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Two
Roads Diverge, I Took Both May 13, 2007 By Chantell Smith I recently completed two radically different books that
uncannily joined in on a common literally theme—a journey. 2007’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The
Road by Cormac McCarthy was a sobering voyage.
The narrative follows an unnamed father and son who journey to a more
southern part of a post-apocalyptic United States because they cannot survive
another winter where they live. So
begins the journey on the bleak, ash-covered road.
The author never tells us what exactly happens to render the world barren
and death-stricken—my guess is a nuclear bomb of some sort—and left behind
are pockets of stragglers and traveling packs of “bloodcults,” predators who
prowl the road who engage in cannibalism and debauchery.
McCarthy’s prose is terse, maybe even a little repetitive at times.
Yet it drives home the painful monotony and danger of this colorless,
desolate world, with its many stomach-turning discoveries. How did I make it through such a solemn tale?
The love between the father and son is what gives each a reason to
live—and the poignancy of their love in the face of such horror is what gives
the reader hope. I could also sense
the subtle hint of spirituality beneath the surface.
The man always reassures his son that they “carry the fire.”
They maintain their moral integrity in endless, debased
surroundings—they do not stoop to cannibalism, as do many starving others,
they refuse to steal from others, and even in an every-man-for-himself world, by
the boy’s prompting, they maintain a spirit of compassion.
Perhaps this is a case of the reader reading too much between the lines,
but I even had the sense that God was guiding the pair as they were always able
to scavenge for food, escape danger, and find shelter. A Pre-Apocalyptic Travel Soon after my foray down The Road, I finished a book
by an author I am most familiar with, Donald Miller. No, he hasn’t won the Pulitzer Prize, but I am in love with
his provocative, challenging ideas on Christian spirituality.
Through
Painted Deserts is worlds apart from The Road, but as I read, I
realized there were similarities between the two. Miller’s book is his retelling of a road trip he took with
his friend Paul in a Volkswagen van from Houston to Portland.
They occasionally stop, either to turn in for the night or to fix the van
that is constantly breaking down; like the man and boy in The Road, they
have to use immediate resources to get by.
For example, Don and Paul use wire from their radio speaker to hitch
together the van’s carburetor to get them back on the road.
Though, like The Road, Across Painted Deserts
is not an explicitly spiritual journey, Miller’s values shift from being
overly concerned about the “hows” of life and material things, to marveling
in the “whys” of life and being content with God’s beauty. Though the lush, scenic landscapes Miller travels through are
in stark contrast to the gray wasteland the characters trudge through in The
Road, I saw them both as a parable of sorts of the journey—the
journey of life. We can’t always
choose the conditions of the road we travel (the post-apocalyptic world of The
Road was the only world the boy knew), and we aren’t always in control of
the reliability of the vehicle we travel in—as Don and Paul can testify from
their adventures in that road-weary van, but we can decide what we will allow
ourselves to learn, whether we will allow ourselves to grow or not. ninetyandnine.com © 2007, Chantell Smith ------- Chantell Smith stamps out ignorance in young
minds for a living in Montgomery, AL. Her greatest fear is not having
enough time to read all of the books out there worth reading! |
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