The Road Part 1: The Introduction
Well, the world has ended, which is a total bummer. We didn’t even get a chance to sell our super valuable Beanie Baby collection. We hope you’re smarter than we are, and prepare for the end by watching this video. ...And by selling your Beanie Baby collection. Seriously, that was probably three whole dollars worth of Beanie Babies.
| Literature | The Road |
Transcript
Welcome to Shmoop global headquarters
in Mountain View, California,
where we're talking to Dr. Deb,
who runs all things creative here at Shmoop
about the fun, animated musical coming your way soon
called The Road.
Actually, it's not an animated musical. It's really depressing.
[ dog barks ]
What is The Road all about?
Well, you know, The Road was written in 2006,
or published in 2006,
so it's a newbie.
And a lot of the new stuff coming out people would say
not Shmoop-worthy. It's up against Twilights and Divergents
of the world.
But Cormac McCarthy is kind of a staple contemporary
American literature. He wrote
Blood Meridian. He wrote No Country for Old Men.
Actually, a lot of the stuff that gets turned into kind of crazy,
popular Oscar-winning movies.
So The Road is a post-apocalyptic book.
It's about what happens once the world ends.
We're used to seeing a lot of dystopian
literature these days, young adult dystopian.
This isn't quite dystopian, because no one's really
rebuilt a new society that's supposed to be amazing
and turns out terrible.
It's just literally the world has ended
and now what?
We're in this post-apocalyptic world.
It's incredibly depressing. It's incredibly slow-moving.
But Cormac McCarthy is kind of a genius
when it comes to the written word,
and he makes it work.
[ pen writing ]
When was the novel published?
Who wrote The Road?
What's the difference between post-apocalyptic and dystopian?
And no, it's not just the spelling.