The Road, the most recent novel by American literary giant Cormac McCarthy, is one of the most successful novels of the past year. It has received one of the greatest literary honors (the Pulitzer Prize), as well as one of the greatest pop cultural honors (induction into Oprah’s book club) available to a work of fiction. But more than being among the most highly regarded novels of 2006, The Road is also among the most frightening. It is, in many regards, a 21st century horror story.
The World Of The Road
The burnt out, post-apocalyptic landscape McCarthy paints is, in itself, nothing particularly new. Numerous post-World War II works center on worldwide destruction, particularly that of a nuclear nature. Kurt Vonnegut explored this with irony and humor, allowing the post Ice-Nine world of Cats Cradle to be oddly comforting. Philip K. Dick’s ash strewn wasteland in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is an obvious influence on McCarthy’s piece, but even so it has a tamer quality, there is still some humanity left to hold onto.
McCarthy’s world is different, and more terrifying in two ways. First, the catastrophe that destroys earth is unnamed and unexamined. Likely, it is nuclear, but for all intents and purposes it really does not matter. Second, unlike Vonnegut and Dick, this is not a work of science fiction. There are no outlandish concepts to wrap one’s mind around, no bizarre ideas that distance The Road from the world in which we live. The world feels real, or at least possible.
The Horror, The Horror
The landscape works as if a character in the novel, and disturbing though it is, it only serves to enhance some of the truly terrifying aspects of the story. Wandering alone through the woods, as both The Man and The Boy do in The Road, has long been a staple of the horror genre. The unfamiliarity and the opportunity for surprise around every corner keeps the audience on edge, and provides for startling situations. Lumbering packs of masked cannibals, legless abominations waiting out their final days, and a gutted infant roasting over a fire are a few of the unsettling and terrifying images that McCarthy conjures up. By forcing upon us some of the most deep seeded of our societal taboos, McCarthy provides frightening happenings for his frightening world.
Distinctly Of Our Time
But above all else, what makes The Road a scary story for our time is its believability. This is not a tale of ghosts or vampires. The monsters of The Road are more tangible and thus all the more frightening. They are the land, the wind, the people. They are monsters by circumstance, not monsters by design. They are the monsters that we can see in ourselves. The monsters that live in a post 9/11 world, a world in which we can finally perceive an end to history.
Scott Nossen - Scott Nossen grew up in the San Franscisco Bay Area and recieved his Bachelor's Degree in Literature from the University of California at ...
