The Road/YMMV

• Non Sequitur Scene: One scene switches to first person. Another has the man display advanced medical knowledge never mentioned again.
• Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: The fact that the line "carrying the fire" appears here and in No Country For Old Men hasn't gone unnoticed. One theory has it that The Road is a distant sequel to Old Men. Another theory is that everyone really is in Purgatory and that the boy is their savior.
• Fridge Brilliance: The minimalistic style of writing mirrors the nature of the world. There is essentially nothing left; there is no society, nature bursts into flames every now and then while the left over ash falls like snow, the skies remain gray and bleak while the sun hasn't been seen in ages, the majority of the population has gone insane, etc. That is all there is written BECAUSE that is all that is written, if you get my drift.
  • Much of the book's language reads like Waiting for Godot, the way the boy and the man repeat "okay" and "we're the good guys."
• High Octane Nightmare Fuel: Holy fuck. Babies beheaded and roasted on spits. Lightning-struck man with a melted face sitting on the road and waiting to die. Cannibals amputating and gradually eating their captives, keeping them alive as long as possible.
• Nausea Fuel: The book runs on it. See also High Octane Nightmare Fuel.
• Sci Fi Ghetto: If you value your life, don't bring this book up in front of longtime science fiction fans.
• Tear Jerker: The whole book, but especially when the father dies in the end.
• You Fail Biology Forever: Rather than eat the food they find, the cannibals get a woman pregnant and give the food to her so the baby can grow, then eat the baby. Generously one might say that this is another sign that humanity has lost even a basic understanding of the world.
  • That's assuming they planned on eating the baby. It could have been a stillbirth, or died after birth.
  • There's also the question of what happened to the rats, roaches, and other small, fast-breeding animals that are more resistant to catastrophe than humans are. And the question of how the cannibals managed to avoid scurvy on a diet of nothing but human flesh.