Entry 4: What's the point?

Three quarters of my way through The Road, and McCarthy is still bringing his A game, stenciling in a world full of tragedy, atrocities, and rotting remains.  A key device in the novel so far has been word choice.  Refreshingly, the novel decides not to burden the reader with a multitude of strange and obscure words.  It's rather simple presentation allows the reader to fine tune the details in their head, rather than have them decided for you.  Strangely, it helps create some of the most simple yet disturbing images for the reader.  The end of the second act brings about the most chilling imagery yet.

While continuing down the road our two protagonists felt they were being watched, so they ducked to the side to observe for a bit.  Sure enough, a group of four survivors, three men and one pregnant woman, walked by.  The next day the boy and the man continued into a clearing where they had spotted smoke.

"He was standing there checking the perimeter when the boy turned and buried his face against him.  He looked quickly to see what had happened.  What is it? he said.  What is it?  The boy shook his head.  Oh Papa, he said.  He turned and look again.  What the boy had seen was a charred human infant headless and gutted and blackening on the spit."

What we have here is the holy grail of disturbing images.  Themes of cannibalism, rape and infanticide, impressively fit into one paragraph.  After the horrid pet-human meat locker scene, I didn't think McCarthy could top himself, but by-god he did it.  Even the thought of using a woman essentially to farm meat is absolutely repulsive.  After settling my stomach, one question seemed to be locked in my mind.  Is living in this world worth it?

McCarthy makes arguments for both, although one seems stronger than the other.  As the man and the boy conversed in the early sections of the book, that in a world so empty of happiness and pleasure, the only thing keeping them alive is each other.  Each of them without the other, would give up trying.  It's hard to imagine that McCarthy himself is not close with his family, because this whole book rests on the idea that family is the only thing that matters.  Everything else is secondary: material items, leisure, and even necessities like food.

On the other hand, is there any quality of life anywhere in this world?  All life (save for a few special humans) has been annihilated, you are in a constant state of fear, hunger and confusion, and the world is cold and ashen.  Void of expectations of our contemporary society (a loving family, friends, job opportunities), its easy to ask yourself what it is exactly that the boy has to live for besides his father.  Maybe there is nothing else worth it.  Maybe that's the point.

Still, the trudging day in and day out towards the coast is exhausting and may ultimately be fruitless, especially because the motif of the man's cough is getting more and more frequent.  The cough represents his weakness, his inability to prepare his child for the world they live in.  With each of his failures, it becomes more common.  It also functions as a clock, ticking down until it will ultimately stop.  McCarthy foreshadows heavily, creating a sense of tension every time the man keels over in pain, as we know the boy may be getting closer to a world without his father.  With a potential death of the man on the horizon it will be interesting to see how quickly the boy can adapt in the last quarter of the novel.  Carrying the fire may get much harder for him very soon.