Key Episodes

Coming across the man who has been struck by lightning

• In this episode the man and boy come across a man close to death who has apparently been struck by lightning. Despite the boys' protests, the man refuses to help the stranger and they walk on past him without a word.
• This episode does show glimpses of humanity whereas before it had simply been a desperate struggle for survival with no thought paid to anything else. But the apperance of 'a set of tracks cooked into the tar' implies that humanity can never be completely removed since evidence of it has been permently encassed in the road. By including this, McCarthy is suggesting that humanity will always be there even if civilisation is not, and terrible deeds can be done (such as the ones later in the novel) yet what makes a human a human is ever present. This links in to the boy later begging his father to try and save the stranger; the boy still has his humanity despite the harshness of the life he is forced to lead which suggests that even in the most bleakest of situations, a person is still capable of goodness. It could be argued that the father refusing to help the stranger contradicts this but perhaps the reason he refuses is because the focus has to be on protecting his son- and surely that is one of the most important aspects of humanity?
• In a way the stranger represents the country because he appears near death and beyond help, just as the burned and ravaged scenery seems. Yet the boy wants to help the man, and although his father doesn't let him, it does provide a sense of hope that if people wanted to help each other then slowly civilisation could be rebuilt. However, on the other hand, when the man and boy look back they see that 'the burned man had fallen over and at that distance you couldn't even tell what it was.' This quotation destroys any budding hope because it links in to the country being unrecognisable from the thriving place it used to be.
• This episode is important because it starts the gradual process of the boy becoming numb to his surroundings and the awful events he will come to witness. When they left the stranger and walked on the boy 'didn't look back again', so he's learning that some things are out of his control and that he must overcome his emotions if he wants to survive. In a way he eventually becomes better at this than his father because the latter remembers life before the disaster whereas the son has no recollection of this and life on the road is all he knows. Furthermore, the quotation, 'he didn't look back' symbolises the boy moving on from his sentiments and no longer acknowledging them since he is beginning to learn that if he wants to survive then he has to leave them behind. Therefore, it could be said that the abandoning of the stranger is a metaphor for the boy starting to leave behind his emotions.

Shooting the 'roadrat'

• In this episode, the man and boy see a truck and a group of men pass by them, so they hide in the undergrowth but one of the men stumbles across them. The man eventually shoots the stranger after he holds a knife to the boy's throat.
• This is the next key episode after the one with the lightning struck man because it shows the next progression in the boy becoming emotionally numb. In this instance he finds himself covered in the blood of a man his father has just shot yet he is 'mute as stone.' The use of the word 'stone' is appropriate since that is what the boy is turning into emotions wise. In this case he's only temporarily like this because then his father grabs him and they flee the scene but when the father is killed at the end of the novel, he is not there to break his son's emotionaless trances, so this implies that the boy will eventually become completely cold and unpenetrable. It ironic that this may help him survive because there's the danger he could become as cold hearted as the cannibals who stalk the roads looking for prey.
• There is some foreshadowing in this section of the book because the boy is playing with a toy truck and then a large one arrives. The contrast is that the small one is a child's toy associated with fun and happiness yet the real truck signals danger; this emphsises the boy's lack of a normal childhood.
• There's an increase in tension when the man points the gun at the stranger and this increase is shown throught the rapid, contionous dialogue. In most other parts of the novel, the dialogue is limited and the reader learns little detail from it yet in this situation it provides the reader with various pieces of information. The strained dialogue ressumes once the stranger is dead which suggests the man finds it easier to communicate with a man holding a knife to his son's throat rather than the son himself. There may be several reasons for this, one being it's likely that the father would feel a sense of guilty for the life that his young son is having to lead. Perhaps in an odd way, the man partly relished talking to a stranger because it's a link to a lost world that his son wasn't part of but that the stranger probably was; the man asking about a supposedly everyday thing like a diseal engine shows a desire for the mundane but normal life that has now been lost.
• The stranger's tatoo also highlights the bleakness of the world they now occupy, since it's a bird but one which was done by 'someone with an illformed notion of their appearance.' While this may simply mean it was done by a poorly skilled tatoo artist, it could also be interpreted to mean that there are no birds left and that they have either died out or escaped somewhere else and this give the reader a hint about how large scale the unknown disaster that wiped out civilisation was. Furthermore, birds are a symbol of freedom and the abscence of them implies that the people still alive are trapped in that country and it makes the reader wonder if there is any hope for the man and boy and if they will ever reach the coast.

