The limits of hope
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* Stephen Workman

*   © 2007 Canadian Medical Association or its licensors

**The road** Cormac McCarthy, Random House; 2006 256 pp $30.00 ISBN 0–30726–543–9

We all, someday, are going to die. About this fact “there is no manner of doubt, no possible probable shadow of doubt, no possible doubt whatever” (W.S. Gilbert, *The Gondoliers*). So too, it seems obvious, some day, all human life on earth will end. And be it 5 hundred million or a billion years from now all life on earth will draw to a close when our sun goes Nova. While it is easy, and perhaps comforting, to imagine life on earth continuing long after our species is departed, in *The road* McCarthy imagines a brilliant reversal of this.

![Figure1](http://www.cmaj.ca/https://www.cmaj.ca/content/cmaj/176/6/818/F1.medium.gif)

[Figure1](http://www.cmaj.ca/content/176/6/818/F1)

Figure. Photo by: Image courtesy of Random House

In the near future, an unnamed catastrophe has enveloped the earth. The sky is permanently darkened, the ground coated with soot and dust, fields covered with crumbling stocks of grass and ashen vegetation, and *Homo sapiens* is the last remaining species to walk the earth. The few survivors live off what they can salvage from the rotting stinking ruins, and they live off each other. In this nightmare of darkness, soot, ash and cold, McCarthy has inserted a boy, called simply “the boy,” and his father, known throughout as “the man.” They wander down a road toward the Pacific coast, travelling through the remains of the past in search of a future that no longer exists. The child is perhaps 6 to 8 years of age; we know only that he was born shortly after the end of the world.

In embarking upon the journey to the coast, a transitional boundary of symbolic importance, the father is maintaining hope and a belief for the future for himself and his son. By virtue of not eating other survivors they are the “good guys, the keepers of the flame.” When they see another child in the ruins the boy wants to care for him, to let him come along on their journey. “I saw a boy,” he says. ‚We should help him.”

They move on; logistics demand that they leave the desolate child to his fate.

I needed to read this novel twice, as it kept exceeding my capacity and endurance; some sections compelled me to skip over details and paragraphs. In one section I overlooked, as did the man, the vital clues McCarthy lays out for us, resulting in a horrifying and jointly unexpected discovery. The climax of the book occurs shortly after this scene; the father must leave his son alone for several hours hidden in a field. Before he leaves he attempts to ensure that his son can kill himself with the last remaining bullet, if discovered by their pursuers. “You put it in your mouth,” he reviews. The boy is agreeable, says he knows how to do it, but the man is frustrated and becomes momentarily angry with the boy, who is clearly still too young to be trusted with such an important task, and it is made clear that the man's anger is ultimately an expression of his love for the boy.

Several times during the journey down the road, the boy is filled to the core of his being with overwhelming terror. After his father blows the brains out of the man about to kill and then eat them, grey matter and blood defile the son's head. The father then watches his son doing a “dance of terror” something he has seen him do, perhaps many times, before.

As a father of young sons, I found this book had a visceral impact. It made me step back each day and marvel at the world we live in, at the cleanness of our air, the bounty awaiting me each day in the refrigerator.

Sometimes my 3-year-old jumps from the car and does a little dance, skipping sideways in his trendy new shoes, so proud of their designer decals and his ability to run and jump. He dances with his arms outstretched and his head thrown back, a dance of pure joy. For this sight I am now even more thankful.

We all live with the certainty that we are going to die, yet the struggle to maintain hope and create meaning comes naturally and fills the lives of many; it is essential to the daily practice of medicine. In stripping from the world all the gifts our planet provides for us, McCarthy has created a study about the essence and limits of hope and hopefulness.