The Road is a novel set in a postapocalytic world. I'm not sure how or what happened, but a man and his son are alone, traveling south while hiding from other humans. Almost everyone is dead so they go through empty house to try to find food or blankets for survival. They have to hide from the "bad guys", though, the word bad does not do them justice. These men take humans of all ages and genders as sex slaves. They eat other people and the protagonist's wife kills herself out of fear from getting caught by them. She urges the protagonist to do the same to himself, after first shooting his son. He doesn't follow either of her wishes.
There is a scene (that reminds me of the movie Brothers) in which the man and the boy are hiding from the bad people and the man believes that they will be caught. He makes a plan to give his son the gun, and run in the other direction so they catch him and not his son. He tells his son how to kill himself if they find him but then he realizes his son won't be able to do it. He stays with him. He fears that the gun wont work when he tries to kill his son, and wonders how else he could crush his son's precious scull.
That's hard to write.
I wonder how old the boy is, and hope he is older than 10 because the younger he is the more horrific the tale.
An interesting note about McCarthy's writing style is his dialogue. There are no quotation marks and it helps develop a simple, lethargic mood. The two characters comments are sad and accepting of the horrible, shown by the over usage of the word "Okay".
I hope the ending isn't so depressing!
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