Divine Paraphrase: Cormac McCarthy

In Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel The Road (2006), which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, a boy and his father struggle to survive in a world decimated by an unspecified catastrophe.This post-apocalyptic world is dark, but relatively so because it is perceivable. The pre-apocalyptic world, as represented by the language of the father, is different. The father’s world is full of objects which are known and useful. The father’s world is a place of light and speech, while the boy’s world consists of darkness and silence. However, rather than reading the post-apocalyptic world as one of loss, its darkness is taken as a sign of potential. While this interpretation goes against the grain of most of the novel, it is supported by the repeated figuration of the boy as God. Graham Harman and Quentin Meillassoux are the main philosophers used to develop this argument.