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'The Road' by Cormac McCarthy [Podcast] (Patreon)

Published:
2022-05-02 15:14:11
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

Today's show is on Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Road.

The Road makes for insightful complimentary reading up against Blood Meridian.

This poignant father-son story can do a wonderful job of helping to reorient us, as great survival narratives so often beg the questions:

  • Would we survive?
  • And who would we go on living for?

We touch upon significant plot points in this podcast, so it's best to listen after reading the book, which is a much swifter, but not necessarily easier, reading experience than Blood Meridian.

Audio Timestamps:

  • 0:00 why read ‘The Road’?
  • 5:00 Cormac McCarthy’s minimalism
  • 6:00 what destroyed the world?
  • 8:00 survival, prepping & mental fortitude
  • 9:00 child as father of the man
  • 10:00 why do we love apocalypse stories?
  • 12:00 the absence of women in McCarthy
  • 13:00 who would we go on living for?
  • 13:30 finding gratitude in the apocalypse
  • 16:00 burning it down and starting again
  • 18:30 Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
  • 20:00 when a hunter-gatherer’s luck runs out
  • 21:00 the knife-edge walk of our world today
  • 22:00 vicarious experience in imaginative literature
  • 23:00 Coca-Cola & pop-culture in ‘The Road’
  • 25:45 Henri Bergen’s & time in Modern fiction
  • 27:00 when we’re lost in the world of dreams
  • 29:00 Daniel Defoe’s ‘A Journal of the Plague Year’
  • 30:00 how to read signs in a post-apocalyptic world
  • 31:20 the bad guys vs the good guys
  • 32:00 McCarthy’s empty structures
  • 33:00 father as experience, and son as innocence
  • 34:00 anti-ekphrasis in ‘The Road’
  • 35:20 Blood Meridian, The Road & the sublime
  • 37:00 how the father teaches the boy to read signs
  • 39:00 not recognising oneself in the mirror
  • 42:00 the road we’re all walking
  • 43:00 what happens when we lose all hope
  • 44:00 the father’s memory of his wife
  • 46:00 is The Road a nihilistic novel?
  • 48:00 does absence prove non-existence?
  • 49:00 is the child a god?
  • 50:00 the rise in the middle of the novel
  • 52:00 the child as empathy personified
  • 53:00 the good guys don’t give up
  • 55:20 the father-son relationship
  • 57:53 the ending of ‘The Road’
  • 1:02:00 “are you carrying the fire?”
  • 1:04:00 the final paragraph of the novel
  • 1:05:00 let us know your thoughts

Questions for You:

If you have a moment, I would love to hear any thoughts you might have on The Road:

1) How does this work compare with Blood Meridian? 

2) Do we read a message in The Road? And why do we find ourselves drawn to survival and post-apocalyptic narratives? 

3) "He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how." Viktor Frankl uses this Nietzschean idea for his life-affirming Man's Search for Meaning, but this could also be the maxim at the heart of The Road. What is your why? 

Happy reading, everybody!

Files

Previews only

Ep 54 - The Road (Cormac McCarthy)

If you're enjoying the Hardcore Literature Show, there are two ways you can show your support and ensure it continues: 1. Please leave a quick review on iTunes. 2. Join in the fun over at the Hardcore Literature Book Club: patreon.com/hardcoreliterature Thank you so much. Happy listening and reading!

Comments

Brad E.

I read this book about a week before my son was born. Needless to say tears were welling in my eyes as I finished that last page, and I am not the type to cry from something I've read in a book.

Lindsey Chastain

Cormac McCarthy is quickly becoming one of my favorite writers. This book altered my brain chemistry. I still like Blood Meridian a tiny fraction better. As a parent, this hit me hard. You asked the question which camp would we be in. I have to say, I would be in the camp of the mother. I would not want to survive in a world where there is no hope. You can't rebuild because there is nothing to rebuild. You can't grow anything. You will eventually run out of anything edible. I would not make it. The most interesting thing to me was the difference in the thought processes between the man, who was thrust into this world, and the boy, who knows nothing else.

Steve Horan

Thank you so much for the bonus material on The Road. I’d been thinking about reading it alongside Blood Meridian and so started straight into it when I saw your posting. I was always close with my father and found myself reflecting on this relationship as I gave The Road my third reading. I found it interesting that we never learn the names of the father and son and suppose it means it could be any father and son. I also wondered about the age of the kid as the father had to explain the meanings of ‘in the neighborhood’, ‘as the crow flies’, the nature of negotiations, and the terms of beachcombers and flarepistols.; and what it might mean for how the kid could carry on as it was revealed to us quite early that the father was ill. I’ve ordered Daniel Defoe’s ‘A Journal of the Plague Year’ after listening to the latest Coffee Q&A episode, and I’m tempted to read Stephen King’s ‘The Stand’ on the topic of post-apocalyptic worlds, which would be my first reread since it’s original publication.

hardcoreliterature
>>83134321

Thank you, Steve. It’s great to hear you’re diving into ‘The Road’ for your third reading. It does make for a great complimentary read, and it’s a much quicker one to read through. There are two themes that, if done well, are almost certain to make me emotional: the first is war, and the second is fathers and sons. I choked up during this rereading of ‘The Road’, and couldn’t help but think of my own father. As you’ve mentioned, McCarthy keeps them nameless, and yet we feel a bond with them - perhaps we see ourselves. The scene with the flare pistol is one of my favourites. A great visual example of signs no longer signifying in a post-apocalyptic world. In recent years, there have been people close to me who have known they were likely to die and started getting their affairs in order. Keeping the man company as he coughs, knowing that the end of the road is awaiting him, knowing that he is trying to cover as many bases as possible with his son before he dies - this is heartbreaking. And nice one on ordering Defoe! Let me know what you think of the work. I currently have a first edition of King’s ‘The Stand’ on my bedside table. I have fond memories of reading it whilst ill with bronchitis, and it’s been great returning to it again recently.

