Irish Examiner view: On 'The Road' again

Prophetic masterpiece

Kodi Smit-McPhee and Viggo Mortensen in 'The Road'. 

It was this week, in what seems like 15 long years ago, that Cormac McCarthy published his apocalyptic vision of modern life, The Road.

When this Pulitzer Prize masterpiece first appeared, the bleak presentiment it delivered, and its coda of a world destroyed by unknown and inexplicable catastrophe, seemed to be set many generations in the future. Now, not quite so far ahead.

In McCarthy’s novel, an unnamed father and his unnamed son (“Man” and “Boy”) shuffle through a US landscape where ash covers the ground and fills the air. They are, says their masterly creator, “each the other’s world entire”. 

That phrase has endeared McCarthy to activists who see his book as a frightening parable about the dangers of climate change and consumer excess. 

Man and Boy push all their possessions in front of them in a shopping trolley. This is a scene which can be witnessed daily in every major city in the world.

CLIMATE & SUSTAINABILITY HUB

Some eight years later, another dramatic depiction of environmental disaster appeared on stage in New York when Mr Burns: a Post-Electric Play recounted how survivors gathered together to celebrate and recall their lost civilisation by acting out episodes of The Simpsons.

It was a black comedy. We will find out how funny the issues it raises still are when the United Nations Conference on Climate Change ― COP26 ― commences 29 days from now. And when the power bills start dropping on the doormat and hitting the inbox.