Baker - The Road

The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, is a phenomenal book based on a post apocalyptic world in which a man and his son are trying to survive in their quest for a southern land that is believed to be untouched by the bitter cold, vast destruction, and utter chaos that dominates their northern world. The book, as usual, is an overall better experience than the movie, perhaps because of the many details and emotions that are emitted from the film. In a novel, the author can spend pages and pages capturing the emotions and thoughts of the characters during certain scenes – in this regard, McCarthy’s novel fails twice. On the contrary, the ending of the film truly encapsulates the intense feelings of death and hope. So as an overall journey, the novel is better, but the film’s ending blows the novel’s ending out of the water.

In the scene when the boy’s father dies, McCarthy fails to capture the pain and anguish that the child displays in the film. The dialogues are nearly identical, yet the book never portrays the emotions that the movie exhibited. In the movie, the man and his son seem much more effected by his departure. The boy is crying, and his father is fighting back tears. Maybe it is unfair to request McCarthy to replicate these emotions in the novel, but nonetheless, he does not. As a result, the novel’s ending suffers while the film’s ending thrives.

Furthermore, the final scene between the boy and the mother of the family that he meets is much more heartfelt in the movie than it is in the book. In the book, the scene is brief, and the woman tells the child that their family has been following him and his father, and she exclaims that she has been praying for him. In the movie, however, the woman immediately behaves as if she is the boy’s mother. The offers him a warm embrace, and she gives him a true feeling of hope. The boy appears to be truly happy in the movie when he sees the two children and the family dog, and in general, there is a greater feeling of hope at the end of the movie than there is at the end of the novel.

Such is the way with books compared to movies... In general, novels provide the details, and films offer the emotion. The Road was a very well-written novel (including the ending), but it lacked emotion – which is why I am glad that I watched the movie.