Cormac McCarthy, author of "The Road," was raised Roman Catholic and attended Catholic High School in Knoxville, Tennessee. He then went to the University of Tennessee in 1951-52 where he majored in liberal arts. McCarthy joined the U.S. Air Force in 1953 where he served four years, spending two of them in Alaska, where he hosted a radio show. He has written ten novels of various genres; Southern Gothic, Western, and Post-Apocalyptic. In 2006, Alfred A. Knopf published "The Road," which won the Pulitzer Prize for literature. McCarthy was granted an interview with Oprah Winfrey, who had chosen "The Road" for her Book Club. Not only did it win a Pulitzer Prize, but it also won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. McCarthy was truly one of America's great writers!
             "The Road" opens after an apocalyptic event. The first few pages of the novel situate us in the landscape of ash and isolation. The boy and the man are the main characters and McCarthy never discloses their given names. The boy and the man suffering from exposure to cold temperatures and lack of food. They encounter many dangers on the road as they travel south. As they move inland to a pine forest, they come to a point where the man can't go any further. Feeling exhausted and worn out, he lies down beside the road and dies. Before he passes away, he speaks words of encouragement and love to his son. The reader never knows for sure if it's the trauma of the arrow that pierced his leg or his respiratory illness that led to his demise. Much of the book leads up to this event, and the man's interactions with the boy can be seen as an attempt to prepare the boy to live in the world on his own. Luckily, after his father's death, he encounters a family on the road and is welcomed to travel along with them. The book seems just to stop there, leaving it to the reader's imagination to find out what is next. Critics love the brain twister ending of the book, and I agree ...