The Road-Cormac McCarthy

A book written by Cormac McCarthy called "The Road" was the last reading assignment given in my Engl 112 class. We were assigned to read this book and be prepared to be involved with the class discussion. I started reading the book over Thanksgiving "break" and finished it by the second week of December. In the beginning it was quite difficult to keep open, nothing in the book was catching my eye; but I got over that and just kept reading. I knew it had to be done.
The boy and his father are walking along a road somewhere in the United States. We are never told exactly where but we do know that they are walking south. The narrator is describing the surroundings as very ashy. First thing I think of is "oh, there was a fire, the whole city is burned, and basically nothing left of this place." Well as they keep walking, the description of the surroundings never changes. Now that’s a little odd to me. How would the whole entire country looking like this? Burned to nothing.
The boy and his father continue down this road to what seems to be no where. Many times throughout the book the boy wants to stop and not continue on anymore, but his father won't have it. He encourages his son to continue on down this road, even though they are always hungry and always thirsty, they still go on.
That to me is very inspiring, the love that this father has for his son, the goal he wants to reach and knows they can, all of it. It's absolutely wonderful. This place they are walking in being as it is with nothing left, leaves the source of food very unlikely to have; drinks as well. The water is filled with dirt, ash and even dead bodies. I would go thirsty as well. Whenever they do come to houses that look just safe enough to walk through they search for canned foods. Anything they can salvage to take and eat when they stop for the nights.
Throughout the book they do find food and very rarely drink, but they still manage to walk and keep up high spirits. They are thankful to be alive, nothing could be better than being alive and having each other. They run into trouble a few times including crazy people who cook human parts to eat. Thankfully the dad carries a gun in case anything life threatening comes their way; something did, he needed the gun to save his son and himself.
The father is not feeling to well as the book continues. He wakes up coughing so hard that he starts to cough up blood; he is not doing too well. As they stay walking down this road he doesn’t get any better, in fact he gets worse by the day. Toward the end of the book the dad ends up dying but thankfully another family who is also walking the road runs into the boy. They allow him to join with them and continue on their long journey to what still seems to nowhere.