In The Road, the world has become a brutal place. McCarthy lists some of the atrocities here: murder and derangement, both of which are horrifically displayed (e.g. "the dead impaled on spikes along the road"). He also offers us a smart definition of violence: "there was more punishment than crime." Don't we call judicious (and sanctioned) retribution "justice"? And those other acts, unsanctioned and excessive, "violence"?

We're not exactly sure what "godspoke" means – McCarthy made up this word. But, with the context of the sentence in mind, we think it might mean something like "godly." In any event, The Man feels that the loss of other good and pious men equals the loss of the world. He might be right. That said, as one critic suggests, isn't he forgetting about The Boy?

We hear plenty of The Man's dreams, but this is one of the few times The Boy shares a dream. It's a scary one, but according to The Man's take on dreams, bad dreams mean one is confronting reality instead of running from it. How does this dream relate to reality, though? What does it tell us about the world in which The Man and The Boy find themselves?

Well, we're actually unsure how to answer that question. Our best guess is that somehow the world itself – like the penguin – is mechanically progressing toward extinction. And, like the penguin without a winder, there's no way to stop it. On a gut level, though, we find The Boy's dream both frightening and funny. It's a penguin for crying out loud – that's a little silly. But don't children dream of things like penguins? And doesn't that make the dream believable? (And then frightening when you realize no one wound it?)