My friends father recommended it to me after I was claiming that every post apocalyptic book is the same (Hunger Games, Divergent, Mazerunner, Etc). He said it would be a good “change of pace”. I was not expecting the absolute emptiness I would feel after finishing the book. I was looking for that happy moment that almost every book has that rips you from the darkness but there just wasn’t one. Even the ending felt empty to me. Now it is late at night and I don’t know how I’m going to sleep.
by maxforthewin
30 Comments
I felt the same way, but then I read this article, and it helped change my perspective. It’s still an emotionally devestating book, but now I can handle it better.
http://www.artofmanliness.com/2016/10/31/carry-the-fire/
I’ve only ever cried with two books. This one and The Time Traveler’s Wife. Other books has me commenting with, “Oh, that was sad.” But there were tears while I was reading this one. Some people have a trouble with the way it was written because it doesn’t have complete sentences or sections, but I feel like it works with this book. The images McCarthy produced were perfect.
I always remember the scene where he finds a can of coke and his son is cautious about drinking it. I love that scene.
I had a similar reaction to the ending . Even though I should have seen it coming I got to the “part”… Read it …then BURST into tears. Almost as if the pain and (yes) the emptiness exploded out if me uncontrollably. Very powerful. McCarthy …the master
Goddamit, yes. I’ve got 2 boys, and this book just hollowed me out. I tell people it’s the best book that you should never read. I still haven’t had the cojones to watch the movie.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a father recommended this book to you.
I read it 6 months ago and it still sticks with me. That basement scene is the most harrowing reading. And the scene with the baby towards the end. Dark stuff.
I remember an interview Cormac did with Oprah. He said the inspiration for the book came to him as he sat in an El Paso hotel and became depressed with the west Texas scenery and he thought to himself “Jesus what if my son where here?”
I love McCarthy and I think this book is great. But, I did not cry at the end of it. I read most of his other work, so I knew he would screw me.
Now that you’ve read this, lose your humanity with blood meridian.
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Every time i have to cough loudly I think of how the dad would sneak away while the son was sleeping so he could clear his lungs and not attract attention to their location. And that last coke.
Hey! I read this book a few years ago in school. It is apparently one of those books where some audiences can relate quiet differently to the different situations.
What stands out for me is the scene where they explore the house, checking the basement. Oh man …
This is my favourite book. I’dnever been a big reader and used to argue books didn’t have the same impact as movies. This book changed my mind. It literally changed my thinking and still haunts me to this day. It’s beautifully horrific.
My son was five years old when I read this. Every word the child said in the book killed me. Killed me. That moment when the man snaps out and tells the child “You are not the one who has to worry about everything” and the child answers “Yes I am”, that moment still haunts me to this day. I’m tearing up just thinking about it.
I found it a beautiful book; a true love story between a man and his child. Yes, the ending was like a gut punch, but I can’t imagine that book with any other ending. The entire book is a constant struggle between despair and hope, so why would the ending be any different.
It’s definitely not a book you’d want to read if you want warm fuzzies, but a beautiful book regardless.
This reminds me of the time I was at a loud bar and I asked my friend if he had read any good books recently, and he told me he read ‘The Road’, but I heard it as ‘On the Road’ (as in Kerouac) and I thought he was insane as he described how bleak and depressing it was.
My hubby made the mistake of picking up this book 6 months after the birth of our son. There was just no way he could finish it. It’s clear McCarthy wrote it with inspiration from experiences of fatherhood.
It’s the most desolate and depressing version of post apocalyptic dystopian fiction I’ve read so far. In that way I think it’s the most real idea of what it would actually be like and that in itself is utterly depressing.
The other dystopian books you listed are all kind of pop-fiction
I would recommend the following if you’re into the genre:
Animal farm
Brave New world
1984
Lord of the flies
Catch 22
The unbearable lightness of being.
A handmaid’s tale
Read The Passage next.
That final paragraph is one of the most masterful, spine-tingling paragraphs I’ve ever read.
“Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.”
Ha – I bet you also noted the significant jump in quality of writing from Mazerunner to The Road.
My favorite scene is where they find the fallout shelter and the boy gets to be “normal” for a brief amount of time. When they left it crushed me. Such an amazing book.
There are only 3 colors in that entire book; black, gray, and ash
You seem to have mostly read post-apocalyptic youth fiction. There’s a whole lot of great fiction available in this category. Here are some of my favourites:
* A Canticle for Leibowitz (must read IMO)
* World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War (nothing like the film)
* Wool series
There’s a section where McCarthy uses a ledgerbook metaphor, and for me it was the most brutal part of the book- a hopeless argument for materialist apathy as the inevitable consequence of the breakdown of all that is good in human society.
When I finished the book, I was curious about the kind of person that would willingly spend months (years?) in such a desolate state of mind. Looking McCarthy up online, I learned that he had a child very late in life, and for me that put everything in perspective: a man who knows his son will grow up in an entirely different world than he did, and who knows the things he has to teach his boy may not only be meaningless but actively harmful to his son’s success in this new world he struggles to make sense of.
The fact that this and No Country were written consesecutively makes me think of this thing Tolstoy said – “There are only two stories in literature. either a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.”
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If it makes you feel a little better, there are about two uses of color in the book. Gray shades and yellow, notice his father with the yellow boots and the man at the end with yellow, it shows he’s in good hands. I found solace in that alone.
Edit: is=>and
I think I’m weird because yes, I cried at the end and thought the book was sad, but the impression I was left with at the end was a profound appreciation for a fathers love for his son. It makes me so happy to think that there are still people out there that love their children that much. I dunno, it wasn’t much of a sad story but a love story for me.
But then again, I’m weird.
On the ending (many have brought it up). Shotgun Man is a GOOD character, possibly because he has Shotgun Woman, his better half.
They have been following Man and Boy for the whole story, because Shotgun Woman- and by extension, Shotgun Man- were concerned about him. This is much too far to go to chase food-people. I believe this is the author’s intent, but not laid out in blatantly obvious, conclusive “good” because McCarthy wanted to explore Boy’s fear of suddenly being utterly alone in the world and approached by this stranger with an offer. So no trumpets playing as a glorious rescue drops down from above. It’s an anti-deus-ex-machina.
The point is this: Man is fanatical about protecting his son. His paranoia is absolute, which is helpful for survival in this world, but also toxic. He was also an asshole father to Boy- there were reasons he had to be strict, but whether that was right is open to debate. Arguably controlling and abusive, and Boy is in pain over it.
Bottom line though is Man was keeping Boy from meeting Shotgun Family, a clan you could imagine being successful. And Man would NEVER join up with anyone, while alive. He had to die for Boy to move forward. Nothing could change until Man died.
There’s a strong case that Man is NOT a good person. Boy calls that out explicitly- “you always TALK about helping people, carrying the fire, but we never do”. And Man does not find any redemption, there’s no dramatic turnaround. He just dies.