Book Summary: The Road By Cormac Mccarthy

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Student Independent Study - Journal The Road by Cormac McCarthy The Road is a survival/thriller based novel published in 2006 and written by Cormac McCarthy, it is a short novel (307 pages) and was published by Alfred A. Knopf. A unnamed father and his young son journey across a grim post-apocalyptic landscape, some years after a major unexplained cataclysm has destroyed civilization and most life on Earth. The land is filled with ash and devoid of living animals and vegetation. Many of the remaining human survivors have resorted to cannibalism, scavenging the crumbling ruins of the city and country alike for human flesh. The boy's mother, pregnant with her son at the time of the disaster gives birth to the boy but commits suicide shortly after in the knowledge that she cannot live in a bleak, lifeless world. Much of the book is written in the third person, with references to "the…show more content…
Throughout the novel it is indicated that a majority of creatures and plants did not survive the disastrous event which occurred years before. Death is personified as a lover in the novel, this is apparent when the mother quotes "I don't care, its meaningless. you can think of me as a faithless slut if you like. I've taken a new lover. He can give me what you cannot" - pg 58. As the novel continues the reader becomes more aware that the father is dying, this is evident in the following quote. "In the night he woke in the cold dark coughing and he coughed till his chest was raw.... He knelt there wheezing softly, his hands on his knees. I am going to die, he said. Tell me how I am to do that" - pg 162. His encroaching death, evidenced by his ever worsening cough and the increasing amounts of blood he spits out, clearly indicates that the father is getting closer to the

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