The Road (2006) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

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Summary edit see section history

Characters/People edit see section history

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• The Man/Papa: The main protagonist who is traveling with his young son toward the coast as they try to survive amidst starvation, the weather and human predators. The man shows extraordinary strength in the face of hardship. His love for his son is what drives him.
• The Boy: The Boy is the symbol of endless compassion and the hope of rebuilding mankind. Throughout the novel, The Boy must overcome many of fears and struggles. He's very sympathetic and the most vibrant sign of life around.
• The Mother: The Boy's mother who is not actually living contemporary to the story but is only remembered in flashbacks. She leaves her husband and her son and kills herself. She cannot fight anymore and takes the easy way out.
• The Old Man: Foul-smelling and filthy even by post-apocalyptic standards, the old man is a nearly blind, cynical echo of both life on Earth as it once was and a grim reminder of the future of mankind. The Old Man is barely alive and it is amazing that he's made it this far.
• The boy of the same age: While the boy is on the road, he glimpses the face of a boy of the same age as his in ruined house. The image of this boy lingers with the boy throughout the book, as he always wonders why they didn't help him.
• The man and woman and their two kids: This family is another group travelling south. They are also "carrying the fire."
• Roving bands of cannibalistic survivors: Organized groups of survivors eating people. These individuals are usually found carrying lead pipes or even guns. Even a big deisel truck load full of rugged, bearded men, and even some women, many of them pregnant. They are so hungry they will eat anything.
• Ely: An old traveler the man and his son come across. They have a fireside conversation for the sake of the son.

Quotes edit see section history

• “He thought if he lived long enough the world at last would be lost. Like the dying world the newly blind inhabit, all of it slowly fading from memory.”

• “He walked out into the road and stood. The silence. The salitter drying from the earth. The mudstained shapes of floating cities burned to the waterline. At a crossroads a ground set with dolmen stones where the spoken bones of oracles lay moldering. No sound but the wind. What will you say? A living man spoke these lines? He sharpened a quill with his small penknife to scribe these things in sloe or lampblack? At some reckonable and entabled moment? He is coming to steal my eyes. To seal my mouth with dirt.”

• “There is no God and we are his prophets.”

• “You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.”

  Papa

• “...Look around you. Ever is a long time. But the boy knew what he knew. That ever is no time at all.”

• “If you break little promises you'll break big ones. That's what you said.”

  The Boy

• “So, he whispered to the sleeping boy. I have you.”

  Papa

• “If trouble comes when you least expect it then maybe the thing to do is to always expect it.”

  Papa

• “Beggars cant be choosers... that would be asking too much.”

• “The frailty of everything revealed at last. Old and troubling issues resolved into nothingness and night. The last instance of a thing takes the class with it.”

• “Years later he’d stood in the charred ruins of a library where blackened books lay in pools of water. Shelves tipped over. Some rage at the lies arranged in their thousands row on row. He picked up one the books and thumbed through the heavy bloated pages. He’d not have thought the value of the smallest thing predicated on a world to come. It surprised him. That the space which these things occupied was itself an expectation. He let the book fall and took a last look around and made his way out into the cold gray light.”

• “He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.”

• “Each the other's world entire.”

• “•Are we going to die?•Sometime. Not now.•And we're still going south.•Yes.•So we'll be warm.•Yes.”

• “•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.”

• “•Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever•You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.”

• “•The boy was all that stood between him and death.”

• “•All the trees in the world are going to fall sooner or later. But not on us.”

• “•The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later.”

• “•They are going to rape us and kill us and eat us and you wont face it. You'd rather wait for it to happen. But I cant. I cant.”

• “•They say that women dream of danger to those in their care and men of danger to themselves. But I dont dream at all.”

• “•If they find you you are going to have to do it. Do you understand? Shh. No crying. Do you hear me? You know how to do it. You put it in your mouth and point it up. Do it quick and hard.”

• “•We wouldnt ever eat anybody, would we?•No. Of course not. Because we're the good guys And we're carrying the fire.”

• “•Crate upon crate of canned goods. Tomatoes, peaches, beans, apricots. Canned hams. Corned beef. Hundreds of gallons of water in ten gallon plastic jerry jugs. Paper towels, toiletpaper, paper plates. Plastic trashbags stuffed with blankets.”

• “•Do you wish you would die?•No. But I might wish I had died. When you're alive you've always got that ahead of you.•Or you might wish you'd never been born.•Well. Beggars cant be choosers.•Nobody wants to be here and nobody wants to leave.”

• “•How would you know if you were the last man on earth? he said.•I dont guess you would know it. You'd just be it.•Nobody would know it.•It wouldnt make any difference. When you die it's the same as if everybody else did too.•I guess God would know it. Is that it?•There is no God.•No?•There is no God and we are his prophets.”

• “•When we're all gone at last then there'll be nobody here but death and his days will be numbered too. He'll be out in the road there with nothing to do and nobody to do it to. He'll say: Where did everybody go?”

• “•There were few nights lying in the dark that he did not envy the dead.”

• “•Are you real brave?•Just medium.•What's the bravest thing you ever did?•He spat into the road a bloody phlegm. Getting up this morning, he said.”

• “•Is it real? The fire?•Yes it is.•Where is it? I dont know where it is.•Yes you do. It's inside you. It was always there. I can see it.•I'll talk to you every day, he whispered. And I wont forget. No matter what.”

• “It's snowing the boy said. He looked at the sky. A single grey flake sifting down. He caught it in his hand and watched it expire there like the last host of christendom.”

• “The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such as one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes. So, he whispered to the boy. I have you.”

• “He thought each memory recalled must do some violence to its origins. As in a party game. Say the word pass and pass it on. So be sparing. What you alter in the remembering has yet a reality, known or not.”

