The Road Part 1: The Introduction

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.