Madd’s Reviews > The Road > Status Update

“Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains.

On their backs were vermiculite patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.”

They’re still alive despite everything as they always had even before man.

Oh god it’s agonizing

“He took the cup and moved away and when he moved the light moved with him.”

“There is no prophet in the earth’s long chronicle who’s not honored here today. Whatever form you spoke of you were right.”

I turn the page and ik he’s gonna be dead

“In some other world the child would have begun to vacate him from his life. But he had no life other. He knew the boy lay awake in the night and listened to hear if he were breathing.”

The man is the boy’s world as the boy is the man’s bro oh my god why

Makes me sad that the boy has no memory/life before the world started to end. When the man dreams it’s of memories of a beautiful past where the world was good. But for the boy? It’s just memories of what he has lived and none of it has been good. All the man dreams about is a life he can never return to because he’s about to die. While the boy dreams about the now he’s been through because he’ll live

“You have to stay, he said. You have to be quick. So you can be with him. Hold him close. Last day of the earth.”

Contrast with his quote earlier about if he could shoot his son

“I will do what I promised, he whispered. No matter what. I will not send you into the darkness alone.”

The man, who grew up in the world before, tries to teach the boy old stories of goodness and right. I love this so much. How the man refuses to let the world change him for the sake of his boy. His outbursts in the movie are understandable but they don’t reflect his true nature in the book

Another thing I love about this book over the movie is that the man serves more as a grounding force of moral for the boy, rather than vice versa like in the movie. In the movie the man slowly becomes more corrupted internally after his first kill. But here, the boy, who’s grown up in this cynical world without a knowing what came before is naturally welcoming of death and grief.

I’m crying this book of my god dude