The Road

Diario fanta-apocalittico con tonalità horror, il romanzo può essere immediatamente inquadrato come un racconto di lotta per la sopravvivenza, con annesse riflessioni sulla follia dell'uomo, sull'importanza di non spezzare il legame con la Natura, ecc. ecc. Non a caso tutti i personaggi adulti (buoni compresi) presentano qualche deformità fisica, riflesso di un più grave (e gravoso) malanno morale.

Personalmente preferisco leggerlo però come una descrizione coraggiosa e lucida dell'attuale condizione morale della società occidentale. Essere padre oggi significa muoversi in un contesto privo di punti di riferimento e dover condurre il proprio figlio nel freddo e nella sporcizia (morale) che alligna ovunque, lungo la retta via (la show more strada) che porta ad una verità piú grande (il mare). Verità ahimè ridotta oramai ad una poltiglia grigia e morta poiché anche le vecchie sicurezze sono state svuotate del loro piú intimo significato in questa società malata e disfunzionale.

Il passato oltretutto è un'eredità ancipite. L'immagine dell'uomo che al tramonto legge un vecchio giornale mentre il bambino sta dormendo esprime eloquentemente l'assoluta inanità della conoscenza pre-catastrofe: la scienza di un tempo ora è favola, buona solo per tirar sera. Viceversa nulla di quanto prodotto nel post-catastrofe è utile alla sopravvivenza, ciò che aiuta a tirare avanti sono invece i pochi resti del tempo andato, ciò che i previdenti hanno pensato bene di conservare (cibi, bevande, suppellettili, ecc.).

Il sole dietro la coltre di polvere si è liquefatto in una lattiginosa luminescenza incolore non più localizzabile. Le mappe del vecchio mondo, consultabili con grande difficoltà, sono decomposte in un puzzle di quadretti che consentono a malapena di procedere a vista.
Esiste solo l'oggi e il qui. L'altrove, temporale, spaziale e perfino onirico è bandito. Forse per sempre.
I viveri per affrontare il viaggio sono scarsi e sovente scadenti: non c'è nutrimento per lo spirito.
Perfino l'identità si è dissolta: tutti i personaggi sono senza nome, tranne Ely, un vecchio mezzo cieco che parla in modo sconnesso e si dice profeta di un Dio che non esiste.
Eppure la spinta ad andare avanti è forte. Fortissima. E del tutto immotivata.

Il protagonista, nel breve tempo che gli rimane, prova con tutte le sue forze ad adempiere al disperato compito di indicare al figlio la strada e le regole per una nuova vita.
Evitare gli altri prima di tutto.
Perché gli uomini, ben che vada, vogliono derubarti o peggio divorarti, spolparti il midollo. Fino a lucidarti le ossa.
E rimanere sempre uniti.
Rileggendo il precetto evangelico "Ama il prossimo tuo come te stesso", l'autore lega padre e figlio in modo così stretto da escludere qualsiasi altra presenza. Perfino la figura della madre è lasciata nell'ombra di un ricordo dolorosamente ambiguo. A dire il vero la componente femminile è assente in tutto il libro ed è richiamata archetipicamente solo nella forma delle cavità naturali e dei rifugi di fortuna in cui i due protagonisti trascorrono i momenti migliori (le imboccature delle grotte, il rifugio antiatomico, ecc.). E non può essere diversamente perché il paradiso è non essere mai nati: l'uscita al mondo è sofferenza e disperazione e una madre, qualsiasi madre, non porta che a questo.

Ciò che conta è tenere sempre acceso il fuoco interiore (unica nota di colore in tutto il libro!), che non si sa di dove venga e in che cosa consista, ma c'è e guai a lasciarlo spegnere. In antitesi al "fuoco mobilissimo" di Eraclito, legato a doppio filo alla parola-ragione (logos), il fuoco di McCarthy è confinato nel non-detto, non voce ma respiro, non gesto ma vicinanza e si alimenta della quotidianità di un rapporto fatto di piccole attenzioni, di rispetto, di cura reciproca e di fedeltà al difficile compito di rimanere uomini.

Ma forse l'insegnamento più grande sta nelle ultime, semplici parole del padre al figlio prima di morire: "Fa' tutto come lo facevamo insieme".
Perché l'esempio e la condivisione sono la lezione più efficace e sincera.
Perché la vita si sviluppa per cicli e ripetizioni. E ciò che non si ripete muore.
"Fa' tutto come lo facevamo insieme".

Di impianto più semplice dei romanzi precedenti, La strada si dipana per accostamenti di immagini e sequenze racchiuse in paragrafi di lunghezza variabile, da poche righe a qualche pagina, frantumate testimonianze di un'esistenza che ha cessato di accrescersi e che si ripiega su sé stessa rantolante. A una narrazione tanto frammentaria giova come non mai l'impeccabile stile dell'autore, asciuttissimo e quasi refrattario, non scalfibile.

