Coming across the man who has been struck by lightning (pp. 50-53)

The existence of the man is first alluded to on page fifty as the man notices the sudden appearance of human tracks, when queried on his existence by the Boy the man replies 'Who is anybody?' which sets the tone of the state of human affairs in the world is The Road by inferring that everybody is nobody to them, and that anybody could be anyone. Suggesting by this that by this point the world has descended into such an unredeemable state of entropy that the normal functions and standards of society have corroded and the normal rules of human expectation no longer apply. The lack of trust and the wariness of the Man for the rest of humanity here tells the reader that humans in this world are capable of any means by which they'll survive: murder, betrayal, theft etc. and of the Man's outlook that even those you know can become someone else in this world which was revealed to him brutally in the suicide of his wife. The devastating effect the apocalypse had on humanity triggered a transformation from human to survivor which left humans are unknown species to each other, as the Man states 'Who is anybody?' in a world where humanity has decayed and rotted in the ashed of the fire.

The Man's perception of other humans in this section is contrasted  with the The Boy's unrelenting will to help others as he repeatedly implores his father to help the man, 'pulling at his coat' asking 'cant we help him' even when it is as the Man says 'There's nothing to be done for him'. This characterises the Boy for possessing an all-enduring hope which in This Road is something almost alien, unbelonging, and possessed by a Boy who is alien to this world.

The man struck by lightning himself is symbolic of the calamitous fallout of the apocalypse on humanity in The Road who was 'as burnt looking as the country' representing the effect of the apocalypse burning out humanity and leaving them ruined and vulnerable to the new world where only the ruthless survive as survival cannot exist in the same place as humanity. McCarthy presents Survival and Humanity as binary oppositions which cannot prosper in the presence of the other and empitomises the two absoultes in the characters of the Man and the Boy thus creating as paradox in the beauty and innocence of their relationship in the novel by allowing the two, survival -the Man- and humanity -the Boy- to work together to survive as the Man allows the Boy to survive and the Boy keeps the man alive. The man's attempts to throw away his humanity -in this section as he leaves personal posessions 'His driver's license. A picture of his wife' laid 'down in the road...then he stood and they went on'- represent the concept of survival vs. humanity as the character himself believes that humanity cannot exist inside of him if he wants to survive, but the fact that it is the Boy that he is surviving, shedding his humanity for, contradicts these actions as while he still wants to keep the Boy alive, he will always possess some humanity, as to survive optimally he would have to leave the Boy, who keeps him alive and his humanity intact. This paradox brings to light McCarthy's Post-Modernism in the rejecting of two binary oppositions as absolutes which can't exist together and in the combining of literature genres Post-Apocalyptic and Post-Modern as well as Dystopian.

Fire and Ice

"Some say the world will end in fire,

   Some say in ice.

From what I've tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

   But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

    To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

   And would suffice."

-Robert Frost

The End

I feel that The Road ends at the moment when the man and boy stop walking and he knows that this is where the road ends for 'when he lay down he knew that he could go no further and that this was the place where he would die.' which brings the novel an end for the man and a return to the chronological beginning of the story as the first dream he has in the story reappears, and he is able to pass through this time around. This signals the end for the man and that nothing is holding him back from death anymore, no 'granitic beast'. We are left with the boy alone and grieving for his father; when he joins with the new, mysterious family we are given a new beginning for the boy which we know next to nothing. The end's ambiguity raises many questions which leaves the reader anxious/curious about the boy's future in this world. We know that he is 'carrying the fire' which it is implied can possibly redeem the world but what hope is there in the world of The Road for a life; the boy lives, but is it a life worth living? Will he stay with this new family, carry on living on the road? This ambiguity makes me feel that the end of The Road is not hopeful but rather worrying and bleak with the unknown prospect of the future.

The Relationship of the Man with the Woman

“Nothing was closer to me than your coldness. So much love remembered exactly wrong.”