Steve Horan

Speaking of the theme of fathers and sons, what do you think of ‘Fathers & Sons’ by Ivan Turgenev? I am fond of Russian literature and just started reading it.

hardcoreliterature
>>83151935

It's been quite some time since I've read it, so my memory isn't too good on 'Fathers and Sons' (although I know I enjoyed it). I have been meaning to return to it for a while, so I'll have to put it to the top of my pile and let you know my thoughts!

Scott J. Buxton

I just finished Samuel Johnson’s “Rasselas,” and near ending J. M. Coetzee’s “Waiting for the Barbarians.” Both great!

Libby Beesley

I read The Road many years ago, finishing it in the airport at Florence, sobbing. Harrowing doesn't cover it. It is a deeply profound and brilliant novel; however my son now has a son and I couldn't read it again...

Caroline P

I read The Road when it was first published I think, around 2006 or 2007. I was completely taken with it.. the sort of lack of a traditional plot, the post apocalyptic theme and writing. I cried for such a long time afterwards but still recommended it to friends left, right and centre. Only one friend went on and read it and she declared it the most miserable thing she had ever encountered and had no idea why I had recommended it. I just spoke to her about it today and she remembers it vividly and still asks me what I could have liked about it. Admittedly Blood Meridian is fresher in my mind, but listening to your podcast and flicking through the book again, I think Blood Meridian is better. I think it has more to think about within it. I also can see how The Road was born out of Blood Meridian. More devastating perhaps because of the father son relationship, so that you feel The Road in your heart more. Did McCarthy want to carry on that bleak landscape theme and put different characters in it..I am really interested in that onward journey theme in both books. The journey without a real goal or realised destination. I am not sure what that means to McCarthy, the trudge relentlessly onward. I do love that though, it pulls me along too. I need to reread it to think of a message. In my memory of the book I seem to think I thought it was about an internal struggle through life, fear and how everything around ‘one’ is false if you can only find a way through a bleak and uncaring world. I didn’t feel there was a strong environmental theme. More that feeling that civilisation is a veneer. Really, although nuclear war is probably what happened, I don’t think a specific cause was given. I am probably talking rubbish, I need to reread it. The reason for the fall was not what I mulled over specifically at the time I think. I feel very drawn to post apocalyptic books and I think it is because I feel we have life so easy. I mean as an example, that my life is a complete bubble of wonderfulness. Food, luxury items (books, flower gardens, pets, hobbies, home, holidays…everything), health care, friends and I think I can’t help but think what it would be like if my bubble burst. To be honest, I could be a prepper if I over thought it. And as to my why… I have always been an optimist and take great pleasure in plans for adventures and exciting things for the future. Forward thinking I think gives me a why. And having had a life threatening cancer in the past really boosted my appreciation of the world. Nothing like the threat of taking it away to make you realise how precious something is. The utter pleasure of the world and the privilege to live in it is my why on a minute by minute timescale.

hardcoreliterature
>>83268365

Nice one, Scott. I thought ‘Waiting for the Barbarians’ was great, and am currently reading ‘Disgrace’ at the moment.

Ellen M

I read the Road years ago, in my younger single in the city days. I loved the writing but remember finding it sooo depressing, not the subject matter I’d normally gravitate to. Fast forward some years: Well Ben your reading of the ending brought me to tears. I am a parent now, and what a difference it makes in perspective when reading something like this. It’s brutal: the knowledge the father has in comparing the world they’ve lost to the miserable one they now find themselves in. He has to teach the boy hope, and to be a good guy at all costs. But for what and why? How utterly heartbreaking for the father when he knows he will die and leave his baby alone in that hell of an existence. My why is certainly my children, my family. The Road forces us to examine what really is important to us, to think about what road we’d take if faced with calamity: would we choose the path of the wife or the father? The book does leave me with a positive feeling. In very simple terms: if the boy is like God in the form of pure goodness, his survival urges us to search for goodness, or God even when all else points to the contrary. It is a book of hope. Thank you for a beautiful chat as always Ben

Ellen M
>>83281030

I get that Libby.. I choked up listening to Ben’s reading and even though I’m thinking of a reread, I’m not sure I want to put myself through it again

Dawn

Ah... I cried when I read it several years ago and I re-cried hearing you speak of it again. That was an absolutely beautiful episode.

Lauren

I watched the movie last night after reading the book a couple months ago. The adaptation was exactly how it looked when reading it. I thought it really captured the powerful moments of the book and didn't cut much. Ofcourse I would recommend the book over the movie. I am looking forward to reading 'no country for old men'. I re-watched the movie after reading Blood Meridian and had much more appreciation for the depth of the characters morality and motivation. Needless to say this year I've become a big fan of Cormac Mccarthy.

Kim Gabriel

New member here, still trying to navigate all of the resources. I note that this week The New York Times has article on interviews with young McCarthy (pending his release of two new books and his reluctance to do interviews). Unclear to me if links are allowed (please just delete post if I am overstepping). https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/30/books/early-cormac-mccarthy-interviews-rediscovered.html?searchResultPosition=1. I am trying to do some backstopping (so, followed The Road material as I had read this, dipped into Blood Meridien and am undecided if I can tolerate the violence), re-reading Dracula in anticipation of October (I am gobsmacked to discover Stoker is Irish!)... it is all going from 0 to 100 in a mish mash kind of way