They ate the kid, right?

This book is meant as McCarthy's tribute to his son. Why would he have him eaten in the end?

because he's still Cormac McCarthy and the grim deterministic evil of the world is his favorite thing to write about.

is this book actually good? I found a copy on my kitchen table, a friend must have left it here or something but I've been ignoring it. I've always thought it was a Hunger Games style normie book.

>Hunger Games style normie book
Oprah selected it for her bookclub and personally visited McCarthy's ranch, and then every mom in america read it.

If that didnt happen it would be just another McCarthy book.

I dont think its as bad as everyone says, its not some life changing work like everyone outside Veeky Forums moans about, but its a good beach book, especially if you are a Fallout fan.

It's not an awful book, but it is probably the *most* overrated book of the last decade.

ehhhhhhh I'd say Fifty Shades of Grey holds that title tb h

Something being overrated doesn't make it bad unless you're some jaded Veeky Forums autist.

The book is very good if you like McCarthy's style.

Lol no. Other than the false impression that mccarthy = edgy, there are zero context clues to think this. It's supposed to be a hopeful ending.

>zero context clues

Oh, you mean like the fire pit they stumble upon 30 pages earlier with the charred remains of infants on spits? Or how about the cellar full of malnourished people about to be cannibalized? Yeah dude, what could lead people to believe the guys at the end didn't have malevolent intent?

Fucking moron.

Even normies shit out Fifty Shades of Grey

Those were separate groups of people you fucking mong. Seeing some cannibals doesn't make everybody a goddamn cannibal.

McCarthy specifically stated that gratitude and hope were the primary themes. It would take some more evidence than "cannibals exist" to support the idea of that family not having The Fire.

No.

Every human being they met up until that point had succumbed to depravity and savagery maybe save the old man, although McCarthy describes the way he looks at the boy as unsettling, and they even came across a couple con artists who were out for their own ends. So it is just as likely the people at the end could have been similarly debased but were more clever in their deception. The main theme is hope because we have no choice but to hope that that was not the case, and that there was a reason for the man and the boy to persevere through the anguish and desolation so that the boy might have some shabby semblance of a future with these survivors. However, this is by no means guaranteed and it is quite possible that they were just as morally barren as the other people they ran into on the road.

Maybe you'd have a more comprehensive understanding of the ending if you weren't such a 'fucking mong'.

They didn't eat him.

I think it's also implied around the part where they find the baby on the spit that the family with the pregnant mother was following the father and his son.

Neither of these are context clues, you fucking braindead retard.

I suggest you pick up the book again, because you clearly did not understand the ending.

Like I said, it's not awful. But it very much is overrated (largely, I think, due to critics not knowing that McCarthy's 'literary' take on genre fiction has already been done, and done better, by actual lowly genre authors themselves; ironically this is the same complaint genre authors levied at Ishiguro last year even though critics largely planned 'The Buried Giant' and Ishiguro spoke out publicly in favor of genre literature).

His son being cannibalised is symbolic of youthful innocence being preyed upon by established predatory hierarchies.

>shit like this is a lit professor's wetdream

No it isn't.

Because he doesn't get fucking eaten,

>yecarthy readers can't even into basic plot elements, let alone anything deeper

color me surprised

-spits-

In the end we all get eaten, anonkundesuyo!

> Poor user doesn't realize I am an immortal being

Even the eternal ouroubourousous.

>I can never spell that thing right, like 'bannananna'

Maybe not at first, but wait till he starts with the fucking questions.

On the Beach
Also a good beach book if you are a Fallout fan.

spoiler motherfucker

hey man if you wanna stick with your Oprah reddit ending I won't stop you, but you're showing a glaring lack of ability to think critically and openly beyond surface text. I'd also be willing to bet you haven't read a single other McCarthy novel. Spoiler alert the theme is exactly the same in most of them

>being this mad that you didn't get the ending

this isn't le red dit motherfucker

Smells like summerfags in here. Why couldn't you stick to your containment websites where they have safe spaces and no one gets their feelings hurt

Of course they're context clues. The entire world is harsh and violent, why are we to believe these people are any different? Because they seem nice and we want the boy to have a happy ending? The book communicated in several places that there were people using trickery to get what they wanted, and even that there were some cannibals following the man and boy earlier. Leave it to millenials to desperately cling to their saccharine resolutions

It's his most polarising book and it's pretty depressing, but you might enjoy it.

This. There was no children or wife in the book with the guy, and the guy is pretty rough in the book. The only positive about him is that he doesn't try to disarm the kid and remove his gun.

It's a pretty darn good book, my man. Probably his most mainstream and easily accessible.

It's buttfuck boring. it's a series of essentially unrelated events that don't build on each other and eventually fart away into nothing. It's not as mesmeric, as vivid, or as interesting as any of mccarthy's other books.

utter trash. written to be adapted into a film.

what's the significance of the brook trout that hum of mystery?

>reserving books instead of just stealing them

That's a damn good question.
I don't remember much about the paragraph, but I do remember getting the impression that McCarthy was referring to the natural world making a shift from the post-apocalyptic conditions. The life of the old-world unknowingly evolving to survive the new-world, but remaining trout all the while.

It's been a while since I read it though

>not being part of your local community
>not hanging out with the cool old lady librarian who tells you stories about the war and how she once kneed a german officer in the balls at a party
>not becoming a respected member of the library, meeting housewives and students of your little town
>not getting to know the cosy essence of the provincial soul
>not travelling during the winter and then coming back with stories of your own to the library
>not blushing when the old lady elbows you as a cute girl walks in
>"I'll leave you two young people alone" as she goes into the back room with a smile and a wink
>not developping an awkward hello-thanks-goodbye relationship with the shy qt who comes around to borrow classics
>not leaving a note in the book she reserved
>not meeting up with her, dating, falling in true love, moving away, getting married, having kids
>not going back to the old library for the first time in years on a whim
>not not recognizing anyone
>not asking for the old lady
>"who? oh yes Margaret. I'm afraid she passed"
such is life

Yes, terribly sad and banal.

>not meeting up with her, dating, falling in true love, moving away, getting married, having kids
God that bit was rushed over.