A Road Of Ashes

The Road by Cormac McCarthy, is not another sad novel. This is a story in which strength, will and love are the keys of real survival, without leaving aside your morals and the morals of society. During the whole story the two main characters have to fight against various obstacles which hold them from their goal, south.

"Guiding the cart on the curves with their bodies in the manner of bobsledder. It was the first he'd seen the boy smile"(pg 19) Happiness was something taken from this world in which human kind had became something totally different of what it is today, or is it that this book represents the road human kind is heading too? Maybe our world already became this place full of ashes and death bodies all over. We see the different news on TV or the newspapers, in which groups like the FARC or even criminal juvenile organizations kill other people, whether it is directly or by what here in Colombia is called a "Bala Perdida".

In this book we see how the author constantly talks about the ashes. This may be because they are a symbol of the destruction human kind causes. Global Warming, Illegal groups, Black arm market, Drugs and many other things that human kind does to make this world a place full of ashes. McCarthy through his first 5o pages is showing the reader how we through every daily action make our world be better or be burned and turned into ashes. Is there someone to blame about this? The government, the country, the neighbor or why don't we simply blame ourselves and try to change so that this world can become the place we ant it to be.

Human kind has a long way to travel before knowing that we are actually taking care of our planet Earth.

Gabriela