It is also, paradoxically, his most humane and compassionate book. Father and son are genuinely affectionate toward each other. Each would give his life if it meant the other could live. This is as far as McCarthy has ever gone to acknowledge the goodness in people. And in the light of that relationship, the question that the novel implicitly poses–how much can you subtract from human existence before it ceases to be human?–takes on heartbreaking force.
“The Road” could have been a novella. Almost everything in the story–scrounging for food, hiding from the “Road Warrior”-like evildoers who haunt the highway–happens more than once. But the tedium that creeps in from time to time is integral to the narrative. Hunger and danger and cold are not just one-time obstacles for these pilgrims but things they must confront again and again; their courage lies in their refusal to give in. The boy and his father call themselves “the good guys.” It’s something a father would say to a son he wanted to guide and protect, but the more you see of these two, the more you want to remove the quotes from those words. They’re not ironic. The characters’ lives are gnawed down to the bone: all they have is their love for each other. And that, in the end, suffices.
One measure of a good writer is the ability to surprise. Terse, unsentimental, bleak–McCarthy’s readers have been down that road before. But who would ever have thought you’d call him touching?