Günter-Grass

Structure and The Handling of Time

The narrative of The Road moves in the continuous present with analeptic episodes into the man's memories and the sense of time is broken down to scattered and vague references such as 'four more days' and 'In the morning' which are the more specific references presented to us. The broken down sense of time is representant of the man still grasping at a vague sense of a normal routine; wake up in the morning, eat breakfast, walk, eat, walk, eat dinner, sleep during the night. This continuous loop the man keeps as the world around him descends into entropy creates the sense that the man and boy live in their own world and time 'each their others world entire'; that the man and boy live in their own circle of time within this entropic world but at the same time separate from it. The abstract references to time are very important in the story because it represents the concept of time as alien and disconnected from their world, as if it doesn't belong anymore as it -just like the rest of human kind and society- falls into dissolution as any other creation of humans. A key abstract quote of time is 'Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it' which I chose because it creates the feeling that the man's time is not his own and has been taken or 'borrowed' from somewhere or someone else. This ties in with the man slowly letting go of the memories of his past in order to survive in the present which we see in the frequency of his memories slowly declining through the novel; here is created the impression that the man is 'borrowing' time from his life before the boy to give time to live in the present, to survive. In turn this creates two separate characters within one; the man before the explosions and the man after which is a key characterisation of how the man goes through a change in order to survive and brings in the notion that something must be lost in order for something to be gained; the man must sacrifice his past, his humanity to survive in the present and time is 'borrowed' form his past to give time to the present. This could perhaps be the reason for the decline in memories from his past as the novel progresses; as the man's memories begin to run thin, he runs out of memories to take time/strength from. After this he slowly falls to his eventual death as he has no more time from the past left to 'borrow'.

The Road Rat

'A single round left in the revolver. You will not face the truth. You will not.' Who is the man echoing here? How do you believe these words are uttered?

These words echo the man's last conversation with his wife where she tells him 'I should have done it a long time ago. When there were three bullets in the gun instead of two... You have two bullets and then what? You cant protect us.' and 'I'm speaking the truth.' which tell us the effect that the woman has on the man; how she lingers in his subconscious despite his endless attempts to rid himself of her. I imagine that these words are uttered with a numb, disconnected tone and expression to reflect the man's shock and despair of the harsh truth that there is only one bullet left, so they must die later, slower. This shows the man trying to repress these feelings of despair and the morbid thoughts of the death that's awaiting them, resulting in this numb and disconnected expression as he refuses to face the truth. The fact that the man echoes the woman's voice here represents that the man feels the closeness and reality of death more now than ever -where he refuses to accept that they will die in other circumstances in the novel e.g. 'Are we going to die now? No.' pg. 92- as the woman is symbolic of death and memories of her only arise when the man feels death is near.

What do we learn about the man through his exchanges with the Road Rat?

Key elements in the man's characterisation arise in his exchange with the Road Rat as acquired traits and knowledge is alluded to in particular as the man describes why the Road Rat will not hear the gun shot. Not only are we shown the man's ability to think quickly in a difficult situation but it is revealed that the man possibly has and interesting history in medicine as the man says 'Because the bullet travels faster than sound. It will be in your brain before you can hear it. To hear it you will need a frontal lobe and things with names like colliculus and temporal gyrus and you wont have them anymore.' or defense/combat in 'The man had already dropped to the ground and he swung with him and leveled the pistol and fired from a two-handed position balanced on both knees at a distance of six feet.'. By using jargon and complex lexis like 'colliculus' and 'temporal gyrus' it is impossible that the man hasn't had some kind of medical training or education which would teach him these complicated terms and how to use them and by combining this knowledge with his obviously deft skill in combat gives reason to deduce that the man had a particular profession which involved all of this skill set. Whatever that may have been we know that it gave him the skill to survive which is presented here and at other parts of the novel (such as the scene when the explosions hit with his wife when he immediately filled the bath).

Why is the Road Rat's character so explicit whilst the man is so implicit?

The man's character is implicit to represent how the man tries to cut himself from his humanity so detatches from any personality or human part of himself in order to survive and not be repressed by any personal preferences/opinions etc. This separates the man (and the boy) from the other characters in The Road and expresses how they are different from them.

On the other hand the character of the Road Rat is made so explicit as to attach the events of The Road to a world forgotten to the characters and connect to American culture. The Road Rat is described as 'lean, wiry, rachitic' and 'dressed in a pair of filthy blur coveralls and a black billcap' which characterises him as a stereotypical 'redneck' character which connects The Road to a key feature in typical American culture (a 'redneck' being the stereotyped image of an American). This means that by featuring this redneck character McCarthy is mythologising the past and combining the world of The Road to the lost world destroyed by the nuclear blasts.

