Quote:
Originally Posted by 8ballrollin
Here is my take. Let me know what you think, SU.
On its face it's a simple plot: a post-apocalypse travelogue, a father and son adventure - stark and very matter-of-fact in its gloom. Not a very original plot, but the narrative is good enough to warrant a recommendation if it contained nothing else.
What I see as metaphor or deeper levels. (NOTE: some spoiler elements, but not specifics):
The “darkness implacable” of the universe against those who “carry the fire”
Note: the father is very much a polymath (renaissance man, maybe?)
Our children keep us from the abyss: Their simple (correct?) understanding of what’s morally right and wrong ("can't we help him, papa?"). Our existence must go beyond our everyday search for food. In the face of a cold, grey existence working for THIER future, not our own, helps us slog forward.
Endurance – "This is what good guys do.”
Where man can’t live, gods fare no better
Man’s destruction of natural beauty (when we are no longer like the children?) vs. it’s inherent complexities and splendor (example in the last page).
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These are all very good points. I agree they are meanings in the novel. Well done. Thanks for so concisely identifyig them.
I'm still puzzling over the theology. Is the next to last paragraph supposed to be hopeful, or unspeakably bleak, a woman conforting a little boy because she must shield him from the awful reality that he is the last of the gods and men? Oprah must be discerning the former meaning, or I have a suspicion it would not have made her book list. But I'm not sure that's McCarthy's intent. Like Woody Allen some of his works suggest an optimistic world view, and these have been the best sellers (until this novel if this novel has any optimism at all), but his best work is dark dark dark.
This relates to the awful paradox that runs through the book: in a post-apocalypse world survival is the only thing, but why bother surviving? And the man's awful dillema: He can't bear to leave his son alone in such a world, but the worst imaginable outcome is to have to kill him. The fact that they do try so hard to survive, and go to such lengths to last each day at a time, just to do it, is one of the most moving and provocative concepts in the book for me. Maybe it's the man's dillema that drives him, nothing more.
One quibble about your points. I'm not so sure this is in any way a polemic about man's abuse of nature. It's not clear to me this is supposed to have been done by humans. But there is that wonderful scene where he comes upon the tipped over book shelf and water logged books and thinks about row upon row of lies.
The fidelity with which he has created this dead earth is amazing. The discriptions of physical details in such spare and stark prose will stick with anybody, as will the lovely though very simple exchanges between father and son. Maybe he's telling us that even a corpse of an earth is beautiful to behold. He certainly renders it that way, ironically.