“The Road” by Cormac McCarthy
Cormac McCarthy’s The Road: Discovering Hope, Grace, and Meaning in Literature
Literature has always been a means of discovery; it provides readers with experiences they may not have otherwise, becoming an avenue for discovering truth through story. In The Road, Cormac McCarthy uses various images of hope, like the man and boy “carrying the fire” and the boy being the “Word of God” for the man to reinforce the centrally-Christian theme of hope in a hopeless, post-apocalyptic world. A world that doesn’t seem too far off in our current political state. McCarthy provides for readers a different yet familiar experience through his characters and plot, one fraught with a discovery of hope and mercy and a longing for meaning.
The Road is a deeply depressing book that still provides beacons of hope; the story bestows a heaviness that comes with a true understanding of brokenness. The burden is too much to bear. If you are unfamiliar with the plot, a man and a boy make their way through a post-apocalyptic wasteland in search of safety. With every encounter with another being comes the chance for a gruesome death; it’s not exactly a light read.
Still, it’s an important read. In women’s discipleship at church, we are studying Colossians, and I couldn’t help but remember the way Paul describes our current state as saints in Christ juxtaposed with our despondent state before Christ. The state of life in sin looks a lot like McCarthy’s dark world.
Colossians 1:13
“He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”
The man and the boy trudge through a domain of darkness and death, yet their entire process - their walk on the road - is a transference into a new kingdom of light - at least, that is the hope that keeps them going. That they’ll find something better at the end of the road.
The metaphor for which the book is named is itself a representation of hope. While the book is without sections and chapters, it is still separated in small moments throughout. We are catching glimpses, both of despair and death and of hope and life. And the glimpses of the latter shine the brightest in such desolation.
One moment toward the beginning of the book, the man wakes, walks toward the road from where he and the boy have made camp, and watches a forest fire in the distance. McCarthy writes, “Cold as it was he stood there a long time. The color of it moved something in him long forgotten. Make a list. Recite a litany. Remember” (31). McCarthy’s prose is powerful because of his short sentences, making each thought more powerful than the last. The last few words of this passage - Recite a litany. Remember. - imply a once-known source of hope and peace. The memory is stronger than he knows.
The man and boy are searching for some semblance of peace again, something different than the chaos in which they currently live, and in this moment, the man is somehow reminded of that unknown peace they are searching for. If he only keeps walking...if he only keeps reciting, remembering.
The road also implies there is something at the end of it, something they are searching for. Recite a litany, the man tells himself; remember, he reminds himself. As Christians, though we can find ourselves in similar states of despair, we know what our “something at the end of the road” is. We recite a litany and remember.
The forest fire itself is significant as well. Later in the book, after a run-in with cannibals, the man and the boy are discussing the fact that they would never eat another human being and the boy says, “And we’re carrying the fire,” to which the man responds, “And we’re carrying the fire. Yes,” (129).
The book heavily implies the concepts of good and evil as the man and boy repeatedly call themselves the good guys. The good guys on the road “carry the fire;” they carry hope with them. The man is reminded of “something long forgotten” when he looks at the forest fire, reminded once again of the fire they are carrying (31).
McCarthy uses these symbols, the fire and the road, to show the hope the man and boy still have, despite their hopeless situation. These symbols of hope are not just words for the boy to hold onto because he is young and needs a sense of security, but they are symbols the man needs as well. Both need a sense of things changing in the future, of reaching the beach and a place better than where they are, of hope to keep going on the road. Keep carrying the fire.
Colossians 1:10-12
“...so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy; giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.”
Later that night, the man admits, “There were times when he sat watching the boy sleep that he would begin to sob uncontrollably but it wasnt [sic] about death. He wasnt [sic] sure what it was about but he thought it was about beauty or goodness” (129).
His view of the boy is revealed very early in the book when he calls him “his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke” (5).
The Gospel of John 1 tells us Jesus is the Word became flesh, and the word of God is alive and powerful. For the man, the boy is life itself. The boy is the reason he hasn’t given up, the reason he keeps moving on the road, the hope of his life. The man’s relationship with the boy is akin to God’s relationship with Christ, and Christ’s relationship with us as believers, as heirs with Christ. Christ sacrificed himself for us the same way the man sacrifices himself throughout the novel, his own safety, sleep, comfort, food, and very survival is sacrificed over and over for the safety of the boy.
Colossians 1:19-20
“For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.”
McCarthy’s The Road provides experiences no one has encountered; yet through those experiences, readers are left with deeper understandings of hope. And yet still, as Christians, we have an even deeper understanding of this hope - the hope laid up for us in heaven, as Colossians 1:5 tells us.
Despite the direness of the man and the boy’s circumstances, they still cling to hope and keep moving on the road. In the same way, as believers, we trust in the hope laid up for us and we pray continuously to be filled with knowledge of God’s will, so as to walk the road in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, in the midst of a broken world.
Colossians 1:21-23
And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation…”
