McCarthy Unabridged: The Road, Page 283

The creative scene below was crafted in order to relay what in what my mind had imagined to have been cut from McCarthy's finished version of The Road

I am carrying the fire. But my fire is not the fire you carry. 
Your fire is different?
Yes. Everyone carries a different fire. Even your papa carried a different fire. 
Papa and I carry the same fire. We are both good guys. 
No you were your papa’s fire. He was carrying you. You need to figure out what your fire is. 
But we all have to carry the same one. That’s why we are god guys.
There are no good guys. 
My papa was a good guy. I’m a good guy. We don’t eat people. 
Eating people makes you a bad guy? 
Yes. 
How about killing people?
Yes. 
Did your papa ever kill anyone? 
Yes. But only because he had to. A bad guy tried to hurt me. 
Well doesn’t that make him a bad guy too?
I don’t know. 
It doesn’t. 
It doesn’t? 
No. There are no good or bad guys. Just guys trying to survive. Trying to protect their fires.
And my papa was protecting me? 
Yes. You were his fire. 
So it doesn’t matter that he killed someone? 
No because he had to. You were his fire, his reason to live and he couldn’t let his fire go out. 
So sometimes good guys do bad things. 
Yes. 
So you really can’t tell the difference. 
No because there is none. 
No good guys or bad guys?
No. 
Just guys trying to live. 
Yes. 
Just protecting their fires. 
Yes. Everyone is just protecting their own, sundry fires. 


Included below is a rationale explaining every choice made for the scene crafted above. 

The scene crafted tackles the theme of morality that lingers in such a deranged world. At this point in the book, the boy has met a man willing to take him in, but the boy is determining whether or not he can be trusted. The scene is placed on page 283, in which the book is almost through, in order to show how much older the boy has gotten by the end. It uses this boy’s development of maturity and understanding throughout the book to ease into one of the longest dialogues seen yet. This directly shows the growth of the boy’s character, but does as well entail a lot about the father’s, despite his absence. The man in this scene begins to explain more to the boy in one conversation about the world in which they live than his father had throughout the entirety of the book. This portrays the innocence his father wanted him to keep despite the world they’re living in. It shows the protectiveness his father had of not only his physical being, but of his uncorrupted mind. The addition of the new scene graffles with the question of whether or not there is a difference between good and bad guys in such a world by determining how this fire that everyone seems to be carrying affects their morals. This scene uses the recurring concept of “carrying the fire” to help prove that there is in fact no good or bad guys, just people trying to survive, and in order to survive they need to keep this fire alive. In the scene, the boy is forced to reflect back to a time in which his own father killed someone, causing for him to argue his own definition of what a good guy is. He knows his father was forced to kill the man in order to protect him, and so the man helps to explain that it’s because he was his father’s fire and so it was his job to keep him alive. By keeping the boy alive, he was keeping himself alive because everyone’s fire is their reason for fighting, reason for living. The man goes on to explain that everyone’s fire is different. Everyone is carrying their own fire in which they prioritize over anything else in order to keep themselves going, meaning that sometimes they will be forced to do things considered wrong. The man uses the word sundry to describe the fires. Sundry, meaning several, is most commonly used to describe ingredients, such a herbs, crafting the concept that everyone’s fire is like their own special ingredient. And so, without these fires, no one would be the same. 



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