McCarthy Unabridged: The Road, Page 272

Lets stay here for the night, Papa

We haven’t traveled very far today

I know

It could be dangerous

I know, Papa

We need to keep going

No.

The man turned around to see the boy setting up the tarp. The man walked to the boy with a limp to return the tarp to the cart, the boy grabbed the tarp from out of his hands. The man coughed until he couldn’t stand, the boy made a tent from the tarp and started a fire, he covered the man in a blanket and sat down next to him.

The man sat silently and eventually fell asleep. The boy stayed for a moment before going to see what was down the road. He took the gun from the man and walked towards the Road, he saw a small town in the distance. On the way back the boy gathered some brush and wood for the fire. Out of the suffocating darkness he heard his father calling out. The boy returned, the man livid with anger. The fire slowly began to burn out.

Where did you go, where is the gun?

I have it

Why did you take it

I went to go see what was down the road, and to go get more wood for the fire

I dont want you going anywhere without me

You were sleeping

I know

But the fire was going to go out, you would have froze

I don’t care. You cant go anywhere without me.

One of the motifs in this passage was the fire. Both the fire the man sets up at the camps, and the fire he and the boy carry within themselves. As the man gets closer to his death his fire begins to go out. He loses whatever morals he had, becomes angry and bitter. The boy goes to get more firewood, because he knows how important it is to keep the flame light. And despite any fears the boy may have, he risks going down the road on his own to keep that fire going. Throughout the book is it clear that the boy’s fire is brighter than the man’s.

In this passage I wanted to highlight the man’s protectiveness of the boy. The man wants to boy to know how to survive without him there. Yet at the same time the man doesn’t want to see the boy become independent of him, since the boy is his reason to fight to stay alive. After he see’s that the boy can take care himself the man has to grapple with the fact that the boy can survive without the man. The boy is the man’s reason for living. Knowing that the boy is at an age where he doesn’t need someone to take care of him, the man slowly loses his reason to stay alive. The man fights for their survival throughout the entire book. It is his nature to feel the need to always protect the boy, even if he doesn’t necessarily need said protection. There is a fine line between being protective of his son and being over protective, preventing his son from doing anything on his own. This could make life more difficult for the boy after the man is gone and end up hurting the boy. One of the motifs I decided to use was surviving on the road without a companion. The man worries about what the boy will be like on the road on his own. He fears that the boy will hurt himself and end up like the lightening struck man, will he lose his morals to survive, or only survive with the help from others just like Eli. This fear only makes the man more protective and unintentionally harmful to the boy.