Use these links to supplement and complement students’ reading of the work and to increase their overall enjoyment of literature. Challenge them to discern parallel themes, engage through visual and aural stimuli, and delve deeper into the thematic possibilities presented by the title.

Recommended Texts for Pairing

The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy

• Though Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian is the most frequently cited companion piece to The Road, this book resonates as a personal story of a young man moving through the desolate landscapes of the American Southwest and Mexico, trying to stay morally upright in an amoral society.
• McCarthy’s novels of the American Southwest often feel apocalyptic in their own right, as they exist at the turning point between the romanticized West and the modern age; The Crossing, for example, ends with the main character witnessing a nuclear test in the desert, signaling the end of the world he’s known.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

• This book takes a different stance on the apocalypse, focusing on the way in which community and culture can be a tool for salvation and purpose.

Other Student Resources

Cormac McCarthy’s The Road May Have the Scariest Passage in All of Literature