On Tuesday, June 13, American author Cormac McCarthy died in New Mexico, and my reading group and I began an analysis the road (2006), his most famous novel, inspired by chance. The author’s iron 89 years produced a narrative work of immense scope, peering into the dark side of human action. What could be more shocking than imagining what the world would be like after a nuclear or meteorological hecatomb that destroyed life on the planet?

What resonates in the endings is the story

We already know that literature helps us complete the past and imagine the future. And that in many cases it is true. Didn’t we think that the pandemic threatened humanity? Is it not true that the powers of the world can set themselves up as supreme judges and destroy us who have nothing to do with their evil intentions? This novel of 200 pages and a little more is directed by these hypotheses, based on the wandering of a father and his child, the symbolism of survivors.

Princess for Murakami

A land that could be the United States, ravaged and covered in ash, with gray waters and fog, demands to take to the roads to find something to satisfy their hunger. The black vein of the road is an open flow that must be followed to more favorable places, perhaps to the south. Father and son push supermarket carts and take away what is left in villages and looted houses, afraid to meet other people because “good and bad” have already been identified: those who help and those who destroy.

40 years of ‘El Rincón de los justos’ is celebrated with a special issue of the Planet

There were readers who found the narrative repetitive and lacking in atmosphere. The landscape does not change, the nights of complete blackness fall quickly, the trees are always burnt. On the other hand, I think the mastery lies precisely in creating tension and interest with few elements and focusing on precise and short dialogues between father and son to survive the dilemma without betraying the fundamental values ​​of the human condition: communication, curiosity, solidarity… A child growing up in front of a lonely mirror adults and the stories he listens to at night is an expression, as Plato would say, of the natural search for the good. It is soon discovered that hordes wielding rudimentary weapons move through the roads dragging women and young men in chains and carrying off anyone: many feed on their fellow man.

The metaphor of the end times does not only ring in the ears of Christians.

A father protects while he raises his son: they are one of the good ones, they spread the fire, they are called – by God, the one who entrusted him with fatherhood until the last moment? – continue forward in the race with death. . A ragged old man receives help – is he a mysterious figure testing the value of generosity? – a couple attacks them, another homeless person steals their food. Being alive confirms all kinds of behavior, above all the selfish and violent ones that put themselves above everything else.

The novel corners us in fear and makes us wonder what we would do in the place of the characters. It is a lesson in humanity and a catharsis of deep fears. The metaphor of the end times does not only ring in the ears of Christians. Science also leads us to imagine the end of history. (OR)