The Road So Far
May. 3rd, 2007 11:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jakebe
I'm reading The Road by Cormac MCarthy. The story so far:
Two people, a father and his son, wander south for weeks trying to escape the cold. The entire world has been blasted into a wasteland for years; all the useful supplies and food scavenged and picked over long ago. The boy has had to endure watching his father shoot a man for touching him, seeing a man struck by lightning, burned beyond recognition, die in front of his eyes, running away from a small band of people that have resorted to cannibalism, with amputated, withered people locked away in a basement. Hunger, freezing, exhaustion. Thieves and violence. The boy understands little; the father is haunted by illness and memories of the old world the boy has never known.
Finally they come to a ruined house. Something makes the father stop in the backyard. He starts digging. The boy is terrified; he's seen enough of locked doors and underground rooms, an endless parade of corpses and other horrors even worse. The father is persistent. We're starving, he says. There's nowhere else to go.
The door is exposed, then opened. Down inside, a fully stocked shelter the owners never had the chance to use. A cornucopia of canned fruits, meats, supplies, gas and power. The father is delirious with relief. The boy only vaguely understands this is a good thing. My relief, like the father's, washes over in an overwhelming wave.
I step off the bus, nearly brought to tears again. The sun is shining. The leaves are so green. The world is a beautiful place.
Two people, a father and his son, wander south for weeks trying to escape the cold. The entire world has been blasted into a wasteland for years; all the useful supplies and food scavenged and picked over long ago. The boy has had to endure watching his father shoot a man for touching him, seeing a man struck by lightning, burned beyond recognition, die in front of his eyes, running away from a small band of people that have resorted to cannibalism, with amputated, withered people locked away in a basement. Hunger, freezing, exhaustion. Thieves and violence. The boy understands little; the father is haunted by illness and memories of the old world the boy has never known.
Finally they come to a ruined house. Something makes the father stop in the backyard. He starts digging. The boy is terrified; he's seen enough of locked doors and underground rooms, an endless parade of corpses and other horrors even worse. The father is persistent. We're starving, he says. There's nowhere else to go.
The door is exposed, then opened. Down inside, a fully stocked shelter the owners never had the chance to use. A cornucopia of canned fruits, meats, supplies, gas and power. The father is delirious with relief. The boy only vaguely understands this is a good thing. My relief, like the father's, washes over in an overwhelming wave.
I step off the bus, nearly brought to tears again. The sun is shining. The leaves are so green. The world is a beautiful place.
