If you’re looking for a short novel to discuss with your writing and
reading friends — perhaps at a newsroom brown bag lunch — I’d
recommend “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy, an Oprah’s Book Club selection
and winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. To facilitate
some good talk, or to help enrich your reading experience, I offer
these questions for discussion:
- McCarthy sets his novel at some time in the future after some unspecified
worldwide disaster. The author
does not reveal how the world became a wasteland: nuclear war? natural disaster? collision with an asteroid? global weather catastrophes? In a sense it doesn’t matter. The world is no longer a place that is
congenial to human beings — to culture and civilization. Even though the author doesn’t reveal
his view, it’s fair for readers to imagine the “back story.” What do you think happened to the world — a world in which murder and cannibalism have replaced care and community?
- Since
the start of the new millennium, we have experienced the terrorist attacks
of Sept. 11, the destruction of New Orleans
by Hurricane Katrina, and wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq. Throughout history, the end of one era
and the beginning of another have produced two contradictory
responses: the belief that the
world is coming to the end, and an impulse to create a new, better era. Although “The Road” is set in the future, all good stories help us
understand the here and now. What
lessons do you draw from this novel that we can apply to creating a better
world?
- McCarthy
does not name his characters. They
are “the man” and “the boy.” I
can’t think of another story in which characters we care so much about are
nameless. Perhaps the author is
saying that in a world so hostile to humans, names have no meaning. Or that these characters represent every
man and every boy — every person who faces death and despair. Kurt Vonnegut once said that the best
way to tell a story was to create a good, likable character and spend the
novel doing horrible things to that person. Think of all the horrible things that
happen to the man and the boy. Now
think about the ways in which you as a reader identify with both of them.
- American
literature gives us many examples of stories about two characters, usually
men or boys, who leave the civilized world behind for an adventure on “the
road.” Think of Huck and Jim
escaping on a raft on the Mississippi River. Think of Ishmael taking off on Captain
Ahab’s ship in search of Moby Dick.
These great stories help us understand what is most important in
human life when experience is stripped of the trappings of
civilization. In “The Road,” the characters, time and
again, stumble upon the relics of culture and technology, most of which
are useless, but some of which sustain life. How did reading this novel influence your
thinking on important expressions of culture that you may take for
granted: family, food, health care,
transportation, shelter, community?
- Two
technical literary words have been used to describe this novel. One is “dystopia,” the opposite of “utopia.” If a utopia describes an
ideal world, a dystopia describes a horrific one. “Brave
New World” by Aldous Huxley and “1984″
by George Orwell are examples of important, influential dystopias. Such stories gain their power by
exaggeration, by taking significant problems in contemporary society and
enlarging them so we can see them more clearly and dramatically. Another word is “post-apocalyptic,”
meaning after the apocalypse or the great catastrophe. We are familiar with such stories, not
only from literature but from popular culture. Think of the series of Mad Max movies
starring Mel Gibson. Great authors
take advantage of these familiar forms, but then add something special, a
distinctive vision or revelation.
How is “The Road” different
from other such stories you have experienced?
- Important
literature helps you remember key scenes from other works of
literature. For me, “The Road” called to mind the scenes
in Shakespeare’s “King Lear” when
the great king, stripped of all power and possessions is left standing,
almost naked, in the wilderness, in the midst of a terrible storm, shaking
his fist at the heavens. In “The Road,” the man and the boy are
also stripped down to the essentials of life: a tarp, a grocery cart,
makeshift shoes. Authors use such
moments to dramatize what is truly important in human existence: love, loyalty, courage, persistence,
hope, generosity. As circumstances
get worse and worse — in the world and in literature — human values can
get stronger and stronger. I’m
thinking now of another American literary classic, “The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck. The setting is another American
wasteland, the dust bowl of the 1930s, in which the Joad family becomes
part of a great exodus of farmers and workers headed west from Oklahoma. In that book’s famous final scene, an
astonishing act of life-sustaining selflessness, a young girl nurses a
starving man. Re-read the final
scenes of “The Road” and discuss
the life-sustaining values that they promote.