• “- We used to talk about death, she said. We dont any more. Why is that? - I dont know. - It's because it's here. There's nothing left to talk about. - I wouldnt leave you. - I dont care. It's meaningless. You can think of me as a faithless slut if you like. I've taken a new lover. He can give me what you cannot. - Death is not a lover. - Oh yes he is.”

  The Man and The Mother

• “He said if he were God he would have made the world just so and no different.”

• “He Knew only that the child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.”

• “The soft black talc blew through the streets like squid ink uncoiling along a sea floor and the cold crept down and the dark came early and the scavengers passing down the steep canyons with their torches trod silky holes in the drifted ash that closed behind them silently as eyes. (pg 181)”

• “He thought that in the history of the world it might even be that there was more punishment than crime but he took small comfort from it.”

  Papa

• “Query: How does the never to be differ from what never was?””

• “"When did you eat last?" "I dont know." "You dont remember." "I ate just now." "Do you want to eat with us?" " I don't know." "You don't know?" " Eat what?" "Maybe some beef stew, with crackers, and coffee." "What do i have to do?" "Tell us where the world went."”

  Papa and The Old Man

• “"They lay listening. Can you do it? When the time come? When the time comes there will be no time. Now is the time. Curse God and die. What if it doesnt fire? It has to fire. What if it doesnt fire? Could you crush that beloved skull with a rock? Is there such a being within you of which you know nothing? Can there be? Hold him in your arms. Just so. The soul is quick. Pull him toward you. Kiss him. Quickly.”

  Papa thinking

• “He'd stop and lean on the cart and the boy would go on and then stop and look back and he would raise his weeping eyes and see him standing there in the road looking back at him from some unimaginable future, glowing in that waste like a tabernacle.”

• “•What is it?•Nothing. I had a bad dream.•What did you dream about?•Nothing.•Are you okay?•No.•He put his arms around him and held him. It's okay, he said.•I was crying. But you didnt wake up.•I'm sorry. I was just so tired.•I meant in the dream.”

  Papa, The Boy

• “"Perhaps in the world's destruction it would be possible at last to see how it was made"”

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

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• Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever,

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• People were always getting ready for tomorrow. I didnt believe in that. Tomorrow wasnt getting ready for them. It didnt even know they were there.

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• He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.

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• No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one’s heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes. So, he whispered to the sleeping boy. I have you.

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• On this road there are no godspoke men. They are gone and I am left and they have taken with them the world. Query: How does the never to be differ from what never was?

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• He thought each memory recalled must do some violence to its origins. As in a party game. Say the word and pass it on. So be sparing. What you alter in the remembering has yet a reality, known or not.

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• Where men cant live gods fare no better. You’ll see. It’s better to be alone. So I hope that’s not true what you said because to be on the road with the last god would be a terrible thing so I hope it’s not true. Things will be better when everybody’s gone.

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• gryke in the stone and there he crouched coughing and he coughed for a long time. Then he just knelt in the ashes. He raised his face to the paling day. Are you there? he whispered. Will I see you at the last? Have you a neck by which to throttle you? Have you a heart? Damn you eternally have you a soul? Oh God, he whispered. Oh God.

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

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• The Road
• The Beach
• The Cave
• The Forest

Organizations edit see section history

• Bloodcults: Roving bands of survivors that harvest humans as one of the last remaining sources of food.

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Glossary edit see section history

• catamite: handsome youth kept as a sexual companion in ancient Rome, usually in a pederastic relationship
• Krugerrand: South African currency made of gold

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

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• Road itself: It's a path, a path which has to be followed in order to obtain peace, a path to finally escape the horrors of war, a path where you will meet good people and bad people. It resembles our lives, one's life is a road, where one travels in order to achieve eternal happiness, peace and success, on the road of life, one meets good people and bad people. One has to chose the good ones, help others, one has to find happiness in little things of life, one has to struggle, one has to be brave and never back down and bravely follow on the path, which would take one to their final destiny. On this road of life, people will come and go, loved ones will die, but one has to keep going. On this road of life one will encounter enemies, one will encounter people who have much more difficulties. This is life, a road, where one has to be tested. Those who achieve it, would finally be able to get to the other side of the road - that is the life hereafter.
• Hope: Even when things are at their absolute darkest. There is still hope.
• The Boy: This unique character is the only person who has not lost purity and innocence that has been lost in the post-apocalyptic world. The Boy is the symbol of hope.
• The Fire: Symbolic of hope and life. It is a metaphor for the fire in one's mind that ensures one does not give up hope.
• Moral Ambiguity: This is a big theme in this book. What do you do when xyz happens? Moral ambiguity is always present in our lives as it is for papa and the boy on the road.

Series & Lists edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Cormac McCarthy (Author)

Other Contributors:

1. Luis Murillo Fort (Translator) - Spanish edition

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• Pulitzer Prize (2007: Fiction)
• Quill Award (2007: General Fiction)
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize (2006: Fiction)
• National Book Critics Circle Award (Finalist, 2006: Fiction)
• Geffen Award (Finalist, 2009: Best Translated Science Fiction Book)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: PS3563.C337R63 2006
• Dewey: 813.54

Notes for Parents edit see section history

High School - it is easy to read but it has a lot of death and mature themes

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Authors, A-Z › ( M ) › McCarthy, Cormac
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Contemporary
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

• Wikipedia: Learn more about The Road on Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
• Daniel De Guia's review of "The Road"

Movie Connections edit see section history

• The Road (2009) (IMDb): With Viggo Mortensen, Charlize Theron, Kodi Smit-McPhee and Guy Pearce 111 min IMDB rate : 7.4/10

More Books Like This edit see section history

Books That Influenced This Book edit see section history