THE ROAD by CORMAC McCARTHY

page 116 .....This is what good guys do.They keep trying.They dont give up.

Many regard this novel as bleak, desolate and pessimistic.On the contrary this novel is one of great release and Hope.

Even more so than when it was winning awards in 2007 , the desperate cataclysmic state of the then  Triple A rated rates economies , we have a situation in which the dream of the state looking after the population from cradle to grave has come to an all shattering shuddering grounding collapse.

Even in the early solutions being sought by the tax payer in bailing out the excesses of the ruling architects of the most beastly social darwinian capitalists the poorest and most vulnerable , as well as the middle classes that cannot afford the tax and accountancy specialists advisers who can make billionaires pay pitiful taxes barley amounting to 1% , involve youngsters remaining with their parents because the cost of getting on the first rung of owning a house is out of reach , students having to pay for further education so that they will be in debt to a rate of over an years wages before they even come close to drawing a first salary , and pensioners forced to work way beyond the age they would liked to have retired because the yield of the pension will not come anywhere near to paying bills , never mind luxuries of leisure.Add to that the next generation of workers unable to get a start in their careers as the natural wastage of veterans retiring has dried up. 

The Hope the Novels gives from this bleak cycle of economic desolation is that when the state gives up its responsibilities we have to go back to the old , reliable, trustworthy, permanent institutions of Family and Community Bonds to see us through the collapse of the "Civilisation" of the Modern State.Families and Communities looked after each other before the creation of Modern States and Institutions and will continue to look after themselves when Post-Modern States and Institutions gave reneged on their responsibilities.

This article by Anis Shivani captures well the lessons to be drawn from this Book of the bleakness of the system , and the Hope of the eternal institutions that we can take the road required to escape its destructive all-embracing clutches. Though like most left leaning critiques , it is high on analysis but low on solutions.

When the capitalist system collaborates in its own end, it takes down all of humanity with it. It's an all-or-nothing proposition that doesn't brook compromise. Isn't this the true meaning of apocalypse today? Where and how do we escape, become anonymous? Capitalism aims to be all-encompassing, and all capitalist political ideology (including fascism and American corporatist democracy) aims to leave nothing of the individual to himself. The Road is a gut-wrenching attempt to seize the most intimate portions of the human soul and throw it to the dogs, to see what happens, what sticks, what works and what doesn't work, just as long as the existing enveloping apparatus is gotten rid of.