In tanta devastazione l'unico flebilissimo segno positivo si intravede nel divario che piano piano si va creando tra padre e figlio e, per quanto cupo, il finale è aperto alla speranza. Morto il padre, il bambino, piú ingenuo e indifeso ma anche più aperto verso gli altri, ripone la sua fiducia nell'uomo col fucile: la società nasce dalla reciproca collaborazione anche se si è circondati dai cannibali e questo atto di fiducia può essere compiuto solo dai giovani perché le vecchie generazioni, responsabili della catastrofe, sono incapaci di costituire nuovi solidi rapporti. E' dunque tempo che muoiano e che altri procedano più avanti lungo la strada.

Già me lo vedo McCarthy che al mattino presto si alza, va alla porta di casa col bicchierone di caffé americano in mano e nel deserto del New Mexico che si spalanca oltre la soglia legge la desolazione della società attuale. Rientra, dà un'occhiata nella camera del suo figlioletto, lo ascolta respirare, magari gli sistema le coperte. Lui è vecchio e sa che non lo vedrà crescere. E che non potrà accompagnarlo molto piú in là lungo la strada che attraversa il niente.
E poi scrive.
Scrive di questo fuoco che è dentro ciascuno di noi, consapevole che forse non avrà il tempo di comunicare al suo piccolo l'importanza di tenerlo vivo quel fuoco.
E spera che dopo di lui ci sia qualcuno che nonostante tutto se ne prenda cura.

Chissà, forse il finale è aperto alla speranza proprio perché McCarthy stesso ha bisogno di quella speranza.

E noi con lui.

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Seconda lettura
Precedente: [b:Ehi, prof!|3972405|Ehi, prof!|Frank McCourt|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1413288428l/3972405._SY75_.jpg|3060322]
Successivo: [b:Un albero cresce a Brooklyn|3927372|Un albero cresce a Brooklyn|Betty Smith|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1424087119l/3927372._SY75_.jpg|833257] show less

The Road, the man, the boy. A cold, burnt, godforsaken landscape that stretches forever. This post-apocalyptic story takes us on a lonesome and horrific journey. What catastrophe has happened we don't know, but all animal life seems to have died together with plant life.

The fathers reason for existence is his boy - this love drives him on - yet he has lost almost all hope - he knows what it takes to survive but how can he survive and at the same time remain human? What future is there for this boy? The boy in his innocence still reaches out to people he meet, while the father has to teach him to stay away from people who are all potential cannibals. Can they trust anyone - and what is life reduced to without human interaction, love, show more trust?

Also the idea about God comes and goes. The presence of God and the absence of God.

Are you there? he whispered. Will I see you at the last? Have you a neck by which to throttle you? Have you a heart? Damn you eternally have you a soul? Oh God, he whispered. Oh God.

The writing is sparse, yet powerful. It's not a pleasant read, but thought-provoking. It certainly has made an impact on me. show less

In a way, this book is responsible for my aversion to post-apocalyptic lit. I saw the movie adaptation of this when it came out, and of course knew that it came from McCarthy’s novel. The movie is bleak, to say the least, and I’ve thought back to it literally every time I’ve even considered watching or reading another piece of dystopian fiction.

So having decided to give the novel a shot, I’m surprised at how much I enjoyed it. “Enjoyed” might not be quite the right word, but it’s pretty close. The writing, obviously, is powerful & well executed. The characterizations are also suprisingly robust. I found myself really absorbed and, despite all reason & evidence, hopeful. The tenacity and strength inherent in this man and show more his son are impossible to deny, and hard to avoid catching.

I can’t deny that the novel earns its reputation for desolation & bleakness. But as a whole, that was not the effect that I found it had on me. I actually did enjoy it. show less

“Nobody wants to be here and nobody wants to leave.”—P. 169.
Having finished this shortly after the suicides of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain, I couldn’t help reading the world of The Road as McCarthy’s landscape of depression. For the depressed person, the everyday life we take for granted is seen as a dystopia. “In reality” thinks the depressed person, nobody wants to be here, they just don’t know it, but I see the gray ashen truth and the struggle is to somehow remain in this barren place and not put a bullet in my head (and maybe “liberate” my loved ones) in order to become one with this lifeless world. Perversely, moments of happiness can be an inducement to suicide and must be resisted, because they promise show more future hope if we could only resist the instinct to survive and go on to the unreal dream of a future life. Remaining grounded in the dead world by caring for our loved ones is the only thing that holds us back from moving on to the imaginary other world – think of the dialog about life on Mars late in the book --while at the same time the underlying desire is to become lifeless ash. Some of the extreme negative responses to the book might have something to do with the way the story sucks you into the suicidal world-view of the depressed mind. show less