Moments of Rich Lyricism

"And the dreams so rich in color. How else would death call you? Waking in the cold dawn it all turned to ash instantly. Like certain ancient frescoes entombed for centuries suddenly exposed to the day."


"Ash moving over the road and the sagging hand of blind wire strung from the black-ended lightpoles whining thinly in the wind."


"Wrapped in the blankets, watching the nameless dark come to enshroud them."


"The ashes of the late world carried on the bleak and temporal winds to and fro in the void."


"Like the great pendulum in its rotunda scribing through the long day movements of the universe of which you may say it knows nothing and yet know it must."

A Limited Palette

The death of everything living – plants, trees, creatures and most other human beings – is evoked through the bleakness and ‘deadness’ of the language.

"The road was empty. Below in the little valley the still gray serpentine of a river. Motionless and precise. Along the shore a burden of dead reeds. Are you okay?"

"Sketched upon the pall of soot downstream the outline of a burnt city like a black paper scrim."

There is a powerfully poetic effect in the simplicity of the language. By avoiding rhetorical flourishes and elaborate language the writer makes a stronger impact.

"Like pilgrims in a fable swallowed up and lost among the inward parts of some granitic beast."

"Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again."

Avoiding emotional language and keeping it simple makes the narrative all the more emotionally engaging.

"She was gone and the coldness of it was her final gift."

"When he came back he knelt beside his father and held his cold hand and said his name over and over again."

How does McCarthy tell the story in pages 1-28 of The Road?

The Road begins in medias res as the man reaches out to touch the boy sleeping beside him after waking up himself from a nightmare. In the first twenty eight pages the man and boy continue their journey to the south and we are introduced to McCarthy's interesting though unconventional style of writing; complex lexis such as 'glaucoma' mixed in with the otherwise basic language, an absence of speech marks or punctuation in general. We are brought into the world in The Road, where it is made obvious some kind of apocalypse has devastated humanity and an ashen wasteland is all that's left; McCarthy emphasises the desolation of the survivors with the characterisation of the man and by contrasting this with his memories of his old life and with the characterisation of the boy.

The setting in The Road is described in 'Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before.' which suggests that the world is slowly dimming, fading away as the light diminishes. This gives us the imagery of the world growing darker by the day, implying that it is getting harder and harder for the man and boy to navigate and that it's not a place fit for human life; this helps to tell the story of the disintegration of civilisation and fits the novel into the post-apocalyptic genre. More importantly, this representation of the world is contrasted with the world that we live in in these first twenty eight  pages with the first can of Cola. The man finds a Coca-Cola in an upturned vending machine -'He withdrew his hand slowly and sat looking at a Coca Cola.'-  and gives it to the boy to drink/ This signifies the disintegration of a consumer-capitalist society. The boy's fascination and awe of the taste of the cola forms a 'golden', idealised vision of the old world; the can of coke therefore symbolises the idealised perception of the old world that the boy has, believing the can to be pure and untouched by the apocalypse. The contrast between the world the man and boy live in and the world the boy is imagining emphasises the degree of destruction and corruption in The Road, making it seem darker in comparison therefore helping to explain the story of disintegration of society and destruction of the world in The Road. 

The theme of spirituality in The Road is brought in on the first page in the man's dream where 'he had wandered in a cave where the child led him by the hand.'. We are shown that the boy is taking the man on a religious journey in 'Like pilgrims' and that the boy is leading him to death, where the man can't take the boy. This gives us a key characterisation of the man by explaining his inability to relieve the boy of this life by killing him which is referred to throughout the novel and how the man chastises himself for this, seeing himself as weak. This also explains the feeling that death never ends in their world, suggesting that the survivors of the apocalypse live with death as a companion in day to day life. This dream is significant in the story of The Road as it explains how the man views death in The Road as something that cannot be his but what he wants. He describes his dreams as 'rich in colour' which suggests that the dreams are 'rich' and enticing to him, showing that he wishes for death, but that he resists that temptation until the conclusion of the book where he finally dies. Then the man dreams that he finally reaches the end of the cave that appears in this first dream, explaining how the man has accepted him inevitable death and that he has moved past life into death and let go. This is significant because it explains the representation of the relationship of the characters with death in The Road and how that death is viewed a gift rather than a fear. 

