What is a dystopia exactly? Well as a definition, ‘an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one’ – or so the Oxford dictionary believes it to be.

In terms of The Road, it is clear to see why the thoughts of a dystopia could be taken into consideration, with a post-apocalyptic setting and a small variety of characters to choose from. Friedrich Nietzche believes that in order to actually ‘live’ your life, you must frequently persevere through ‘suffering, desolation, Ill-treatment and indignities’. This could be compared to The Road in many ways…

McCarthy paints the world of which the characters are alive through the use of dark and depressing imagery, which unfortunately provides the ideology of suffering and loss of dignity. This aids Nietzche’s quote above and linking back to the original theme, also constantly shows the divide between the reality of which the reader is in, and the character’s post-apocalyptic dystopia. It almost signify’s the idea of hell-on-earth and the occurrences that ‘the Man’ and ‘the Boy’, as they are commonly referred to as, have to deal with.

The author through the use of adjectives and the surroundings does indeed hint at the idea of a dystopia, but it would almost be wrong to define it as one as the story behind the Earth’s decline isn’t mentioned. It could potentially be anthropogenic in terms of a nuclear war, or natural through meteorite and collisions. A dystopia would not be keeping the reader in the dark concerning it’s happenings.

The world may have become a bleak and hostile environment for one to live in, with the contemplation of a possible death throughout the opening pages of the book, but this is only used as a setting. This is only used as a background for the more heart-warming idea of the story of a young lad and his father, and their search down ‘The Road’ to salvation.

The dystopia for which the book is described as, leads me to believe that there is more than one meaning behind it. I have been toying with the idea that the setting is the harsh reality of the world we’re living in now, just without such dyer consequences. McCarthy may be hinting at this idea in particular, or maybe another in the sense that this is what the world could come to in the near future.

Just a thought.