meaningfuel

“You have to carry the fire.”
.”I don’t know how to.”
“Yes, you do.”
.”Is the fire real? The fire?”
“Yes it is.”
.”Where is it? I don’t know where it is.”
“Yes you do. It’s inside you. It always was there. I can see it.”

Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Despite the author’s passing on June 13 2023, ‘The Road’ would have made its way to a review before too long.

Perhaps father’s day is equally as fitting.

I read this book when I was fifteen. I was being hounded by GCSE poetry and Shakespeare.

Forced to shoehorn metaphors and meaning in to vague essays and character-studies to achieve the highest grade.

‘The Road’ or maybe just Cormac McCarthy, doesn’t dwell on depth and meaning.

It just exists.

McCarthy was an American powerhouse, I use the past tense because it is the unforgiving reality of human life, one of many truths that he so often built within his narratives.

Old men die.

Dignity is not certain.

The world is cruel.

‘The Road’ tells the story of a father and son in a apocalyptic world.

They scavenge across a barren, cold landscape; always afraid of an attack from some of the few remaining survivors.

Cannibalism is not uncommon.

The boy knows nothing of the world before. His father is haunted by it.

The boy walks because his father walks. His father walks to keep his son alive.

While the novel is bleak and unforgiving, there is always the faintest hope in the form of the boy.His innocence and perception of the world is the only reason his father decides to keep them both alive.

He reminds the boy that despite his own acceptance of inevitable doom, they are still ‘the good guys’,they do not resort to the barbarism of others.

The boy can still find and give hope.

The simplicity is biblical.

Heartbreaking.

McCarthy’s bleak story inspires us:

To be ‘the good guys’, to be resourceful,to care for each other and to look at evil things directly; learn from them.

To carry the fire.