“On”: Reading Cormac McCarthy’s The Road through Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Ill Seen Ill Said

Abstract

ABSTRACT The quality of Cormac McCarthy’s dialogue with Beckett in The Road is substantial yet often subtle, and McCarthy’s employment of particularly the Beckettian intertexts Waiting for Godot and of Ill Seen Ill Said enables him to not only pay homage to a literary master of his but also to re-accentuate Beckett’s existential concerns and to infuse them with a surprising sacramental turn of his own in his portrayal of the father and son’s loving relationship and in his treatment of the son as divine. Finally, like Beckett’s works, it is difficult to “exit” The Road, as McCarthy’s conclusion leads us into new imaginings and mysteries—new ways to travel down and perceive this fictional road trip again.