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What is meant by narrative power? I identify it with the writer's ability to capture the reader and imprison them in the world and the story they are telling. If my definition is correct, no one today has the narrative power of Cormac McCarthy, and "The Road" is the most shining example in his extraordinary bibliography.
What does man fear more than anything else? The unknown... What we've always feared most are those things we can't explain and, precisely because of this, are unable to confront. In the novel in question, McCarthy catapults us into a dark, gray world marked by some apocalyptic event about which he tells us nothing, in things like daily reality (as we know it), hope for a better future, and memories of one's past have been brutally swept away.
McCarthy's world is a desolate land covered with ash, where the continuous fires haven't just destroyed civilization as we know it, but have upturned the values of this civilization, bringing to light its most terrible aspects (brutality, violence, cannibalism, etc...) and transforming them into "everyday normality." We live this "non-world" through the eyes and events of a man and a child, father and son, nameless characters, an aspect that helps us identify with them. Through the eyes of the man, we witness helplessly (like him, in the end) the moment when the woman (the child's mother) loses hope the instant she gives birth and, a few years later, decides to end the captivity that confines her in her own home, simply going outside and disappearing into the darkness.
The man decides to attempt a desperate journey south, towards a place that represents the only hope left, hope for a better life and some sunlight, which hasn't emerged from an eternally gray sky for years. "I think it's October, I couldn't say the year. For years I haven't kept a calendar..." are the man's words to explain the sense of desolation that pervades their life. This is one of the strengths of McCarthy's style: to clarify a lifelong situation in just a few simple words, with a raw, concise, and effective style. This style pervades the entire book, making it smooth, thrilling, and surprising, up to the dramatic conclusion of the events of a father who now lives only for his son, who in certain situations will become the conscience of his father, whose sole purpose is to prepare the child for the moment when he will no longer be there.
In summary, McCarthy makes us understand to what extent a father can go to protect his child's life and how much a child can grow, coming to save the conscience of their father, bringing him back to values he believed were lost...
The absolute masterpiece of what is, in my opinion, the greatest modern author, capable of capturing and harnessing the emotions of the reader ensuring that the latter receives a simple message: one must never, even in the hardest moments, give up hope, if not for ourselves, for the people beside us, who will always carry a part of us and what we wanted to give them within themselves.
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Other reviews
By lazy84
What keeps you alive, what saves you from the brutality that rampant despair incites, is the child sleeping next to you.
There is only the intense but silent love of a father and an unnamed son, made of gestures, of concrete rituals of survival.
By RolloTommasi
"When we’re all gone from here, only death will remain, and even it will have its days numbered."
"Listen to me, he said. What. When you dream of a world that never existed or one that will never exist and in which you are happy again, it will mean that you have given up. Understand? And you cannot give up. I will not let you."
