The Road

A man and his son travel a long-abandoned Road to an uncertain destination, in search of a salvation that is, at the same time, both remembered and the object of their desires, both past and future. They journey through a nightmare, apocalyptic landscape, the result of a blinding flash, and half-forgotten low concussions in the night.

Like Christian, in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, the travelers find the road to be rife with danger. Death lurks around every corner, watches from a distance, stalks them like prey. In a time beyond mutual annihilation, where only a few survive, where society has collapsed into anarchy, and where the only sustenance is to be scavenged from the ruins of the past, the man and his son travel a Road that is absolutely without hope.

Cormac McCarthy's The Road is a simple story, at times lyrical, almost poetic in tone, but harsh and graphic in content. McCarthy, searching for foundational truth in a world that increasingly values style over substance, scours the earth and returns to the primal void. Civilization is gone, and with it the restraints that make us able to co-exist. It remains to be seen whether, in this stark vision, anything of value remains.

Never named, the man and his son descend by foot from the mountainous north country, fearing the approaching winter. They follow the remains of the Road, down through the barren countryside where nothing lives, where every memory is painful, and even the snow is ashen. Along the Road they encounter men-become-animals, cannibals who feed upon their own. Death, and the detritus of a civilization destroyed by nuclear war, accompanies their every step. Even the landscape is devoid of life. Nothing grows. The shore of the sullen, brooding sea is lined with the bones of a million fish. The earth is dead. Those who, somehow escaped the holocaust shall surely not survive. God is not in His heaven; all is not right with the world.


Towards the end of this grim tale a nameless woman embraces the boy. She talks to him of God. Yet when the boy tries to talk to God, he finds himself speaking to his father, now dead. The woman tells him that God cannot be dead because their breath is the breath of God. But on a Road without hope, where every painful breath spreads a mist of blood, can one really speak of God?

On the Road the man and his son, "each the others world entire," are sustained by love. That is a noble vision, but it is not enough. There is no grand narrative behind the tale. There is no destination towards which the Road leads. It leads nowhere. Time and truth have lost all meaning. Philosophy and theology, always uneasy bedfellows, lie together, abandoned in a ruined library. Nothing is of value that cannot be eaten. Man has descended to his most basic instincts - food, shelter, fire. Woman has taken her own life in despair. Survival trumps civilization. Godless and friendless, without a future worth striving to attain, the last human beings slouch, angry yet resigned, towards oblivion.

Meanwhile, in a much older story, Christian travels a road that has a destination, an End.

Christian knows where he began, and why he became a pilgrim, and he trusts that the path he takes will lead him home. At his destination, having endured trials and temptations along the way, and having escaped from perils that threatened to destroy him, Christian finds the peace for which he longed - the blessing of peace with God. For him, the pilgrimage of the Christian life is a journey with purpose, and every step is filled with hope.


Both stories assess the human condition. Both find value in sacrificial love. But one story ends with shattered lungs and a dirty blanket as a shroud; the other story finds meaning in an empty cross and a risen Savior. Christ, the goal of all our journeying, is the embodiment of our hope. In a world grown gray, devoid of meaning, He is The Road: the Way, the Truth, the Life.

A Song from "The Pilgrim's Progress"

"Confessed that they were strangers
and pilgrims on the earth."
~ Hebrews 11:13 ~

ho would true valour see,
Let him come hither;
One here will constant be,
Come wind, come weather.
There's no discouragement
Shall make him once relent
His first avowed intent,
To be a pilgrim.


Whoso beset him round
With dismal stories
Do but themselves confound;
His strength the more is.
No lion can him fright,
He'll with a giant fight,
But he will have a right
To be a pilgrim.


Hobgoblin, nor foul fiend,
Can daunt his spirit:
He knows, he at the end
Shall life inherit.
Then fancies fly away,
He'll fear not what men say,
He'll labour night and day
To be a pilgrim.

John Bunyan