3499 The Road - my take

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.
-- Ghandi --

-----------------------------------------------

This is copied from my blog post of 01/08/10:

In other movie news, my Meetup group saw "The Road" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_%28film%29) Wednesday evening. One of the attendees (R.) was a fan of Cormac McCarthy, the author of the novel, had read the novel, and was able to explain some of the symbolism and meaning that otherwise might have escaped us. Interestingly, the Wikipedia entry on the movie skims over the meaning, too.

I did notice that even though the father keeps saying that they are "the good guys", he is descending into immorality himself, and that the son was of an age when he would not only learn from the actions of his father, but would strive to take those teachings to a greater level to impress the father - and yet the kid remains good and pulls the father back from depravity. I noticed that, but I didn't know why, and R. explained it.

Odd that I didn't write the explanation then. I did later read the book, and it's also odd that I didn't comment further then.

The major character in the book and the main symbol is neither the father nor the son, but the road. The journey. It is neither from nor to, but simply a journey. A context. Although it is lifeless, it is life, and it is what we have made of it.

The son is the second messiah. "The fire".

I found a New York Times review of the book just this morning, and it explains it all much better than I could (but not half as well as R. did). If you are familiar with the book I urge you to read this review. It won't hurt and might help you to deal with leftover emotions.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/books/review/Kennedy.t.html?pagewanted=all

The novel was awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 2006. (Not that that means a whole lot. Most Pulitzer Prize-winning novels are unreadable.)
.