The Road vs. Other Apocalyptic Stories

The Road is the only post-apocalyptic story that I have completely read. I am currently in the middle of reading, along with my inquiry project book, World War Z by Max Brooks. World War Z is a novel about interviews a man did on survivors of a zombie apocalypse. The interviews explain how the apocalypse started, how it was solved, and how people lived afterwards. While The Road and World War Z are both the same genre, they are completely different. While The Road follows the story of an unnamed father and son duo, World War Z follows multiple people and multiple stories. Also, while the reader is told that World War Z is a about a zombie apocalypse, we are never told what caused the apocalypse in The Road.
The story/movie I thought of when I was reading The Road was the movie The Book of Eli. While The Book of Eli followed the character Eli, carrying the last surviving bible to the coast, The Road, is very similar in that the boy and the man are traveling south. We are told that the apocalypse in The Book of Eli was caused by a nuclear fallout. There a lot of similarities in the experiences the characters from both stories face. Both face cannibalism, having to fight for survival, a shortage of supplies, and in the end, death. They also share a religious kind of theme.

End of The Road

Having finished The Road last week, I must say that I very pleased and enjoyed it immensely. I was attached to the characters the whole time, I understood a lot of the underlying messages of the story and had a style that was very fluid and easy to read. The setting of The Road was incredible. The way McCarthy created the setting was almost perfect. He was able to create a type of environment that no one has ever experienced, but at the same time make it feel like you have lived in it. The use of a road as the main setting was genius. Everyone in the world has experienced or seen some kind of road before in their life, so it's very easy to envision a road covered in ash. There were only 2 things that I didn't really like about this novel. First, at some points, the story seemed to move very slow. This mainly happened when the boy and the man stopped moving on the road. The dialogue during these parts were very boring and usually consisted of the man saying a short phrase and the boy responding with one word. I know that this kind of dialogue is important for the readers to understand the characters more, but I don't understand why McCarthy had to make whole scenes that boring. The second thing I disliked about this novel was the ending. I have read some novels that have pretty terrible endings, and while this ending may not be as bad as some of those, it is definitely not a very good one. McCarthy leaves us with the boy going to some group we know nothing about, besides that they have a veteran and a religious woman, and doesn't give us any closure about what happens to him in the future. For all we now, the group could have gotten the boy fatter and then eaten him. The story builds up too much about how the boy IS the future of Earth to just leave us with that kind o ending. I want to know if he turns out saving the human race by bringing the survivors together, or if he did something like become emperor of the world. But, overall this was a great novel, and has definitely lived up to the good things people say about it.

The Road

I have enjoyed reading The Road so far. I believe the tone that McCarthy creates is almost perfect for a post apocolyptic story. The tone, so far, has been sad and pretty depressing. The tone may be one reason for much of the story feeling boring and slow. Many parts are boring and feel dragged on, the dialogue between the boy and the man is very short, and many of the mans flashbacks are sad and depressing. While it may not make for a happy story, I believe the tone is what makes McCarthy's world very realistic. Many movies and other novels portray life in a post apocalyptic as non-stop excitement and adventure, but after reading some of this novel, I believe every day would be a struggle, as there would be very little to do besides look for food, eating and drinking, maybe moving to a new area, and sleeping. The sense of hoplessness that this story gives off is disturbing. Throughout what I have read, I am starting to see death as the only escape for the man and the boy. This brings up the question is suicide okay? That is what really disturbs me. We are always taught that you shouldn't even think of suicide and that life will always get better, but this story is about the struggle for life and how it will not get better for these characters. The boy basically has no future, unless the world is rebuilt, he is starving and freezing every night, and even if he does live much longer, he could be caught and eaten or enslaved.
Well, that was my rant for The Road so far.