The Road

The Road is a 2006 post-apocalyptic novel by American writer Cormac McCarthy. The book details the grueling journey of a father and his young son over a period of several months across a landscape blasted by an unspecified cataclysm that has destroyed industrial civilization and almost all life. The novel was awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 2006. The book was adapted into a film of the same name in 2009, directed by John Hillcoat. Plot A father and his young son journey on foot across the post-apocalyptic ash-covered United States some years after an undefined extinction event; the death of all plant life and virtually all animal life. The boy's mother, who was pregnant with him at the time of the disaster, has committed suicide at some point after his birth. Realizing they cannot survive the winter in northern latitudes, the father takes the boy south along county roads towards the sea, carrying their meager possessions in their knapsacks and a supermarket cart. The father is suffering from a cough. He assures his son that they are "good guys" who are "carrying the fire". The pair have a revolver, but only two rounds. The father has tried to teach the boy to use the gun on himself if necessary, to avoid falling into the hands of cannibals. They attempt to evade a group of marauders traveling along the road but one of the marauders discovers them and seizes the boy. The father shoots the marauder dead and they flee the marauder's companions, abandoning most of their possessions. Later, when searching a mansion for supplies, they discover a locked cellar containing people whose captors have imprisoned them alive in order to eat them limb by limb, and flee into the woods.