The Road: Part I

The Road-Theme

100

Can I ask you something? Yes. Of course you can. What would you do if I died? If you died I would want to die too. So you could be with me? Yes. So I could be with you. Okay

What is the father/son relationship? The father would not want to continue on without his son thus illustrating the strong bond they have. What is loss of innocence? The young boy's innocence is slipping away as he journeys in the post-apocalyptic world full of death. Young boys should not be questioning whether or not they are going to die.

200

The boy lay with his head in the man's lap. After a while he said: They're going to kill those people, arent they? Yes. Why do they have to do that? I dont know. Are they going to eat them? I dont know. They're going to eat them, arent they? Yes. And we couldnt help them because then they'd eat us too. Yes. And that's why we couldnt help them. Yes. Okay.

What is the loss of innocence? The boy is beginning to realize that they cannot help everyone or they too will die.

300

Within a year there were fires on the ridges and deranged chanting. The screams of the murdered. By day the dead impaled on spikes along the road. What had they done?

What is the breakdown of society? Within a year people were reverting to a more primitive or animal part of human nature in order to survive.

400

The wall beyond held a frieze of human heads, all faced alike, dried and caved with their taut grins and shrunken eyes. They wore gold rings in their leather ears and in the wind their sparse and ratty hair twisted about on their skulls. The teeth in their sockets like dental molds, the crude tattoos etched in some homebrewed woad faded in the beggared sunlight. Spiders, swords, targets. A dragon. Runic slogans, creeds misspelled. Old scars with old motifs stitched along their borders. The heads not truncheoned shapeless had been flayed of their skins and the raw skulls painted and signed across the forehead in a scrawl and one white bone skull had the plate sutures etched carefully in ink like a blueprint for assembly.

What is the breakdown of society? Warring tribes are fighting for power and resources. They are eating the bodies after the battle. The winners could be the bloodcults.

500

Sometimes the child would ask him questions about the world that for him was not even a memory. He thought hard how to answer. There is no past... But he stopped making things up...and the telling made him feel bad. The child had his own fantasies. How things would be in the south. Other children. He tried to keep a rein on this but his heart was not in it. Whose would be?

What is innocence/loss of innocence? The father is trying to protect his son's innocence by allowing him to believe that the South will be a better place with other children, but wants to make sure that the son has realistic expectations.

The Road-More Plot

100

The fire.

What is what the “good guys” carry?

200

“They’d had no food and little sleep in five days,” when the man and the boy come upon “a once grand house” on a rise above the road. They go in.

What is the house that has the half eaten dead bodies in the cellar?

300

An army in tennis shoes, tramping. Carrying three-foot lengths of pipe with leather wrappings. Lanyards at the wrist. Some of the pipes were threaded through with lengths of chain fitted at their ends with every manner of bludgeon. They clanked past, marching with a swaying gait like wind-up toys.

Who are the bloodcults? An organized army with resources who are moving south with slaves and pregnant women. This could be the building up or breaking down of society.

400

The whump of the falling trees and the low boom of the loads of snow exploding on the ground set the woods to shuddering. He held the boy and told him it would be all right and that it would stop soon and after a while it did.

What is the trees falling down because the roots are dying due to the lack of sunlight?

500

“Chattel slaves had once trod those boards bearing food and drink on silver trays”

What is a hint or clue that the man and boy are getting closer to the South?

The Road-Plot

100

South-to the warmer climate and ocean

Where the boy and the man are traveling?

200

Clamped to the handle of the cart was a chrome motorcycle mirror

What is how the man is able to see if anyone is approaching and one of the first clues the reader gets that this world is unsafe?

300

Coca Cola.

What is the item the father finds in the grocery store and shares with his son illustrating the sacrifices the father is willing to make for his son?

400

He held him and floated him about, the boy gasping and chopping at the water. You're doing good, the man said. You're doing good.

What is when the father teaches the boy how to swim? This seems so out of place in this post-apocalyptic world.

500

a cord tied to a bell strung through a window, a padlock on a hatch in the middle of the floor, 40 gallon cauldron large enough to scald pigs

What are the several warning signs that the Man later remembered he should have paid more attention to when they walked onto the property with the charred bodies in the cellar?

The Road-Quotes

100

“In the pocket of his knapsack he found a last half packet of cocoa and he fixed it for the boy and then poured his own cup with hot water and sat blowing at the rim. You promised not to do that, the boy said.”

What is, Cormac McCarthy illustrating the boy's ability to be generous and his innocence and the father's desire to sacrifice for his son? What is the boy's innocence by believing that promises can be kept in this post apocalyptic world?

200

“The clocks stopped at 1:17. A long shear of light and a series of low concussions. He got up and went to the window. He went into the bathroom and threw the switchlight but the power was already gone. A dull rose glow in the windowglass.”

What is a possible explanation as to how and when this apocalyptic world began?

300

“In the pocket of his knapsack he found a last half packet of cocoa and he fixed it for the boy and then poured his own cup with hot water and sat blowing at the rim. You promised not to do that, the boy said.”

What is the boy's realization that the father is sacrificing cocoa?

400

You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.

What is the father's way of explaining to the boy the burden that dreams and memories carry? He is explaining that the bad memories are sometimes the ones that we remember and good memories are the ones we easily forget.

500

You put it in your mouth and point it up. Do it quick and hard. Do you understand? Stop crying. Do you understand?

What the man tells the boy to do if the cannibals find him?

The Road-Characters

100

She was gone and the coldness of it was her final gift.” Who is the “she”? What was her final “gift”?

The Boy’s mother who committed suicide rather than slow the Man and Boy down on their journey.

200

“ I was appointed to do that by God. I will kill anyone who touches you.”

Who is the man? He is explaining to his son why he had to kill the Road Rat. This could also be a connection to theme (the father and son relationship).

300

He was as burntlooking as the country, his clothing scorched and black. One of his eyes was burnt shut and his hair was but a nitty wig of ash upon his blackened skull.

Who is the first "survivor" the reader meets who has been struck by lightening? The boy wants to help him, but the father refuses. The boy cries uncontrollably.

400

He came forward, holding his belt by one hand. The holes in it marked the progress of his emaciation and the leather at one side had a lacquered look to it where he was used to stropping the blade of his knife. He stepped down into the roadcut and he looked at the gun and he looked at the boy. Eyes collared in cups of grime and deeply sunk. Like an animal inside a skull looking out the eyeholes. He wore a beard that had been cut square across the bottom with shears and he had a tattoo of a bird on his neck done by someone with an illformed notion of their appearance. He was lean, wiry, rachitic. Dressed in a pair of filthy blue coveralls and a black billcap with the logo of some vanished enterprise embroidered across the front of it.

Who is the Road Rat that the man must kill when he grabs the boy?

500

Come back, he called. I wont hurt you.

What is what the boy yells to the other little boy he sees?