Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel, The Road, is not a subtle book. The author’s vision is clear and his themes move slowly and obviously across the page like his two major characters walking the eponymous road. The characters are an unnamed man and his son, “the boy.” The world they inhabit has been destroyed by some kind of all-consuming fire. A constant flurry of ash falls from a gray-covered sky. Bands of wild men stalk the earth, “men who would eat your children in front of your eyes” (181). The man and the boy walk south on the road, scavenging for food, blankets, and shelter. They walk with no long-term goal.

In the vast wasteland of death, “the sweeping waste, hydroptic and coldly secular” (276), McCarthy’s two characters embody the conflicting elements of the novel’s “Waiting for Godot”-like theme. At two points during the novel, these thematic elements are stated baldly in the text. For the man, it comes as a kind of accusation, though to whom and by whom, it is not clear. The text reads:

Do you think your fathers are watching? That they weigh you in their ledgerbook? Against what? There is no book and your fathers are dead in the ground (196).

To get the full force of this paragraph, one must know that the text is comprised of widely-spaced paragraphs, most of which are written from the third-person-limited perspective, where the person is usually the man. In the above paragraph, however, McCarthy switches to the second-person. Because of the context (the boy and the man sitting alone around a fire), the reader assumes the man is doing the accusing, but the significance of both the words themselves and perspective-shift strikes the reader with the full force of McCarthy’s own being, as if the words are his, and not his character’s.

Such a suggestion is unpolitical, of course, especially in a literary establishment where “The Author” is as dead as the fathers mentioned in the paragraph, but the observation is not one of truth, as much as it is of the reader’s feeling. When the text speaks these words, the reader is overcome by the cold, hard truth of them; and the truth is that it’s unclear who’s doing the talking.

Furthermore, it is unclear who “you” may be. “You” is obviously not the boy, and the plural “fathers” implies that “You” belongs to a group of people, and is not meant to single out a specific individual. Again, it is as if McCarthy was asking all the members of his audience: What guides your morality now that your father is dead?

The paragraph’s closing sentence is a clear, concise summary of the man’s secular nihilism, and it is supported by his actions throughout the rest of the novel: He continues to tell the boy that they are “the good guys,” but the only time he does anything good is when the boy’s pleading forces him to. Otherwise, he walks the road, cold, hungry, and distrustful of everyone he meets.

Faith and goodness, on the other hand, radiate from the boy’s every action and word; as just one example: when they come across an abandoned but well-stocked bomb shelter and are about to eat their first real meal in months, the boy asks, “Do you think we should thank the people…the people who gave us all this?” His father answers, “Well. Yes, I guess we could do that” (144):

The boy sat staring at his plate. He seemed lost. The man was about to speak when he said: Dear people, thank you for all this food and stuff. We know that you saved it for yourself and if you were here we wouldnt (sic) eat it no matter how hungry we were and we’re sorry that you didnt (sic) get to eat it and we hope that you’re safe in heaven with God. He looked up. Is that okay? he said (145).

As fine an example as this is of the boy’s basic goodness, it is not the bald statement of the theme, which comes later, when the man and the boy finally reach the gray, lifeless ocean.

They come across an abandoned boat, where the man finds a flare gun and several unused flares. The boy asks, “There’s nobody to signal to, is there?” “No,” his father answers. “I’d like to see it.” “You mean shoot it?” “Yes.” “We can shoot it.” … “In the dark?” “Yes. In the dark.” “It could be like a celebration.” “Like a celebration. Yes” (241).

The day passes, during which the man and the boy have two conversations about there being few people left alive on Earth and those who are alive being mostly “bad guys.” Finally, night comes, and they fire the flare up into the dark sky. “They couldn’t see it very far, could they, Papa?” “Who?” “Anybody.” “No. Not far.” If you wanted to show where you were.” “You mean like the good guys?” “Yes. Or anybody that you wanted them to know where you were.” “Like who?” “I don’t know.” “Like God?” “Yeah. Maybe somebody like that” (246).

Despite the obviousness of the novel’s theme and the discomfort some readers may feel with the way McCarthy resolves the theme, in the end his book isn’t about searching for God as much as it is about trusting humanity and lovingly accepting the faults of a devoted family member.

It is, in every sense of the word, a good book.