On Tuesday, I finished Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Road, for the second time. I thought my emotional response would be more controlled the second time through; instead I bawled in my office with other graduate students surrounding me and thought about the father and the son, and the Father and the Son. The things we sacrifice are so often the things we live for.
I don't think I could be like the mother; I could never willingly leave Wesley or Charles Lamb. I think I could last longer without food and water than I could without Wesley. If he dies first, I won't be able to last long. Or maybe my body will and that will be the torture of it.
Unlike The Border Trilogy and other work I've read by McCarthy, The Road echoes with redemption and hope. Despite cannibals, despite no light, despite soot and polluted water--there is the boy and the man who lives only for the survival of that boy.
I guess the question could be "Why continue? Why live?" and the answer is stuck in the boy's matted hair and dirty face in the trusting "Okay, Papa."
Ahhhhhh. Two passages from this book that I especially love:
ReplyDelete1. "No lists of things to be done. The day promised providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes. So, he whispered to the sleeping boy. I have you."
2. "You have to carry the fire.
I don't know how to.
Yes you do.
Is it real? The fire?
Yes it is.
Where is it? I don't know where it is.
Yes you do. It's inside you. It was always there. I can see it."
One of the few books that made me cry. Both times I read it. So you definitely aren't alone there.
Exquisite.