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In The Road, Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic tale of a father and son traveling in the aftermath of the world's collapse, we are thrust into a land of remains. The land is barren and covered in ashes. The sky is dark, and everything is dry. For those unfamiliar with the book, there is no intricate plot in The Road. The plot is sparse, as is the dialogue. The man and boy walk, hunt for scraps of food, speak in short sentences, and navigate around any signs of human life. Moving south in hopes of escaping the onset of winter, they make their way around a road, a place of passage but also a place of danger. Each encounter invokes dread and suspicion. All those who remain are potential competitors for the meager supplies - gas, blankets, and jars of preserves. McCarthy maps the landscape of survival, describing it in desolate terms such as "cauterized terrain," "dull sun," and "ashen scabland" (12, 13).
McCarthy tells us very little about what brought about the end of the world. "The clocks stopped at 1:17 pm. A long shear of light and a series of low concussions" (45). He offers us glimpses of the previous world through the father's memories. We know that the mother committed suicide, choosing not to go on in a world that no longer exists. The son, born before the collapse, knows no other world than this one. Throughout the novel, man and boy, both unnamed, move through the remains, of houses, of streets, of dried-out streams and barren farmlands. Two bullets remain in the father's gun over the course of their journey. Death is inevitable, if not welcomed. As they find their way to the warmer climate, it becomes increasingly clear that the father, whose health is declining throughout, will be unable to continue.
The last several pages narrate the farewell between father and son. The boy encounters a family who, the reader infers, takes in the boy now that his father has died. In the penultimate paragraph, the woman embraces the boy. McCarthy writes:
She would talk to him sometimes about God. He tried to talk to God but the best thing was to talk to his father and he did talk to him...