A fun and quick read. This is a bit too pretentious for my taste but once you get past the Woe-is-the-Human-Race navel gazing McCarthy puts on a good show. He has a nice eye for occupationally specific nomenclatures and the lack of chapter headings push you on to read one more page past where you had planned to call it a night. This post apocalypse futuristic novel of Americans returning to Thomas Hobbes' dreaded state of nature was an Oprah Book Club selection although I can't imagine Oprah reading it and enjoying it other than her watching white Americans having turned cannibal on other whites.
The author's moralizing was quaint, and I love quaint. McCarthy's omniscient narrator revels in the slow disappearance of all vestiges of any show more religious framework leaving human consciousness as they struggle to live in a world where God doesn't exist and can't exist. McCarthy leaves the reader with a sense of hope that a new pantheism or at least an animism (Native American spirituality perhaps) will take hold in a more practical usefulness than prior organized religions had. As The Man and Boy pass each day with fewer and fewer words to communicate with, God has no way to be addressed except through rituals improvised on the spot without reference to how symbols work. Symbols are community based and transmitted actions which carry meaning beyond words over human generations. The world described in The Road is hopeless but the ending intends to frustrate that suffocating circumstance with a forming of a new community of youth and caring by a single family adding new members. McCarty's No Country For Old Men film adaptation was violent but well done. I have not yet read No Country for Old Men but I hope to now. The Road, as a novel, is also well done although it carries, not violence, but menace and release from societal morality to make its points of argument. The Man shields the boy and the reader from all that he experiences and suffers and in doing so The Man shields us as well. The readers form a close bond with The Man and Boy but the world they flee as fugitives we readers are already well acquainted with. Plato's Thrasymachus and Machiavelli's Cesar Borgia are always interesting characters defending the claims of the strong or mob leaders. It's an interesting thing to see a man and boy do what they can to avoid perishing from the natural elements as well as eluding humans who have given themselves over to satiating their basest needs. show less

Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is devastatingly well written, restrained, and deliberate. It is not a loud novel. It does not beg to impress. Instead, it strips language down to its bare bones and lets meaning accumulate through repetition, silence, and omission.

The prose is spare to the point of austerity—short paragraphs, simple vocabulary, almost no punctuation—yet within that minimalism McCarthy tucks sentences of startling beauty and philosophical weight. The effect is a relentless forward pull: the book reads quickly, but it does not give you space to breathe. That tension between ease of reading and emotional heaviness is part of its power.

What struck me most is how carefully McCarthy resists sentimentality. The novel is about show more transmission: of moral instinct, of responsibility, of what it means to “carry the fire” when the world itself appears spiritually exhausted.

There is a brief passage where McCarthy allows his older, mythic voice to surface—dense, prophetic, almost Biblical in tone. It reads like a reminder: this is what I can do if I choose. The restraint elsewhere is not a limitation, but a discipline.

I rated The Road a 4.5 rather than a full 5 not because it fails at what it attempts—it succeeds almost perfectly—but because Blood Meridian exists. The Road is masterful, moving, and deeply humane. Blood Meridian is wilder, more ambitious, more ferocious in its language and metaphysical reach. This novel is quieter, narrower in scope, and intentionally so.

That is not a flaw. It is a choice.

The Road lingers not because of shock or spectacle, but because it understands that in the end, survival alone is meaningless. What matters is what kind of human being walks forward when there is no one left to tell them how. show less

I read the The Road for the first time, in printed form in 2009. I have just finished reading it in audio form in November 2025.

When I first read the The Road, I found it engaging, frightening, and beautifully written. I was glued to the pages, and when I finished the book I marveled at Cormac McCarthy’s words and vision.

The Road is a post-apocalyptic story about a man and his son traveling on a road at a time when the world has been damaged by war and the destruction of the environment. It’s a grueling journey in a hostile world, a journey that can have no easy ending.

The man and the boy are the main characters, the center of the book, and their love for each other throughout setback after setback pulls you into the novel and you show more hope though you know it is in vain, that they will succeed in finding a place of safety.

On my second reading, I found The Road to be quite distressing. I actually started crying about two thirds through, and by the end, I was in an emotional mess.

Why the difference between the two reads? Well, it’s complicated. I’ve put it down to three main reasons which combined made for an unpleasant though still engrossing read.

The first is the boy in the story. When I read it back in 2009, my grandson was not yet born. Now he is around the age of the boy in the book. He even talks a little like him with his “OK” answers to complex questions. He’s pre-pubertal, still with a child’s innocence.

The second reason is that I’m twenty years older now, and unwell. The description of the man becoming increasingly frail mirrored my own life in the last few months. Yes I can see the end of the road.

But perhaps the third reason is the most important in how I came to be so affected by The Road. Back in 2009 it was a different world. Europe had no all-out wars on its own territory for over 50 years. The Israel Palestine problem was its infancy (not that we realized that at the time), and no one could have imagined the Gaza of today. Though America was involved in wars overseas. It was nothing like the situation now. In any case, I was younger and intending leave America to return home to Australia back then.

We didn’t really know about Epstein, Looking back George Bush, was a chap you could imagine having a beer with despite his politics. AI was called artificial intelligence, not being given the prestige of having its own acronym. Global warming, well we knew about it, but we hadn’t yet seen its effects.

Movies like Mad Max were seen over-the-top fantasies. Free speech in Western democracies was a given.

The end of the world as we know, it was not taken seriously. Or if taken seriously, it was seen as a long way off. Now it seems, if not in our lifetimes possible in our children’s.

McCarthy does a brilliant job in describing the decay of society together with and because of the decay of nature, both being brought about by man’s actions.

The Road is an exceptional book and I’m giving this book 4.5 stars but I cannot now recommend it to empaths.

November 2015
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