The man remembers an evening spent on the lake with his uncle. Remnants of the old world often - like houses, billboards, and hotels - clash with the reality of the new world, reminding the man of the life he once lived. They come upon towns and cities that are mere shells of what they once were. They are running low on food, and the man is fighting a bad cough, one that sprays blood on the gray snow.
They have a grocery cart with them, filled with their belongings and supplies for their journey. When the boy wakes, they set out on the road yet again, making their way through a "nuclear winter" that follows them from start to finish as they make their way south to the coast, hoping to find a better life there, although the man knows there's no reason for him to hope that things will be different for them there. The pistol, though, only has two bullets. He keeps a pistol with him at all times, unless he goes inside a house. He is all the man has, and the man believes that he's been entrusted by God to protect the boy. Bad dreams, on the other hand, are reassuring because they demonstrate that the man and boy are still persevering in the world they inhabit.įrom the start, it's clear that the boy is all the man worries about. The man's dreams play a large role throughout the novel the man tells both himself and the boy that good dreams are to be feared because they indicate a form of acceptance, and that death would inevitably be near. While the boy sleeps, the man reflects upon one of his dreams of a creature with dead eyes.
Because this is a post-apocalyptic story, the exemption of these punctuation elements might serve as a way for McCarthy to indicate that in this new world, remnants of the old world - like electricity, running water, and humanity - no longer exist, or they exist in very limited amounts. McCarthy also chooses to use no quotation marks in dialogue and for some contractions, he leaves out the apostrophes. Stylistically, the writing is very fragmented and sparse from the beginning, which reflects the barren and bleak landscape through which the man and boy are traveling. The story is set in a post-apocalyptic world, date and place unnamed, though the reader can assume it's somewhere in what was the United States because the man tells the boy that they're walking the "state roads." Neither the man nor the boy is given a name this anonymity adds to the novel's tone that this could be happening anywhere, to anyone. The novel begins with the man and boy in the woods, the boy asleep, as the two of them are making their journey along the road.
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