The reader is not really sure what has caused the setting
in which McCarthy's story takes place. It is something that resembles post- Apocalyptic
reality. Little else is given in terms of detail. In the first chapter, there is
description of ash having fallen, with the rivers reflecting some type of fallout that
has impaired life from regenerating. The fact that the reader never really knows what
happened is something that is fairly deliberate by
McCarthy:
... Not knowing all the precise
details of the past creates a tension in the story. Readers will find that they want to
know more and so will keep turning the pages to learn about the back
story...
In this, it is not
really given as to whether it was a nuclear catastrophe. Certainly, all signs point to
something of that magnitude, but I think it is not the driving point of McCarthy's work,
to specifically tell us, the reader, what caused this as much as it is to display the
relationship between father and son in an extremely trying
setting.
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