In these first pages we are introduced to the strange relationship between the man and the boy. Their relationship is not what you would expect of a father and son and is best explained in the first section of dialogue 'I'm right here. I know.' which sets conversation style for the rest of the novel.The boy's reply 'I know.' expresses that the relationship between the two is distant but that he always present to the boy. This represents how the man lingers in the presence of the boys life, always there but never close to him because of the man himself. It is shown in 'If only my heart were stone' that this is a deliberate action of the man because he is trying to disconnect himself from his humanity on order to survive as he sees fit, and look after the boy. This presents us with the irony of this because the man is trying to rid himself of his humanity in order to look after the boy, showing that his humanity will always be intact because his relationship with the boy and that he will never succeed in getting rid of his humanity for the boy because of his love the boy. This sets us the relationship between the man and the boy and tells the story of their complex relationship.

Post-Apocalyptic Literature

Marauding Gangs of Bandits

The Gang of Road-Rats

'He wore a beard that had been cut square across the bottom with shears and he had 
the tattoo of a bird done by someone with an illformed notion of their appearance.'
The gang of road rats represents the degree of the corruption and disintegration of society in The Road. This is a key concept which links to Post-Apocalyptic literature as it brings in the theme of violence to the novel whilst also setting the defining lines between the 'good guys' and the 'bad guys'. This section also gives us a key characterisation of the man by hinting at a background that involved these kind of dangerous situations on a regular basis.

The Gang in Haz-mats Suits

'An army in tennis shoes, tramping. Carrying three-foot lengths of pipe with leather wrappings. (. . .) The phalanx following carried spears or lances tasseled with ribbons, the long blades hammered out of trucksprings in some crude forge upcountry. (. . .) Behind them came wagons drawn by slaves in harness and piled with goods of war and after that the women, perhaps a dozen in number, some of them pregnant, and lastly a supplementary consort of catamites illcothed against the cold and fitted in dogcollars and yoked each to each. All passed on. They lay listening.'
This gang brings in a much more sinister theme to the novel and embodies what the man and boy call 'the bad guys' because this gang stand for the degradation of humanity in The Road. The 'dogcollars' represent the dehumanisation of the people being treated like slaves and speaks volumes about the degradation in this novels by the way these people are being treated like animals. This corruption, degradation and dehumanisation makes the novel fit into the post-apocalyptic literature genre as it represents how survival turns humanity savage and allows them to regress back to primitive behaviour without feeling any moral issues with the acts they are carrying out, because they think they are doing it to survive.

The Woman

Memories of the woman always surface in 'The Road'  when the man feels that he and the boy are close to death which speaks volumes about the role that she plays in the novel and what she represents as a character. Before she commits suicide we are presented with the woman's unique relationship with death. From the beginning of the apocalypse death becomes a companion that survivors live with, but rather than the hatred and grief that is usually regarded to with death, the woman begins to feel for death what she feels for her husband. Her love and hope for death grows day by day of survival eventually becoming as strong as her love for the man, overcoming it; as the man is her primary reason for survival this means that she hasn't got anything to live for anymore when death seems so close and comforting to her. This relationship with death explains her regarding her heart as 'whorish' and death as a 'lover' because she feels like each day she lives with death she is cheating on her husband; she become torn between her want for death and her love for the man and the boy.

It is known from one of the first mention of the woman that she will not survive the apocalypse because she doesn't understand survival. From the beginning of the apocalypse when the man fills the bath it it made clear that she doesn't understand what he is doing and why ('why are you taking a bath?') which suggests that she doesn't understand survival, foreshadowing how she ends up killing herself. Furthermore, her reasons for survival are shown not to be strong enough to keep her alive. She says 'you won't survive for yourself' implying that the man will never stay alive for himself but for somebody else (the boy). Whilst this is a stab in the gut for the man - as the woman is telling him that he and the boy are not a good enough reason for her- this suggests that the woman is not cut out for survival; that she is weak and cold. However she is strong-willed, as she finally decides that she will kill herself and be done, not allowing for any persuasion from the man or any temptation into living. This shows the difference in character of the man and the woman as throughout the novel the man is tempted by death, in his dreams and in his thoughts, whilst on the other hand the woman here is presented to be tempted by life and living.

