Book Club: The Road - Question 1

Why do you think McCarthy wrote The Road?

Book Club: The Road - Question 2

What did McCarthy attempt to do in the book? Was it successful?

Book Club: The Road - Question 3

What do you think McCarthy is saying about humanity in "The Road"?

Book Club: The Road - Question 4

Why do you think McCarthy has chosen not to give his characters names? How do the generic labels of "the man" and "the boy" affect the way in which readers relate to them?

Book Club: The Road - Question 5

What do you think the coast represents (physically and literally)? Why?

Book Club: The Road - Question 6

Why did the father choose to survive and not the mother? What did he see that she could not?

Book Club: The Road - Question 7

One man they meet on the road says "There is no God and we are his prophets." What does he mean by this?

Book Club: The Road - Question 8

What are the key moments that help push the father to keep striving on?

Book Club: The Road - Question 9

When does the boy become a man? What does he see that his father can’t?

Book Club: The Road - Question 10

What do you think of the end of The Road? After such a fate, could things be "put back again?" Could they be "made right?"

Book Club: The Road - Question 11

What would you do in a world like this? Would it change your beliefs? What would you hope in?

Book Club: The Road - Question 12

What do you think McCarthy is thinking of when he speaks of "the deep glens where all things are older than man and hum of mystery?" What does it make you think of?