This is a really nice thread, great posts. I finished late last night and then couldn't sleep. So I read some of a parenting book, and felt much better. See, parenting problems I can deal with, a nuclear winter not so much.
I found the Road really powerful, although I'm not exactly sure what did it. Part of it was the father-son bit, and the questions of what-would-you-do. I mean the whole book the man is talking hope, but he doesn't see a single sign of it. Everything is dead, and there isn't even a hint of any renewable food to be found, only spoils of still undiscovered canned food (and human flesh, but that's not to his ... um... taste). Was he delusional? I kind of wondered whether his wife didn't have the most reasonable response.
But then The Man does go through some amazing survival skills, and they do lead a life of sorts. And the end justifies the man (and I really liked the end). But the book didn't have to end that way. It could easily of been either rather gruesome, or something else.
Some responses to above:
#almost everyone: Hope.
I think the book brings up interesting questions hope. But, I’m not complete sure it was hopeful. Maybe it was about false hope. I’m still thinking about this.
#6 CEP: the literary power of the lack of information
Yeah, I agree. We never know anything. I was craving info, every tiny bit was sacred.
#7 sydamy: where in the US were they
The lower Appalachian mountians. I thought about this a lot, then I looked in up in Wikipedia which spoiled the fun. At one point they pass a sign on roof that says “See Rock City”. Later they cross some mountains, and a long time later see the coast. I checked Rock City on Google and found four locations. One is upstate Illinois; the other three are somewhat close together, in the vicinity of Nashville, TN and Huntsville, AL. So, my guess was the book started in Tennessee somewhere and that they crossed a pass in the southern Appalachian Mountains and eventually reached the coast in South Carolina or Georgia. That McCarthy grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee is maybe significant. (I had this idea that perhaps the house The Man grew up in was a description McCarthy’s childhood home.)