Finding the cellar of naked and mutilated people

• In this section of the novel, the characters come across a cellar full of people who are probably being kept there as a food source. One man has had his legs removed. This episode clearly defines the novel as part of the horror genre and for the first time it shows the depths to which people are willing to sink. Furthermore, this episode teaches the reader a lesson in humanity since the people who've kidnapped and locked up others were probably just ordianry people before the destruction of civilisation. It makes the reader wonder what they would do in that situation; everyone would like to think we'd stop and help the prisoners but would we really? So while the reader struggles to connect to the novel on an emotional level, it does pose unanswerable questions.
• There is initially a sense of confusion as the scene the characters are viewing is revealed to the reader bit by bit, which reflects the man's confusion at what the world he used to know has descended into and the boy's confusion about is this all there is to life since he was born after civilisation was destroyed.
• There is also a build up of tension, one of the only examples of this in the novel, which tricks the reader into assuming something will happen. Yet although we experience the shock of finding out that people are being kept in a cellar as a food source, the novel ressumes it's slow, monotonous pace. Although this detaches the reader from the story it is appropriate because it represents the characters' monotonous lives; sometimes they have a glimpse of hope yet it is quickly dashed and they ressume their fight for survival. The reader does not connect with the characters because there is nothing to connect with; they have lost their emotions and don't experience strong feelings themselves, so why should the reader?
• There are some examples of language whilst they are discovering the people in the cellar which shows how bleak the situation is. For example, the smell is refered to as an 'ungodly stench' and the man whispers 'Jesus.' The choice of words which are associated with religion is ironic since religion is a concept of hope and there is little of that in the novel, let alone in this episode. Furthermore, if the man was religious before the destruction of civilisation, then it seems his God has abandoned him, yet he still whispers the name Jesus, who was a symbol of love and hope, which suggests the man is still clinging on to aspects of his past life and may believe that things have to improve. Yet the fact that he whispers the word suggests he thinks he's being foolish and doesn't want to admit to a hope that someone will save him- he realises he's alone but doesn't want to admit it.
• The structure of this episode reflects the man and boy's movements. For example, as they descend the staircase, the sentences are short to represent them moving one step at a time and seeing more things as they go. They finally see everything when the man turns on the light and illuminates the horrific scene before them but in a wider sense he has just illuminated the horror of the entire novel for this event shows that a line has been crossed and that some people's humanity has completely snapped. Therefore it's ironic that by turning the light on and making the room brighter he simultaneously reveals the novel to be a lot darker than initially thought.

The baby on the spit

• In this episode, the man and boy find a baby being roasted on a fire for food, although the perpertrators have fled. Initially they both seem to feel shocked but they quickly continue walking.
• While reading this episode, I didn't feel a particularly emotional response to the events, apart from an obvious feeling of disgust. I think this was because the novel itself is so detached, so the reader doesn't feel a connection with the characters. There is little detail and emotion in the text, usually just the bare facts are given which links in to the bareness of the man and boy's lives and that they've had to block out their emotions otherwise they'd be compelte wrecks and would have little chance of survival. Therefore, the reader fails to connect with them but perhaps that was McCarthy's intention and he wanted the reader to feel as lost and unmoved as the characters themselves are. If so, then it could be argued that the reader does connect with the novel, but the style of writing makes the reader feel in a similar state as the charatcers.
• The baby on the spit shows how everyone from infants to the elderly have been affected by an unknown disaster and how no one can escape the aftermath. The scene makes the man and boy's journey seem hopeless because they appear to be running from something that is unescapable and is consuming everyone and everything. Furthermore, it shows the horrific depths that some people are willing to sink to in order to survive and it could imply that the man and boy may one day fall to these levels themselves. Everyone must have started out optimistic that they would survive but found it impossible to do so without commiting such atrosticies. Therefore this episode also poses several question about whether survival is worth it if the person becomes evil in order to achieve it?
• Before they see the baby, the boy is worried that 'it could be a trap' and although it isn't a literal trap, it is a metaphorical one because the next thing they see will be imprinted in their memories forever and it's unlikely they'll ever be able to completely forget what they are about to see.

Getting to the shore

• In this episode, the man and boy find a disgarded wheelbarrow to carry their things and then eventually find the coast, although the boy is disappointed that the sea is not blue.
• When the man wakes up at night coughing, he feels like 'a man waking in a grave' which can be interpretated in more than one way. On one hand, the word 'grave' may symbolise the world which they live in since it is home to the dead, meaning the countless people who died in the unknown disaster, and the threat of their own deaths is always hanging over the man and boy.