I still prefer my reading but only because it seems more interesting to me and not because there is anything overt in the text to merit it (and of course, there is nothing in the text to disclude it either).

I think I like the book a little less with the probable ending in mind, but it does present some interesting food for thought along the lines of some of the ideas brought up in this thread. In any case, articles and the subsequent discussions like this one are my favourite thing about CAPC (even more than stuff like the Movieguide hubbub), so good job everybody.

@Carissa – Ever since you posted this article, the song from the Rankin/Bass animated version of The Hobbit has been hopping to mind every three or so hours. I’m not sure whether to thank you or curse you for that.

I’m not convinced myself that the woman is necessarily portrayed as weak, though it is a complaint I’ve heard others make. She’s too much of a cipher for me to feel confident making an argument one way or another. As far as my extra-text interpretation, I suspect that one reason for her absence from the novel is that McCarthy doesn’t feel comfortable writing women (which is fine–discretion is still the better part of valor in published writing). I did read a recent interview, though, in which he mentioned that he was currently working on a book largely about a female character (though, again, one who has already committed suicide by the time the book’s narrative begins).

On a side note, I’m interested in how many movie critics have given The Road less than stellar reviews largely for “not living up to the book.” Literature folks, however, even ones who professionally study McCarthy, seem to like the film just fine. I haven’t thought of a compelling explanation for this–just an interesting observation.

I read the finale to The Road as the man going to his grave justified, even if only that justification was self-created by the conjuration of the surreal sequence by which his son would be rescued. In any case, I’ll leave that alone until I reread the ending.

I like your read on both the man and his wife, Alan. Especially good was the sacredness with which he views his son. Not only are he and his son the priests of the temple of the true fire, but his son functions as both priest and temple/tabernacle. I suspect if the man was asked the reason for the hope that lies within him (and felt inclined to answer), he would probably simply point at the boy.

And that is why the man’s hope is so mystical as opposed (I think) to reasonable. The man sees something non-empirical, something that cannot be seen with any eye other than the eye of faith. He sees the fire in the boy whereas the mother simply saw the boy himself.

I think now that regardless of the ending, both the mother and the father were both well-justified in their perspectives. I agree with the father, but I empathize with the mother. I don’t find her weak. Just absented of faith.
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*note: We ascertain this from a host of reasons but primarily because Charles Foster Kane’s final, breathless whisper is reported in newspapers across the nation even though no one was present in the room with him (the nurse doesn’t enter until she hears the sharp crash of the snowglobe).

Dane

Since the the boy is rescued after the father is dead, I don’t think we can reasonable say that it was a hallucination, but you could hope against reason that it was!

I tend to read the mother as a combination of Job’s wife (there is an allusion somewhere to “curse God and die”) and the embodiment of materialism (in the strictly non-transcendent sense). If you accept that there is no God or afterlife, then her logic is sound: why suffer horribly when you know there is no hope for the future? Even more compelling: why allow your child to suffer?

The father acknowledges the logic of this, but cannot bring himself to kill the child and commit suicide. What is interesting is that the moments of the novel where the father is most convinced that it is right to continue to carry the fire are strange, almost mystical moments where he sees his son as a tabernacle in the wasteland.

By consistently choosing to have hope in the future despite the impeccable logic of his wife’s pragmatic materialism, the father practices a faith in something transcendent. I don’t think this is faith against reason, but rather faith in a reason that is different than the reason presented by his wife.

I suppose that’s fair, Ben. Depending on how one reads the book’s finale. Honestly it’s been awhile since I read The Road and I didn’t like it enough to really merit a second read-through, but maybe I’ll read the ending again just to make sure. As I recall (and this is a very hazy recollection), McCarthy left indications that the hopefulness in the book’s last pages were really just fantasy. A dying man’s dying dream.*

If that’s the case, then I think my reading of McCarthy’s treatment of the woman is more accurate. If it’s not the case, then yours would probably be the better reading.

My reading is that hope exists entirely apart from reason and while the two may intersect at times, reason cannot and will not ultimately govern hope. And whether hope will disappoint or not is really, in the end, divorced from circumstances. So a man devoted to hope (or to faith, as they function almost synonymously here) will continue to see through the lens of hope even when reasonable expectation has entirely evaporated.

Ah well, even if it’s not an accurate reading, it’s still (I think) an interesting one and always made The Road seem a better story to me than the alternative reading that you represent here.

[*note: I've been trying not to be spoilery for those who are inexplicably reading this without having seen the movie or read the book, but for those who have, let me be clear: I'm saying that the boy wasn't saved at the end and that whole thing is just the man's death-rattle of a hallucination. Again, it's been a while so I don't recall if this was really the case or if my memory of the book has been tainted by time...]

To me there seems to be acknowledgement (even OVER-acknowledgement) of life’s grim realities, but also that there is hope even so.

The way I read the wife is that she was simply more sensibly- and rationally-minded than her husband. I read it as a challenge of faith vs. sight. And in the end, it seemed like McCarthy probably came out on the wife’s side of things.*

Taking it another way, under the face of such tragedy, even those that do have some measure of faith in humanity, the human spirit, the basic goodness of the soul, or even just faith in hope will be prone to lose that faith. Such a worldwide calamity (and the man-eat-man society that would immediately follow) would come as a profound betrayal of that kind of faith, for if such a world comes to be, that faith was clearly misplaced. And when faith betrays, many people give up on it. And it’s only reasonable to do so.

In The Road, I would postulate that it is the man who is weak, who clings to sentiment and hope and faith even after such things have been shown hollow and vain. The wife understands what has occurred and what it means and realizes that the world she’s inherited is a nihilistic morass in which things like hope and survival are meaningless social constructs. The man seems to recognize this too but is propelled nonetheless by his faith in something he sees no evidence for (save for in his son).

Now the question of whether such weakness is good or bad remains and is worthy of discussion, but in any case, that’s my take on the man and his dead wife.
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*note: it’s been a while since I read it, but if I recall, the hopeful scene at the end seemed more like a hopeful vision born of the man’s final delirium. I didn’t read the ending as any kind of vindication of the man’s survivalist hope, leading one to muse that he could have saved himself much pain and suffering had he followed his wife’s vector. I could be wrong and I don’t remember the book super well, but that was my read.