There is no God and we are his prophets.
Father and son journey through a dystopian, colorless, cold, and brutal world, along a road fraught with danger at every turn and little hope for things to get better. It is a world that has collapsed in on itself. We're not told how things have digressed to this point, we're only carried along by the constricted prose and staccato conversations about survival between a father and his young son.
In many ways, The Road is the story of life without God, without hope, without joy, without a future, and fading memories of a day when life was as we know it now. Think of the movie, The Book of Eli and replace Denzel washington with a father and son (minus the redeeming ending and the reciting of the Bible... ok, so it's not really like the movie at all).
On the one hand this is a dark and depressing book. On the other hand, the story is engaging, and it reminds us of the downward spiral of humanity trapped by sin and the hopelessness of this world apart from Christ. While this is first book I've read by Cormac McCarthy, it's obvious that he is an excellent author (this book won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for fiction). I look forward to reading more from him... sort of... when I want to enter into the angst.
Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it