In all but one of the memories of the woman she is described using a lexicon of ice and cold which creates the impression of the woman being coldhearted in contrast to the heat and warmth that a love would usually be described with. The semantic field that these words create connotes a cold, icy and sharp characterisation, contrasted with the heat and fire that destroyed the world. This gives the impression that the fires turned the woman cold, foreshadowing that she will not survive the apocalypse because as she represents ice, the fire that burnt the world will melt the ice. Adding to this, in the woman's end the man describes 'she was gone and the coldness of it was her final gift' which suggests that she teaches the man to abandon his humanity as she gives him a reason to hare and let go; a reason to darken his beautiful memories of her and forever forget his past, because the man feels that his memories are holding him back from survival. His resist of memories brings the impression that this is not the time for living, but the time for surviving because the world he's remembering, the world in his memories don't belong here with him.

Post-Apocalyptic Literature

The Thoughts and Actions of Survivors are what counts

Leaving the Thief to Die

'I wasn't going to kill him, he said...But we did kill him.'
This act of taking all of the Thief's belongings after he robbed them shows the decaying of moral standards and the disintegration of society, as although the Thief did steal the man and boy's things, the punishment the man dealt him far outweighs the crime. Yes, the man didn't kill him but the act of killing someone as retribution doesn't have the same standards in the world of The Road, as due to the state of the Earth dying is no longer feared or mourned, but rather seen as relief and salvation. No, the punishment the man deals out is harsher because by taking all of the thief's things he is leaving him exposed and vulnerable to the dangers of the cold, the gangs, starvation etc; he is leaving him to die a slow, painful death. However, if it wasn't for the boy, the man probably would have killed the man outright which tells us that the man's humanity is still intact (though barely) and it appears that the man didn't leave the man there with the intention that he will die, the leaving of his clothes proves that. This gives us the characterisation of the boy as more than a survivor because in this act (and throughout The Road) the boy expresses emotion freely and empathises with the people he meets, wanting to help them in any way he can; the boy is more than survivor because he is still in touch with his humanity, his emotions and compassion; leading us to believe that there is a significant difference in The Road between a survivor and a human. The boy convinces the man, by his grief for the thief that they effectively killed, to give the thief a chance to survive by leaving his clothes on the road for him to find, showing the difference between the man and the boy, between survivor and human.

Ely

'where men can't live gods fare no better.'

The thoughts of the character Ely, whom the man and the boy meet past midway in The Road, embodies the survivor and represents the overall state of the world in the novel. Ely's thoughts of the world being without God suggest a world without morals or hope; the dissolution of society and morals in the world of The Road. Ely shows this absence of morality or hope that embodies the survivors in this world.

'Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it'

This quote expresses the mentality of the survivors in The Road and their attitude to the world that they live in and how it seems like the time and world in which they're living is not theirs anymore and won't be theirs for long; even their own eyes seem 'borrowed' as it seems like each moment they live is evanescent. In whole this quote represents how the survivors feel like they live on 'borrowed time' because they could die at any moment and that they shouldn't exist as they don't belong there anymore.

The Man Struck by Lightning 

'no. We cant help him. There's nothing to be done.'
That fact that the only thing the man and boy can do for the man is leave him to die represents that the world cannot be saved or even helped, but just left to die slowly without even comfort or mourning. This represents to hopelessness of the world and the destruction of humanity in the survivors left on the planet. 

