The Road

Use these links to supplement and complement students’ reading of the work and to increase their overall enjoyment of literature. Challenge them to discern parallel themes, engage through visual and aural stimuli, and delve deeper into the thematic possibilities presented by the title.

Recommended Texts for Pairing

The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy

• Though Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian is the most frequently cited companion piece to The Road, this book resonates as a personal story of a young man moving through the desolate landscapes of the American Southwest and Mexico, trying to stay morally upright in an amoral society.
• McCarthy’s novels of the American Southwest often feel apocalyptic in their own right, as they exist at the turning point between the romanticized West and the modern age; The Crossing, for example, ends with the main character witnessing a nuclear test in the desert, signaling the end of the world he’s known.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

• This book takes a different stance on the apocalypse, focusing on the way in which community and culture can be a tool for salvation and purpose.

Other Student Resources

Cormac McCarthy’s The Road May Have the Scariest Passage in All of Literature

• Benjamin Percy is an accomplished horror writer, and in this article, he breaks down the craft behind McCarthy’s use of tension in the scene where the man descends into the basement and encounters the human cattle.
• For students who are interested in how writing at the sentence level helps create tone and pacing

Compassion vs Cruelty: Why You Should Read “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy

• This article makes a case for The Road’s assertion of compassion toward others, as embodied by the boy’s insistence on sharing food and not taking from others.
• The Road may strike some students as bleak or hopeless, but in the end, the novel’s worldview is more aligned with the boy’s than his father’s, and the boy’s stance is in sharp relief to the world around him.

Teacher Resources

Men at Work

• Jennifer Egan’s review of The Road unpacks many of the themes of fatherhood, arguing that the work ultimately moves McCarthy’s view of masculinity into the domestic sphere.

Five of the Best Climate-Change Novels

• This Guardian piece puts The Road in a context that is often overlooked: a realistic depiction of a devastated ecosystem rooted in our fears of climate change.