"The Road" Blog 3
The environment in the book is as I’ve wrote in my earlier blog posts very well described, the story is taken place in the U.S., don’t get me wrong, the U.S. is clearly not as you expect it to be. There is an apocalypse going on which is destroying every square meter of the U.S.. I get the feeling that the plot could be in a not too distant future, where the father and his son are traveling along the road towards the south. There is a constant downfall of ash which is covering everything in grey dust, the society is ruined, all vegetation is dead because of the perpetual fires which is burning everything down. The smoke of the fire shuts the sunshine out and therefore everything gets greyer and darker.
Although you can see the Earth’s last days coming the contrast between the warmness in the relationship between the father and his son and the environment is huge.
I think that if the book had a different environment, for example if the world was full of life and vegetation, McCarthy wouldn't have succeed to give the readers sympathy for the man and his son. The story might have been the same but the readers wouldn’t have got the same apocalypse feeling and therefore I think the environment in the book is very important to the plot.
