She sees that he will do literally anything to keep his boy alive, even if it means degrading his own humanity. She sees the father has lost his humanity and is why she implores him to “cobble together a passable ghost”. This is also the unspoken reason the wife is killing herself, with obsidian, because as she says “we are the walking dead”.

He is rationalizing to himself that the boy couldn’t know. This is why he says to himself that his boy never saw the boy he killed. He is saying that the boy thought he saw a dog because of the dog that the boy thinks he killed. The father who usually operates in a very direct, emotionless, and calculated manner is rationalizing to himself. He thinks thinks the boy believes he killed the dog, though it is stated the dog was too skinny. “The first bullet was used by the father to kill a boy for food. Here’s one interpretation I came across that has me thinking: The Road is a much more compelling and demanding book than its predecessor. The landscape is destroyed, nothing moves save the ash on the wind and cruel, lawless men. They have no idea what, if anything, awaits them there. In a burned-out America, a father and his young son walk under a darkened sky, heading slowly for the coast.

McCarthy doesn’t bother filling you in on how the world got that way. If you’re looking for revelation or exposition, don’t bother. This is a book about survival and love.Hi Tim – hope to meet you some time at Landmark. 'Despite Cormac McCarthys reputation as an ornate stylist, The Road represents both the logical terminus, and a kind of ultimate triumph, of the American minimalism that became well-known in the 1980s under the banner of dirty realism. With an introduction by novelist John Banville.At 241 pages the The Road never outstays its welcome. It’s the perfect length and.Don’t read the book if you’re in a good mood. The book will sort that out quick smart.McCarthy writes the book in an almost detached style. Everything about the writing, including the dialogue between the father and son is so matter of fact. And yet, somehow, you feel the father’s pain of rearing a son on a dead world, and a son’s pain of knowing that he’ll may never realise his potential.But that makes sense, in a world turned into ash, what’s the purpose of having a name? There are no place names. In fact there are a bugger all names in the book. We never know who the father and son actually are.It’s a book about a father and son trying to survive in a world that has been turned to ash.

The road cormac mccarthy goodreads