Just finished The Road.
It was a perfect book plus two pages.
>>7628987
babby's first post
>>7628987
Which 2?
>>7628987
The story to me only works if it is the story of the last child on Earth.
I thought that was the entire point of the roasted baby scene. To establish that no more children can survive in this world. The man and his boy were only able to live so long through a series of serious good luck. That this truly is, and has been from the beginning, a world utterly without hope. It is about finding meaning in life even without hope, the beauty in the fact that this is the last child the world will ever see and he was able to experience love and goodness. That the last moments before the human race is extinguished can have joy.
And then some dude with a parka and a shotgun and a family somehow just shows up. Just there. All of a sudden. What do they live on? Fuck if I know.
I never thought I'd say this, but McCarthy pussied out. He didn't have it in him to let the boy, who he based on his own son, die as he should have for the narrative.
I even had these great thoughts going about how it and Blood Meridian are really the same story. A story of courage in the face of hopelessness, the Kid's final display of courage in the face of the Judge being the equivalent of the man and boy's entire struggle. The difference between the two stories is that in the world of the man and his son The Judge is God.
But then no it turns out you just get taken in by a kindly little family living off of twenty years of canned food.
I agree.
>>7629009
You put too many of your own assumptions into the story. You didn't read the story you read your own story.
>>7629114
Yeah I could see that argument, but it doesn't even make sense factually in his story! This is world that's shown over and over again to be totally unable to support plant life, which is why the only food source left to anyone is cans and people living off cans.
Then there's just this family. Chilling. I mean did they have like five years of canned food? Cause it seems like it's been at least five years since any other food source dried up.
No one has that many cans man.
>>7628987
/tv/ here, the movie was better
>>7629146
I do want to see it now.
>>7629126
Interesting point. If plant life can't survive, presumably from lack of sunlight, as far as I know the energy cycle would collapse. But we don't have a good window into that aspect of this world. Even a scientist living in The Road wouldn't be able to assess the national food situation for the foreseeable future.
They struggled for food throughout the book, and they will probably continue to struggle until they can do so no longer.
>>7629146
I like the movie because pic
>>7629184
This was in the movie? Who are the characters?
Thinking about it, the one plus about this ending is that it doesn't make the Dad a total idiot for not just staying in that bomb shelter full of food until the end.
Also I found it weird how much I read about it being an ambiguous apocalypse, the cause of which is never revealed.
Like it is obviously an asteroid. No question. First of all on a narrative level the story only really works if humanity was wiped out by the cold indifference of universe. If it was nuclear war or something humanity did to doom itself it just wouldn't work. The story is about the unfeeling nature of the cosmos and the absence of god. It has to have been something beyond our control.
Plus on a technical level a dustcloud that blocks out the Sun across the globe would have to be either nuclear war or an asteroid and there's never mention of radiation.
I thought the family was only in the movie?
That's some bullshit
Is there a cormac McCarthy reading chart available?
>>7629514
unnecessary as his works of merit are suttree and blood meridian
>>7628987
great book...so effortless.
>>7629525
poster on lit.
>>7629449
or a volcanoe buddy
like yellowstone
>>7629167
I wonder how long it would take until all the oxygen would be gone too
>>7629639
Yeah it could have been a supervolcano. Hadn't thought of that.
>>7629449
I was thinking asteroid or volcano were pretty likely. But then I learned that during the cold war they suggested filling your bathtub with water in the event of nuclear war. (This is what the man did in one of the flashbacks). So, if the time period is actually during the cold war there's a suggestion toward nuclear war.
>>7629651
Oh yeah I was thinking this too.
They're very possibly still heading toward extinction. I keep seeing uncertainty and struggle as themes.
>>7630303
That's just good advice for any disaster though.
>>7628990
well, you tried
