Nothing is there to be told. Nobody is there to talk to. “The Road” written by Cormac McCharthy is a book about nothing. Somewhere in the world – it does not have to be the States – there are two persons walking along a road. Their destination is the Sea but they do not know what to expect from this goal.
The world broke down. Nothing is left. The only things that mark the road are burned houses, barns and schools. They travel for a while. In the beginning we do not know either the reasons for the journey, nor from where this disturbed world is coming from that is presented. Unfortunately the author is giving no reason at all throughout the 287 pages. He also is not giving any hint since the man and the boy have been traveling or what kind of destiny they will have to focus. So we, as readers, do not know anything except for the thing that the man and the boy are marching since a long time and will go one. We get to know that they already had suffered from hunger and cold and that these parts will be their ongoing companion. It seems like that in this world is no sun at all. There is no heat source and if they are able to create one they have always to be afraid to get detected by other travelers. I have the notion, that there must be a kind of light because the man tries to divide the days in mornings and evenings. Apparently there is no sunlight. Every-time and everywhere they go to they meet snow, rain or a very strong wind. Nothing seems to be nice there. McCharthy creates death in the fictional world
While reading you ask yourself if there will be a happy end. Instinctively you want to have a good end but in the same way you can feel that there cannot be a lucky ending. However, mostly you ask yourself what would we do if we would be in such a situation.
Going farther in the reading you will find out that the mother of the boy as well as the wife of the man went away into darkness, I assumed to die. She could not stand it anymore and disappeared one night.
McCharty tells his story with small descriptions. He uses mostly main sentences with no exaggerations, neither in words nor in sentence structure. But there is one word that occurs repetitively. It is the word “concrete”. This word appears almost on every page. I asked myself why this word comes back all the time? The only answer I could find is that the author wants to let us know that this fictional dead world could exists out of the real world in which we are living right now and that the latter could be some day a part of human life if we are not paying attention to the immaterial things. In other words, we have to focus on our inner life as human beings if we want to succeed in this world. If we do not try to listen to our inner voice we will march around and around with an unknown destination. McCharty is implying with the concrete things, which are left in the plot of the novel, that these things will be always there but the human being who usually used these things will not be able to work with them anymore. Nothing real will be left except for some survivors. Only the concrete things will be still there and will remind use of a world that we know now. Already in this fictional text not everybody is able to remember it. The boy for example doesn’t know how the world was before he has started to travel with the man. McCharty creates broad pictures of how this world looks like and in general there is nothing left that has to be mentioned. The author has to tell us that in his created world are still these concrete things but there are not useful anymore that we can feel with the man and the boy. In other words he wants that we believe his story. Nobody need or could even use a car or a train in this created world but we have to know that these things existed before. With these small references he remains us of a former world that we know and knew.
The man and the boy are in their final throes when they discover an old bunker which is fortunately filled with food. They always have this luck. They will stay there for some days and will eat and sleep without fear. After five days they pack as much as they could carry and go one with their walk.
Time is another value that loses his characteristics. We are and the man is lost in space without any sense of time. We know that the book is done after this special amount of pages but our reference the man is loosing his time until he accepts that he doesn’t need it anymore. But still he is asking himself from time to time what day, month or season they are in. He cannot figure it out and after a while he let it drop to think about it. He tries to read the time by the things surrounded. Even the map he is carrying is going to be useless because there is no time to measure the distance or the pace in which they have traveled. He even cannot remember or find out how old his son is.
They survive diseases and the cold but finally the man is only spitting blood and you know that he is going to die. From this moment on you ask yourself what is going to be with the boy. How will he survive by himself? The man conceals his death as good as possible but in the end he is like a dying animal which is looking for his place to die. He lies down in the thicket close to the road and reveals his death to the boy. From now one he has to go one by himself.
Three days later the boy has to move one and in the distance he can see a man. The boy is going to him and asking him two questions if he is carrying the fire as he and his father did and if he does not eat people. After the man had asked him where the other man was and the boy repeated that he is dead, he invites him to stay with his family. The boy accepted his offer and the journey to nowhere is going to be continued.
The desperation you feel after reading this book reflects the solitude inside of everyone. Everybody is finally traveling alone through the years of life. You stay with your family or with other persons but in the end you die by yourself. McCharty created a book of starting, ongoing and ending with the result of permanent proceeding in these different stages of life. The dark and cold in his novel mantle the fear of everybody’s life. It doesn’t matter how much agony you had to suffer you will always go one in the hope of something good. The good can be inside of you, it can surround you and it can lie in the future that you don’t know yet.
In this book you can find the music of solitude?
Posted by marthebor 
