THE ROAD: A “Road” that leads somewhere important to go

The scenario is desolating. A vast landscape with no human beings but a father and a son. Earth is not the same anymore. Something has destroyed the world as we know it. These two people try their best to survive, but survival is something bigger than them – bigger than anyone else. This is the place where Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize Winner “The Road” is set. A world where we’d like to visit only in fiction.

But what a road this is. We don’t know where this path leads to, but any reader can notice that this is a metaphorical device. This road is much more than a place to walk over. This is life, after all. McCarthy touches a exposed never about the contemporary world when he writes about a imaginary future – that can even be real in a couple of decades, we never know.

The writer is not really interested in what has changed the world and life into that, but how people cope with this transformation. Some characters can’t even deal with this new present. The third part of this family is one of those who couldn’t accept the new world.

McCarthy creates a journey paved with metaphors and symbols that may be linked to the past or future, or something else. On the other hand, the writer doesn’t abandon the West – mythical environment where is set most of his novels, such as his famous Border Trilogy. There is a concept very clear about characters in “The Road” that comes from that place: the good guys and the bad guys. But, on the other hand, here they are never as defined as they usually are in the Westerner. They can be bad or good depending on how you look at them.

McCarthy is certainly one of the most accomplished American writers working today. His latest novel proves that he is not seeking for catharsis or comfort whatsoever with his work. He wants to raise questions, to disturb us, readers, to remove usfrom our alienation. And in the end of the reading we certainly are fully awaken.

Originalmente publicado em www.Amazon.com em 30/04/2007