Hell above and Heaven below

All the trees are gone

The rain made such a lovely sound

To those who are six feet under ground

The leaves will bury every year

And no one knows I'm gone

Live me golden tell me dark

Hide from Graveyard John

The moon is full here every night

And I can bathe here in his light

The leaves will bury every year

And no one knows I'm gone

Post-Apocalyptic Literature

Mythologizing of the Past in The Road

The First can of Coca Cola

'He withdrew his hand slowly and sat looking at a Coca Cola.' 
The sharing of this first can of coke signifies the disintegration of a consumer-capitalist society and creates the contrast between the world as we know it and the world of The Road. This contrast mythologizes the first world privileges that we take for granted by comparing it to the fascination of the boy when he first tastes it, He savours it as if it's the only one he'll ever have (which is likely, however the boy does have another coke, found in the bunker) and the way the boy treats it gives us our first impression of the idealised, 'golden' vision he has of this old world (our world) which is only a myth to him. Although we know our world to be far, far from being this, as the boy never knew that world it's unsurprising that he forms this 'golden' mythical view of it, compared to the world he lives in. The can of coke symbolises this idealised view that the boy has, it being one of the few surviving things he encounters, it forms his impression of the old world. He assumes that if the old world had such a thing like it, it couldn't have been bad and as he delicious Coca Cola is pure and unaffected he feels that nothing could be better than living in that world again; forming his idealised view. However, we can assume that the way the world was before the events in The Road was by no means perfect in any way, judging by the way things turned out (with the nuclear explosions that caused the apocalypse).

His Uncle's Farm

'This was the perfect day of his childhood. This the day to shape the days upon.'

The memory of his Uncle's farm sentimentalizes his past, spotlighting this day as his best, most happy memory (not the day he was married, as what you would assume). This description leads us to believe that it is (one of) the only memories he has which is left untainted by the apocalypse, no part of it gives him pain, grief or regret just pure nostalgia, happiness and childhood innocence; unlike the memories of his wife (which you would thin would be his happiest) which -although sensuous and romantic- are bitter and harsh, which is reflected in the use of snow and ice imagery to demonstrate the heart of his wife turning to ice as the world burnt. The likening of the woman to ice in a world destroyed by fire and heat tells us that the woman was never meant to survive the apocalypse. This memory of his Uncle's farm tells us that this is what the man wants to remember of the old world, this perfect memory separate from the crumbling world around them, the world that is now closer to a myth than a memory.

Returning to his Childhood Home

'On cold winter nights we would sit at the fire here, me and my sisters, doing our homework. The boy watched him. Watched shapes claiming him he could not see.'

The idea of 'home' is a distant myth to him, the returning to his childhood home shows the shattering of his hope that 'home' will always be there. Home is a constant, safe returning point, the place where we always return to after the world becomes chaos; so the man's returning demonstrates him clinging on to the security and comfort he once knew here, hoping to find solace in the home that what once his. However when he returns the house is (as expected) a ruin destroyed by the explosions, which shatters the idea of 'home' to him and he truly becomes the wanderer/traveler that he's been acting as, and 'home' becomes a myth.

Important Quotes from Pages 1-28

"Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before. Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world."

This first description we are introduced to the dark, ashen wasteland of a world devastated by what we learn later as a nuclear apocalypse. The earth is described to be in a never ending darkness, the days no lighter than the night. This is where we first get the image of a sun hidden behind layers of toxic smog and the impression that the world has been abandoned by God or that there is no God left. The inclusion of the noun 'glaucoma' not only intensifies the image of a diseased earth that is gradually fading away to ash and succumbing the darkness, but sets the writing style of McCarthy in The Road. Throughout the text he generally uses simplistic lexis to reflect the decaying of society and humanity but the inclusion of the jargon polysyllable 'glaucoma' he creates an antithesis of this by this high order noun still present in the decaying world. This is used also by McCarthy to give us the first insight into the man himself. His use of this noun tells us that prior to the apocalypse he was employed in no ordinary job because he knows this lexis that only one in a specific profession would come across, as it is not a word used or known by your average person. 

"Like pilgrims in a fable swallowed up and lost among the inward parts of some granitic beast"

This quote relates the father and son's journey to a pilgrimage and brings in theme of Spirituality. This could be seen as somewhat ironic however due to their world repeatedly being alluded to and sometimes described as being devoid of a God ( 'There is no God' pg. 181) meaning that there would be no real objective in endeavoring on a pilgrimage. This extract also describes the boy taking the man on this religious journey, leading him to death. This tells us that the man cannot take the boy to death, cannot bring himself to end their dangerous and seemingly purposeless wandering despite the fact that he feels it what he should do, he and the boy are subjected their endless wandering. Therefore in this quote we are told that their death never ends as they are forced to live with death as a constant companion but can never be blessed with the peace of it themselves, this is -we can assume- why the woman refers to them 'the walking dead'.

