I argue that alongside its figural dimension, The Road is also to be read as a literal narrative addressing what Mike Davis has termed an “acute hypochondria” afflicting many Americans since the beginning of the new century, when “a sense of unresolved, perhaps unresolvable, environmental crisis has become part of people’s normality”. In other words, The Road appears to be, first and foremost, a piece of genre literature, an environmental novel, hitting the core of current concerns regarding the practicability and sustainability of our life on earth. I contend that, in explicit conversation with recent debates in the natural sciences, the novel addresses life extinction scenarios in ways that are convergent with state-of-the art scientific thinking, while also weighing in on the outcomes of the human involvement in such processes.
Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and the Predicament of Extinction
Carosso Andrea
2019-01-01
Abstract
I argue that alongside its figural dimension, The Road is also to be read as a literal narrative addressing what Mike Davis has termed an “acute hypochondria” afflicting many Americans since the beginning of the new century, when “a sense of unresolved, perhaps unresolvable, environmental crisis has become part of people’s normality”. In other words, The Road appears to be, first and foremost, a piece of genre literature, an environmental novel, hitting the core of current concerns regarding the practicability and sustainability of our life on earth. I contend that, in explicit conversation with recent debates in the natural sciences, the novel addresses life extinction scenarios in ways that are convergent with state-of-the art scientific thinking, while also weighing in on the outcomes of the human involvement in such processes.
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