"There is no God and we are his prophets"

“There is no other path from the mystery of our being to the truth of our condition than metaphor.” — Robert Farrar Capon

Just finished reading Cormac McCarthy's latest, The Road. The last McCarthy book I read was Suttree (a long time ago) which I found dense with its archaic vocabulary. The Road is much more spare in a Heming-way. Cormac has always tackled the grim stuff: the underbelly of society, the depths of depravity to which men will sink. And while the scenario of his latest is the grimmest of all, the sensations of hope, love and goodness are ironically most evident.

A father and 10-year-old son, who remain unnamed, are traveling southward across a postapocalyptic landscape where nothing has survived (Nuclear war? It’s never made clear). Nothing grows; all birds and animals have disappeared. Ash fills the sky and covers the earth. Survival is dependent upon finding old tins of food and avoiding cannibalistic marauders. Billions have died and the two don’t encounter others very often. Those they do encounter have mostly been reduced to the vilest of methods in order to survive and so staying out of sight is imperative. The man and boy try to stay fed and warm, dry and clean, but the odds are against them. They spend their days heading south, hoping for warmer temperatures.

My own inclination is dystopian. Most of us don’t take much time to look very carefully at population, resource depletion, climate change, etc., but a little reading makes it clear that a little recycling and some energy-efficient light bulbs are not going to change things much. So I am drawn to a book like this. What I found interesting was how the characters’ conversation was reduced to essentials: much of what we concern ourselves with is meaningless in a world such as this. The man and boy speak little and when they do it’s spare, often touching. Their love for each other is a beautiful thing to observe. A sense of purposefulness, justice, and hope permeates the two’s daily existence:

There are other good guys. You said so.
Yes.
So where are they?
They’re hiding.
Who are they hiding from?
From each other.
Are there lots of them?
We don’t know.
But some.
Some. Yes.
Is that true?
Yes. That’s true.
But it might not be true.
I think it’s true.
Okay.
You don’t believe me.
I believe you.
Okay.
I always believe you.
I don’t think so.
Yes I do. I have to.