"I'm right here.
  I know."

This first section of dialogue in The Road sets up the conversation style for the rest of the novel whilst also establishing the detached and strange relationship between the boy and his father. His reply 'I know.' expresses how the father lingers as a constant presence in the boys life, always there but never close. This represents how the father is keeping himself at a distance from the boy in order to disconnect himself from his humanity. The boy, in contrast symbolises everything that is humanity, constantly searching and asking for the comfort that he wants from his father and seeing goodness in the people he meets, he wants to help the man struck by lightning,the little boy, the old man and persuades his father to hang on to that last shred of humanity each time it is tested. But the man still remains in this disconnected state because he feels that's the only way to survive ('If only my heart were stone') and the boy is left with only the knowledge that his father is 'right here' and that's all the security he gets.

"Nothing to see. No smoke. Can I see? the boy said."

The boy still hopes for the redemption of the world, which is shown in page 7 'Can I see?'  despite the man proclaiming that there's 'Nothing to see.' the boy still wishes to see through the binoculars, hoping for a change. This representation is developed throughout the novel and explains what 'carrying the fire' is by contrasting the behaviour of the man and the other with the boy. It is the quality in him but isn't in them that sets the boys apart from the others and 'the fire' could actually be a representation of the humanity that the earth has lost. 


"Later he woke in the dark and he thought that he'd heard bulldrums beating somewhere in the low dark hills"

This quote links the novel to a theme of religion. The Christian religion bases upon the death and resurrection of Jesus and consistently refers to blood in it's writings which connects 

"And the dreams so rich in color. How else would death call you?"

This quote reflects the way that the man feels death calling him in his nightmares/dreams. The fact that he uses the noun 'dreams' instead of 'nightmares' -which is undeniably what they are- gives us an insight into his perception on the nature of these dreams. The term 'dream' connotes something we wish for or aspire to gain, which tells us that by calling them 'dreams' the man is demonstrating that death is what he wants, what he dreams of aspiring to as it's the only relief in the devastated world of The Road. This idea is supported by the description 'rich in color' which suggests that these dreams look enticing, luxurious and entirely tempting, calling him to death. This also tells us that death is the thing the man wants most of all in this world. In the resolution of the book, when death finally catches up with the man, his last dreams are described to reflect the first dream he had in The Road. However the tone of this description is peaceful, easy and restful unlike that of the first description which evokes fear; this speaks volumes about the man's entrance to death as it reflects his willingness to die, to move on and leave the world. The only thing that was holding him back is the boy. Here, we know that his death is definite because whilst in the first dream 'the child lead him by the hand' but he would not acquiesce into death, not seeing peace at the end of the tunnel but 'a creature that raised its dripping mouth (...) with eyes dead white and sightless as the edges of spiders', in the last dream he only sees the 'tracks of unknown creatures' and he finally passes 'the point of no return' which is described with 'the light they carried with them'. This significant difference speaks volumes about the man's relationship with death in The Road, it being a constant companion that he longs for in the beginning but keeps at a distance the same way he holds the boy at a distance. Both begging for him comfort and devotion, the boy and death both being the things that keep him in his disconnected state, wanting both, both being as tempting to him as he feels each can provide him the relief and rest he needs. The change in this relationship at the conclusion of the novel shows him slowing creeping closer to death with the boy hanging on but -ultimately- having no choice but to let his father go.

"They were discalced to a man like pligrims of some common order for all their shoes were long since stolen."

In this quote that stolen shoes represent the last thing that stands between these people and death being taken away. In The Road the scenery is described as 'ashen' and dead which can then lead us the believe that having shoes on separates survivors from the death below them. Therefore these people having these shoes taken from them creates a representation of the finality of death; deaths finally takes full ownership of them when the one thing still separating them is stolen from them, thus making them his, a part of him and just another body on the road.

"At eight the primrose closes."

