The Road Sections 11-20 Quotes
The Road Sections 11-20 Quotes
How we cite the quotes:
Citations follow this format: (Section.Paragraph)
And then later in the darkness:
[The Boy:] Can I ask you something?
[The Man:] Yes. Of course you can.
[The Boy:] What would you do if I died?
[The Man:] If you died I would want to die too.
[The Boy:] So you could be with me?
[The Man:] Yes. So I could be with you.
[The Boy:] Okay. (11.16-11.22)
Earlier in the novel, The Woman criticizes The Man for using The Boy as a reason to live. ("The one thing I can tell you is that you wont survive for yourself" [93.22].) We think The Woman's approach is a little cynical. Isn't it a good thing that The Man wants to live in order to care for the boy? That he would die to be with The Boy? We're going out on a limb here, but we think The Road contains one of the most moving father-son relationships in all of American literature.
He [The Boy] was a long time going to sleep. After a while he turned and looked at the man. His face in the small light streaked with black from the rain like some old world thespian. Can I ask you something? he said.
[The Man:] Yes. Of course.
[The Boy:] Are we going to die?
[The Man:] Sometime. Not now. (11.1-11.4)
This is about as terse and true a statement of mortality as you'll see anywhere. The Man and The Boy are out in an unforgiving, dangerous world where even the slightest misstep could lead to death. (Like our world, only with its dangers multiplied to the nth degree.) It's pretty simple, The Man says. We're all going to die – just not now.
Quote 3
He woke before dawn and watched the gray day break. Slow and half opaque. He rose while the boy slept and pulled on his shoes and wrapped in his blanket he walked out through the trees. He descended into a 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 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. (13.1)
In this passage, it seems like The Man might actually believe in God. If someone starts asking questions about the physical characteristics of God – "Will I see you at last? Have you a neck by which to throttle you?" – it's possible this someone has at least a smidgeon of faith. By getting angry at a possible God, he lets on that he just might believe in God. It's also important to note that if he does really believe in an all-powerful being, The Man is quite angry with him.
Quote 4
The blackness he woke to on those nights was sightless and impenetrable. A blackness to hurt your ears with listening. Often he had to get up. No sound but the wind in the bare and blackened trees. He rose and stood tottering in that cold autistic dark with his arms outheld for balance while the vestibular calculations in his skull cranked out their reckonings. An old chronicle. To seek out the upright. No fall but preceded by a declination. He took great marching steps into the nothingness, counting them against his return. Eyes closed, arms oaring. Upright to what? Something nameless in the night, lode or matrix. To which he and the stars were common satellite. Like the great pendulum in its rotunda scribing through the long day movements of the universe of which you may say it knows nothing and yet know it must. (19.1)
We're not sure why The Man has to get up in the night. He's not tending a fire in this passage – maybe to scout out suspicious sounds? Or cough? Anyway, McCarthy's description of total darkness is pretty cool: "a blackness to hurt your ears with listening." And although there's total darkness in the night, The Man doesn't think there's total nothingness. He guesses there might be "[s]omething nameless in the night, lode [rich source of something] or matrix" (i.e., there might be a very anonymous and quiet God out there).
They passed through the city at noon of the day following. He kept the pistol to hand on the folded tarp on top of the cart. He kept the boy close to his side. The city was mostly burned. No sign of life. Cars in the streets caked with ash, everything covered with ash and dust. Fossil tracks in the dried sludge. A corpse in a doorway dried to leather. Grimacing at the day. He pulled the boy closer. Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said. You might want to think about that.
[The Boy:] You forget some things, dont you?
[The Man:] Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget. (14.1)
Memory becomes both plague and salvation for The Man. The barren landscape that he and The Boy wander across has little in common with the world The Man remembers. It's all ashes and death. So the memories The Man has of a more or less normal world – our world – highlight just how terrible things have gotten. Memory is necessarily tinged with sadness and loss for The Man. That said, he also recalls moments of terrific beauty from the former world, and these provide sustenance and hope – though only occasionally. It would be more accurate, we think, for The Man to say he remembers a lot of things but that he can't help pairing all memories with loss (see 226.1 below).