Although there were aspects of the novel that i did not particularly love, overall The Road by Cormc McCarthy was enjoyable and compelling to read. As Ms. Parrish and i somewhat talked about in class today, the sentence structure is extremely simple, although the language itself is poetic and beautiful and uses unique, complex word-choice. This, i suppose, is what i did not like about the book. Sometimes i felt the short and abrupt sentences took away from the beauty of the writing itself. Then again, i think this was a deliberate choice by McCarthy as it went hand in hand with the idea being grappled with throughout the novel regarding love, hope and desperation and their ability (or inability, depending how you see it) to coexist.
I loved the ideas and questions that the novel posed however. Because the story is of the long physical journey of a boy and his father towards the south, following a road, in search of something better, people like them, there is both a sense of hope as well as desperation which can be felt throughout the story. This gave it both a sense of optimism but also a depressing feeling of hopelessness. This father and son are building a bond, love and trust in one another as they move on towards the end of their journey and suffer through starvation, freezing temperatures and many more hardships along the way. I love depressing books, so maybe that is why it appealed so much to me, but i felt that the sadness engulfed in the happiness made the story extremely emotional and relatable.
One paradox i just wanted to address from the novel once again is that of hope and desperation. The book made me question, does hope evolve from desperation? or desperation from loss of hope?... The entire novel the pair are searching for the light at the end of the tunnel, or the southern coast at the end of their road, yet on multiple occasions each of the two spoke of wishing for death and the appeal that death had as opposed to trudging on through the snow to the unknown. It was as if they wished for death, a stop to their heard journey, yet perhaps death was the light at the end of the tunnel, or the final desired destination and they were simply unaware of that. "Nobody wants to be here and nobody wants to leave."..."People were always getting ready for tomorrow. I didnt believe in that. Tomorrow wasnt getting ready for them. It didnt even know they were there." Both of these quotes, i feel, show the central message of ambiguity between hope and despair grappled with in this novel.
In the movie, the ending is presented as almost unambiguously optimistic, which is not how I read it in the novel. I did, personally, decide that the end of the novel is hopeful (without giving anything away, because the boy does meet others) but that hope seems wary and tested in a way that I thought the film failed to convey. That being said, I actually thought the film was pretty good--all the crying I did aside (typical), I thought that the director managed to mirror McCarthy's spare language and simple prose with the almost paradoxical beauty of the decimated landscape. Anna, let me know if you do end up seeing the movie.
ReplyDeleteI really want to see the movie because i'd like to compare the two...hopefully this weekend i'll get a chance to do that!...I read the ending in the same way that you did, hopeful yet almost desperate... but i see how that may have been hard to express in the film just because i think so much of that feeling was given to us through the description in the novel.
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