The significance of this quote lies in the use of 'the primrose'. The primrose is a flower, colourful and showy, which opens during the day (like most plants). However, one variety of the primrose -the evening primrose- opens at night. This is significant in that it can be said to symbolise day and night becoming confused in The Road; the time of day isn't specified in the quote, it can be either eight in the morning or in the evening, this coupled with the fact that the primrose could either open at day or night means that the world in The Road has no real day and no real night. Each is seemingly the same as the other; the darkness of the night wanes into the day and the emptiness of day fades into the night. It represents a dark, dying world abandoned of all hope.

after (45) ago (17) back (252) before (45) beyond (45) blackened (19), blanket (193) could (189) down (244) fire (136) man (193) okay (195) rain (44) sorry (27) time (100) water (109)

The statistical information of the lexical repetition in The Road strengthens the idea that the man and the boy are roving without any explained purpose in a continuum of emotions, needs and surroundings. The repetition of these words reflects the pair's progress in their travelling and their central focus on each other. The lexis 'blanket', 'okay' and 'sorry' in particular demonstrates the father's awareness of his son's welfare, it being his primary focus throughout The Road. The most frequently used 'back' and 'down' represents the state of the world described in The Road and the mentality of the people left living. The frequent use of 'back' echoes the father's constant looking back to the live he once lived and the world now lost and also the narrative structure of The Road, written in a discourse which shifts between past and present. On the other hand, 'down' mirrors the overall perceived direction that the world is headed. The setting is repeatedly described as ashen, black and generally in complete disrepair which can only be perceived as a downward, declining direction therefore, the repetition of 'down' reflects the declining world and morality in The Road. However this repetition also represents the literal direction the father and son are heading on their journey, as they are heading South with the hope that their lives will improve once they reach the South. This, subsequently, is parallel to the American concept that travelling to the West from the East will expand their opportunities of improving their lifestyles, in comparison to the old life.

"This is my child, he said. I wash a dead man's brains out of his hair. That is my job.

Yes I am, he said. I am the one.

Tomatoes, peaches, beans, apricots. Canned hams. Corned beef.

Are we still the good guys, he said.

We should go, Papa, he said. Yes, the man said. But he didn't.

The snow fell nor did it cease to fall.

Okay? Okay.

They sat on the edge of the tub and pulled their shoes on and them he handed the boy the pan and soap and he took the stove and the little bottle of gas and the pistol and wrapped in their blankets and they went back across the yard to the bunker.

Tolling in the silence the minutes of the earth.

She was gone and the coldness of it was her final gift."


These extracts from The Road gives insight into the dysptopian genre by the style of writing. The style -whilst conforming to the spelling and general language conventions- abstains from the use of punctuation like speech marks, this removes the emotion from the speech and gives the impression of being removed from the normal conventions of humanity. This slight contortion reflects the events in The Road and how society has been deformed and destroyed, how life still continued for humanity but never in the same way.


The structure of 'Tomatoes, peaches, beans, apricots. Canned hams. Corned beef.' is constructed in a way to give the sentence the sound of a list being checked of and the appearance of routine. The short plosives reflect how the story continues in The Road, their lives revolving around their one constant ambition to find food and just get through the next day and give a dissociated, mundane impression of living just to get by.


The description of the bottle of gas and the pistol wrapped in the blanket helps to tell the story of the father trying to shield the boy from the death and fire surrounding them despite living in it's destruction daily. The blanket represents the comfort the father is still trying to give to his son and by wrapping the bottle of gas (representing fire) and pistol (representing death) in it we are presented with the image of two cold, heavy objects encompassed by a thin, soft blanket. This implies the weakness and frailty of the father's comfort to the boy and how it is so easily to be broken and for the objects to fall out. However these objects could also be seen to represent the father and the boy in personality. The father is characterised as having accepted this way of life and the destruction and death he had been forced to comply to, whilst the boy still doesn't understand this life; why there is destruction, why they must kill and abandon other people, and why some people are bad. This tells us what is going to happen in the story, that the boy learns about the world around him and accepts that sometimes they must leave and/or kill other people.

Adjectives used in The Road

The Road reminds me of...

First Impressions

The landscapes, descriptions and alluded events in The Road first reminded me of that in the Pure trilogy, also a dystopian fiction following post apocalyptic events.  The 'detonations' left people abandoned outside of the safe haven of 'The Dome' fused to the objects they were holding and near to and the world in ruin. These people came to be known as the 'wretches' and those safe inside the Dome 'pures'.