Chapter Summary For The Road

Surviving alone in a apocalyptic world is a very scary thing for the boy to do, and one of the last things his father would have hoped for. As the book progresses, the boy and man come across many other people, many of which are “the bad guys”. As they plod down to the southern coast, it is easy to see that the man is quickly dying. After he does die, the boy is left all alone to fend for himself. He comes across another family, and out of faith decides he has to go with them in order to survive. The events that have taken place during the book, the authors writing style, and the overall excitement of the book has made the book a great read, and I would rate it a 9 out of 10. As the book progressed, I realized how symbolism was shown through

The writing style in this book was much different than most nonfiction books I have read, and it was cool to see something different for once. Almost the entire book is written in third person with no quotation marks, and the author never reveals the names of the boy or the man. I think one reason he did this is to make the book a little bit simpler. Another theory I have for why he did this is to give the reader a message that names don’t matter in the apocalyptic world. In today’s modern world, names define who you are and give you a personality. Without giving the characters names, the author is giving the reader a sense of social destruction and a more primal way of life. Cormac McCarthy is also somehow able to combine the crude violence in the novel with an almost sweet father-son tale underneath the surface. As the two of them are trying to survive in the non-forgiving apocalyptic world, the father is also able to teach his son some basic morals and values on the way. The boy is really all the man has left in life. “I want to be with you. You cant. Please. You cant. You have to carry the fire.” As the man is dying, he tells the boy that he has to carry the fire, which basically means he needs the keep having hope. The boy stayed next to his father as he reposed and eventually died for three days. That shows how much the boy loved his father, and almost didn’t want to

Cormac McCarthy was able to do this by putting many spots of uncertainty in the book. You never really know what is going to happen next, which makes you never want to put the book down. Whether the boy and man are starving and on the search for food, or if they are hiding from truculent cannibals, the book is almost always exciting. The author also throws in lots of ups and downs to play with the reader’s emotions. Most of it is filled with downs such as the man getting shot by an arrow and eventually dying from his sickness, but there are also very few ups which the reader looks forward to such as finding the coke and the bunker to live in. McCarthy also lets the reader know how they are doing morally based on their dreams. “I don’t have good dreams anyway. They’re always about something bad happening. You said that was okay because good dreams are not a good sign.”(McCarthy 269). Later after that the man says that he is having good dreams and knows that the end is near. After the man dies, the story ends happily with the boy surprisingly finding a good family to take care of