Response to The Road

The Road was unlike any book I’ve ever read. It altogether contained a different style and each word had its own meaning and effect. Phrases like “The man” or “the son” have been expressed and written in such a meaningful way that my heart ached to read on. The relationship between father and son is so strong that when you want to put the book down, you can’t. You have to read on, you have to find out what happened even though tears are splattering all over the page. It’s like a tsunami that hurls at every possible angle and space it sees and won’t stop until it’s satisfied.

The simple similes and vocabulary used has a surprisingly powerful effect. Similes like “Gray as his heart” (27) and “They stood in the rain like farm animals” (20) are completely candid that the images created in the reader’s mind are very precise. In addition, the conversations between the father and son were short and sweet. Few words are used but the questions that are asked and the answers that are given and the short conversations they have describes the deep bond that they have.

Hope seems to be a key element that Cormac Mccarthy expresses in The Road. That’s what I liked best about the book. When he described the fire in them; the hope, the love, the goodness, there was so much of it in the hearts of the father and the son that I wanted to smack the world in the face for not giving them what they deserved.

Along their journey, memories are always sprouting up. Dreaming is always happening. I like this. I think that dreaming is another way of having hope. Having hope that you will survive. Having hope that you will reach the beach. Having hope that you will not starve. Having hope that one day this will all be over. Sometimes I feel that having hope is the lesson that God wants us to learn which is why I expected the book to have some sort of happy ending. Which it didn’t.

I hate sad endings. I hated this ending so much that when I finished reading it I threw the book across the room. Who knew that Cormac Mccarthy could stir up so much emotion in his readers? I wandered afterwards why Mccarthy decided to write such an intense yet passionate book about the relationship between a father and son. After some research I discovered that Mccarthy had a son, called John. Mccarthy says in an interview with Wall Street Journal “he’s the co-author of the book”(http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704576204574529703577274572.html) “He” meaning his son, John. He states that the conversations in the book are based on the conversations Mccarthy and his son had. Learning this information made the book so much more personal that I imagined.

After reading this book, it reminded me of the saying “You never know what you’ve got until it’s gone.” I think if my mother read this book she would probably be much nicer as she would realize that the world is an ugly place and every moment should be cherished. This book opens the eyes of society to the ugly world that many don’t see until something catastrophic happens. For instance, the tsunami seems to be the most recent catastrophic event that has killed the lives of millions and millions of people and opened the eyes of every single person in the world. Even shows like “Gossip Girl” emphasize how oblivious teens are to the real happenings in the world. Overall this book was very different from other books I’ve read; it made me realize how lucky I was to escape the many tragic events that have happened in the world so far.