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy tells the story of a man and his child traveling across the devastated United States in search for survival. Both of them live a monotonous and scarce life, which is described by McCarthy as:

Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before" (3)

The previous quote sets a dark, sad and hopeless mood that is held throughout the book. Every landscape described by the main character looks basically the same: ashes, destroyed buildings and no signs of life. The desolation and loneliness of the towns make the man and the boy anxious and paranoid. They walk carefully (with a gun in the man's hand) and looking back constantly to check if they are being followed. It is sad to see how their life has come down to an endless pilgrimage and how everything they had is now reduced to a shopping cart filled with their belongings.

An interesting contrast with the book's dusky mood is the description of the man's dreams:

In dreams his pale bride came to him out of a green and leafy canopy. Her nipples
pipeclayed and her rib bones painted white. She wore a dress of gauze and her dark
hair was carried up in combs of ivory, combs of shell. Her smile, her downturned
eyes." (18)

The way his dreams are vividly described shows how he treasures those memories and wishes to go back to them. Daydreaming takes a big role in the novel as well, since the man gets caught up when remembering childhood events, like the peaceful afternoons spent in the lake in company of his uncle. The fact that the man is daydreaming permanently makes allusion to the fact that his surreal lifestyle has taken away some of his human attributes, like his sense of reality.

The conversations between the man and his son are very interesting as well. Even though they are short and dry, the exemplify how the son has absolute trust in his father and never questions his judgements or decisions:

Can I ask you something? he said.
Yes. Of course.
Are we going to die?
Sometime. Not now.
And we're still going south.
Yes.
So we'll be warm.
Yes.
Okay." (10)