Cormac Mccarthy The Road Summary

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The Road is a 2006 novel by American writer Cormac McCarthy. It is a post-apocalyptic tale of a journey of a father and his young son over a period of several months, across a landscape blasted by an unspecified cataclysm that has destroyed most of civilization and, in the intervening years, almost all life on Earth. The novel was awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 2006. The book was adapted to a film by the same name in 2009, directed by John Hillcoat. Plot summary An unnamed father and his young son journey across a grim post-apocalyptic landscape, some years after an unspecified disaster has caused another extinction event, destroying civilization and most life on Earth.…show more content…
On their journey, the duo scrounge for food, evade roving bands, and contend with the horrors of the post-apocalyptic setting, such as a newborn infant roasted on a spit and cannibals harvesting human captives as food. Although the man and the boy eventually reach the sea, their situation does not improve. They head back inland, but the man loses blood after being shot with an arrow. He dies, possibly due to his long-standing respiratory ailment. The father tells the boy that he can continue to speak with him through prayer after he is gone. The boy holds a wake over the corpse for a few days, with no idea of what to do next. On the third day, the grieving boy encounters a man who says that he has been tracking the pair. The man, who is with a woman, two children, and a dog, convinces the boy that he is one of the "good guys" and takes him under his protection. Development…show more content…
The review aggregator Metacritic reported the book had an average score of 90 out of 100, based on thirty-one reviews. Critics have deemed it "heartbreaking", "haunting", and "emotionally shattering". The Village Voice referred to it as "McCarthy's purest fable yet." Entertainment Weekly in June 2008 named The Road the best book, fiction or non-fiction, of the past 25 years and put it on its end-of-the-decade, "best-of" list, saying, "With its spare prose, McCarthy's post-apocalyptic odyssey from 2006 managed to be both harrowing and
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    Professor Perry Ivey English 1102 9 April 2015 Cormac McCarthy’s The Road The grim tale, The Road, is about a father and his son trying to survive and make their way south after a catastrophe struck the world. The world looks as if its one big ash tray, as all living things including vegetation is no longer. In their travels, the father-son duo try to avoid others who will turn them into slaves or even worse; eat them. The novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy provides great examples of how inhumane society

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