The Road is a 2006 novel by American writer Cormac McCarthy. It is a post-apocalyptic tale of a journey of a father and his young son over a period of several months, across a landscape blasted by an unspecified cataclysm that has destroyed most of civilisation and, in the intervening years, almost all life on Earth.
In 2009, the book was adapted into a film by the same name, following an unnamed father (Viggo Mortensen) and his son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) as they walk across ravaged America. Armed with nothing but a shopping trolley full of their belongings and a gun with a few bullets, they must fend off life-threatening weather conditions and bloodthirsty cannibals as they struggle to reach the coastline.
I decided to include research on The Road as I think the story is as beautiful and tender as it is brutal, and is a heartbreaking but brilliantly understated take on the post-apocalyptic genre. I also wanted to include still images from the film as inspiration for the environment in which my character may inhabit.
