McCarthy Unabridged: The Road, Page 281

Posted by Tobi Hahn in Being Human - Giknis - B on

I speculate that Cormac McCarthy could have cut this passage from page 281 of The Road before it was published.

The boy wept. The sea churned. Everything was cold. The boy was utterly alone. He wanted his father to be there, to tell him a story - but it was impossible. There was nothing left to tell stories about. There were no more stories left. The pistol lay in his hands. The boy contemplated; he remembered what the man taught him. Hesitated. His hands shook. He’d decide tomorrow. 

It was raining. Great swells of brine wrenched themselves from the deep and broke against the frigid shore. More thought, more hesitation. Why continue when failure is assured? But miracles could happen, and had. He was carrying the fire, after all. Sometimes help came by opening the doors he was most afraid of.

Night. The plenilune moon cast a sterile glare across the frozen earth. The boy dreamt. He imagined that the man was walking along the beach, with everyone - Ely, the dog, the thief, and the other boy - in tow. He woke up.

It was early. The sun had just begun its slow ascent. The boy looked at the pistol. He made up his mind. Sobbed. The man was gone. They were still carrying the fire. The boy walked towards the road.


The following rationale explains why I wrote the passage in the way that I did.

This “missing scene” from The Road is placed on page 281, after the death of the man. I chose this placement because of the large gap in the timeline of the story at this point. After the boy wakes up and finds the man dead, he mourns him. The story then skips ahead three days to when the boy is found by the veteran. This gap has potential for a great amount of reflection and contemplation by the boy. The central conflict in this passage is whether the boy will take his own life or not. On page 113, the man teaches the boy how to put the gun in his mouth and shoot himself if necessary. The boy knows that this is an option, so he considers it seriously.
In this passage, the boy must decide whether he is going to continue carrying the fire or give up. Carrying the fire, and by extension perseverance in the face of difficult and frightening obstacles, is a major theme of The Road. In the passage, I mention that “Sometimes help came by opening the doors he was most afraid of.” This is a reference to the motif of doors in The Road. Doors can lead the man and boy to horrors like the room filled with people to be eaten on page 110 or miracles like the bunker on page 137, but they can never know what’s behind a door until they open it. Before the man opens either one of the aforementioned doors, the boy begs him not to open them. However, the man understands that no matter what terrors might lie behind them, they need to open every door - they have no chance of survival otherwise. In my passage, the boy realizes this. He knows that survival will not be comfortable or easy, but that it’s necessary because he’s carrying the fire.
The reference to stories in the first paragraph of the scene is a reflection of an earlier scene in The Road. On page 267, the man is trying to get the boy to talk to him. He offers to tell the boy a story, but the boy declines. Now that the man is gone, the boy wishes that he could tell him a story. 
My McCarthy-esque word was “plenilune.” This word describes the full moon. It was not used in The Road, and adds to the characterization of the moon here. The moon is a mysterious celestial body that is unfathomable to the boy. Plenilune is a seldom-heard word that sounds mysterious and full, just like the moon in this passage.

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