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.