Cormac McCarthys The Road Was Based on Wroxall

Author Cormac McCarthy revealed in a recent interview that the inspiration for his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel ‘The Road’ came from a summer getaway to the Isle of Wight.

A grim, post-apocalyptic wasteland, the village of Wroxall was visited by McCarthy and his son in the summer of 2005.

McCarthy and his son were forced to hike across the Island by a substandard public transport system and the lack of a car. Their trek through the Island countryside forced them to travel through the small village of Wroxall.

“What was supposed to be a carefree, joyful memory between a father and son became something else, something very different,” told McCarthy. “As we moved closer towards the border between Ventnor and Wroxall we realised that we had strayed too far into something that was too black and too evil. We had become lost in something that threatened to destroy our very cores.”

McCarthy and his son spent several days lost in the countryside around Wroxall. They were forced to live off the provisions they had brought with them and whatever food they could scavenge from the wild.

“Nights were beyond pitch dark and each day was greyer than the one that had passed before. We had become pilgrims in a barren, silent, and godless land.”

“Each day brought with it less hope. We would sleep in whatever shelter we could find: abandoned barns, derelict houses. Eventually hope had all but disappeared, all we had was each other.”

McCarthy and his son were eventually picked up by emergency services. Both were malnourished and shaken by their experience. McCarthy and his son eventually recovered and McCarthy went on to write about his ordeal in one of his darkest and most successful novels, The Road. The book won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for fictions and was later adapted in to a film in 2009.

McCarthy admitted he still has bad dreams about Wroxall, and has not since returned.