The Road has been in the To Read Pile for years. I’m a big fan of Art of Manliness, and Brett McKay reads it annually. The AoM store even has a “Carry the Fire” zippo, which I intend to eventually treat myself to as a reward for making it through this book. Brandon Hale, author of the Prince Martin Epic (our son’s favorite books, and frankly, some of mine) lists The Road as one of the most influential books he’s read. Andrew Heaton, host of several of my favorite podcasts, calls it the “ultimate dystopia” and “simultaneously the most beautiful and hideous post-apocalyptic prose ever written.”
I’d been putting off reading The Road, because I knew the hideous nature of the narrative. I get heavily invested in characters I read (I cried when Dobby died), and knowing the wringer they go through in the book has been off-putting to me. The final straw came when Andrew Peterson in one of his recent books confirmed my suspicions that his song “Carry the Fire” was, in fact, inspired by The Road. I decided that if a guy who often can’t make it through his own concerts without shedding tears can make it through the book, so could I. But I wasn’t doing it during my daughter’s recent surgical adventures.
Once we got back, however, I dutifully checked the book out from the local library and dove in. It wasn’t what I expected.
*****SPOILERS AHEAD*****
For one thing, it was short. I expected it to be about twice as long. And I expected more purple prose. Instead, it’s very direct and sparse. I really appreciated that.
But far more than that, I was surprised with how little I consciously identified with the father, especially given how much many men I respect do. Part of it might be knowing that he dies at the end, so perhaps I kept the character at arm’s length.
Mostly, though, I think I just disagree quite strongly with the man’s choices in life. He is a man with tunnel vision and a Malthusian outlook. He repeatedly has chances to help others and instead concentrates on his own survival and that of his son. Instead of treating strangers as opportunities to expand civilization, he assumes them to be threats, or at best, an extra mouth he can’t feed.
I think it’s the hypocrisy that gets me. He tells his son that they’re carrying the fire–the values (like "don't eat people") that make up the kernel of civilization–, yet when they have chances to be civilized, they aren’t. He claims that they’re looking for good guys, but he’s so paranoid that not only does he never take a risk to find out if some individuals are good guys, the eventual good guys who do take in his son can only do so after he dies.
That’s the great tragedy of the book. He spends so much time making sure he survives to euthanize his son if need be, then can’t summon the resolve to do so and dies with no hope of his son’s survival or peaceful passing. Whereas if he’d been more willing to take some risks, he could have passed in good company knowing his son had a secure future.
I’m sure I object so strongly because I have those tendencies in my own character. I’ve spent much time in my adult life trying to cover contingencies that I’ve failed to take opportunities that could have obviated the contingencies I’ve been planning for. It’s only been recently that I’ve finally started to plan for success in some of my endeavors.
There’s a really great example of this in the book. One of the main problems he faces is that he starts the book with only two bullets in his revolver. Then he uses one. Later, he finds a bunker with food, water, and a couple boxes of .30-30 and .45 ACP rounds. He observes that he could have potentially pried the primers out of the pistol rounds and trimmed the bullets down to the rough diameter of his revolver, but…he threw away his old casings. He treats anything (and anyone) not immediately useful as baggage, never considering that value is often not immediately visible.
I think that sort of zero-sum, short-term thinking has become all too common in America today. Several years ago, there was a fascinating article on the philosophy of The Walking Dead and what its popularity said about America. The article is well worth the read, but the short version is that we’re seeing a reversal of values in the country. The counterexample given in the article is The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, where John Wayne’s rough and tumble cowboy–while respected for his masculine traits that pave the way for civilization–is seen as a relic that must be supplanted by Jimmy Stewart’s civilized lawyer. Both men are held in high regard, but it’s accepted that in order for society to flourish, the bourgeois virtues must supplant the law of the jungle (or prairie as the case maybe). The Walking Dead, on the other hand, ridicules those bourgeois virtues as incompatible with the strength needed for survival.
Yet what does The Walking Dead existence offer? Survival for the sake of survival is circular. Without a telos, existence is meaningless. And that’s the father’s dilemma in The Road.
But that doesn’t seem to be the way I hear it presented much. I sometimes hear it presented as an example of existential philosophy, which is to say, the father, in a world in which survival is meaningless, is making his own meaning by choosing a burden to carry. I think that works to some extent.
More often, though, I hear it presented as a father/son story about fighting to hand down values to the next generation. I don’t think that works very well, though. If there’s one thing I’ve learned both as a child and as a parent, it’s that kids pick up what is displayed far more than what is didacticized. The father in The Road is telling himself that he’s teaching his son moral values, but what’s the actual lesson his son is going to learn?
And maybe a critique is exactly what McCarthy is intending. The son certainly seems to feel bad about the times they don’t help people. Maybe the point of the book is to ask the question, “What good is fire if it’s lost its heat and light?”
