The Road (Alterverse)

The Road is a 2006 post-apocalyptic novel by American writer Cormac McCarthy. The book details the grueling journey of a father and his young son over a period of several months across a landscape blasted by an unspecified cataclysm that has destroyed industrial civilization and almost all life.

The novel was critically panned, with its writing style, character development, and overall story being lamented. The event where the father teaches his son how to kill himself gained controversy and was banned in some retailers for said reason. Despite this, the book was adapted into a film of the same name in 2009, receiving similarly negative reviews.

Plot
A father and his young son journey on foot across the post-apocalyptic ash-covered United States some years after an extinction event. The boy's mother, pregnant with him at the time of the disaster, committed suicide some time before.

Realizing they cannot survive the winter in more northern latitudes, the father takes the boy south along interstate highways towards the sea, carrying their meager possessions in their knapsacks and a supermarket cart. The father is suffering from a cough. He assures his son that they are "good guys" who are "carrying the fire". The pair have a revolver, but only two rounds. The father has tried to teach the boy to use the gun on himself if necessary, to avoid falling into the hands of cannibals.

They attempt to evade a group of marauders traveling along the road but one of the marauders discovers them and seizes the boy. The father shoots him dead and they flee the marauder's companions, abandoning most of their possessions. Later, when searching a house for supplies, they discover a locked cellar containing captives whom cannibals have been eating limb by limb, and flee into the woods.

As they near starvation, the pair discovers a concealed bunker filled with food, clothes, and other supplies. They stay there for many days, regaining their strength, and then carry on, taking supplies with them in a cart. They encounter an elderly man with whom the boy insists they share food. Further along the road, they evade a group whose members include a pregnant woman, and soon after they discover an abandoned campsite with a newborn infant roasted on a spit. They soon run out of supplies and begin to starve before finding a house containing more food to carry in their cart, but the man's condition worsens.

The pair reaches the sea, where they discover a boat that has drifted ashore. The man swims to it and recovers supplies, including a flare gun, which he demonstrates to the boy. The boy becomes ill. When they stop on the beach while the boy recovers, their cart is stolen. They pursue and confront the thief, a wretched man traveling alone. The father forces him to strip naked at gunpoint, and takes his clothes together with the cart. This distresses the boy, so the father returns and leaves the man's clothes and shoes on the road, but the man has disappeared.

While walking through a town inland, a man in a window shoots the father in the leg with an arrow. The father responds by shooting his assailant with the flare gun. The pair move further south along the beach. The father's condition worsens, and after several days he realizes he will soon die. The father tells the son he can talk to him in prayer after he is gone, and that he must continue without him. After the father dies, the boy stays with his body for three days. The boy is accosted by a man carrying a shotgun, accompanied by his wife and their two children, a son and a daughter. The man convinces the boy he is one of the "good guys" and takes the boy under his protection.

Development history
In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, McCarthy said that the inspiration for the book came during a 2003 visit to El Paso, Texas, with his young son. Imagining what the city might look like fifty to a hundred years into the future, he pictured "fires on the hill" and thought about his son.[7] He took some initial notes but did not return to the idea until a few years later, while in Ireland. Then the novel came to him quickly, taking only six weeks to write, and he dedicated it to his son, John Francis McCarthy.

In an interview with John Jurgensen of The Wall Street Journal, McCarthy described conversations he and his brother had about different scenarios for an apocalypse. One of the scenarios involved survivors turning to cannibalism: "when everything's gone, the only thing left to eat is each other."

Reception
The Road was panned by critics, with some media outlets considering it one of the worst books ever written, and the cause of McCarthy’s retirement in 2014.

Tasha Warren, in her review, stated, “This book is hilariously awful. Just look at the writing style! It looks like a goddamn pre-schooler wrote this!” and gave the book a rare zero out of five stars. Joel Alston also panned the book, and stated the suicide lesson was the worst thing he could’ve ever read.

Cormac Sexton stated in his review, “The reason why the book failed was that there was little time to put in a good book, considering The Road was only written in six weeks, but you could do so many things in less than six weeks and it would be more entertaining than reading a book written by a guy who clearly has zero experience in English.”

Cormac McCarthy, in an interview in 2014, stated he regrets writing the book and has since decided to quit writing books. Sure enough, The Road was considered McCarthy’s last book.

Adaptations
"See also: The Road (2009 film)"

A film adaptation of the novel, directed by John Hillcoat and written by Joe Penhall, opened in theatres on November 25, 2009. The film stars Viggo Mortensen as the man and Kodi Smit-McPhee as the boy. Production took place in Louisiana, Oregon, and several locations in Pennsylvania. The film, like the novel, received generally negative reviews from critics.