The Gang Member Character Analysis in The Road

The first “bad guy” the man and the boy meet in the novel, a member of a gang of murderers and cannibals who patrol the road in a truck. The gang member leaves his group to go to the bathroom and accidentally encounters the man and boy. After a tense negotiation the stranger lunges at the boy with a knife, and the man shoots the stranger in the forehead. Later the man returns to the scene of the crime and discovers that the stranger’s companions have eaten him.

The Gang Member Character Timeline in The Road

The timeline below shows where the character The Gang Member appears in The Road. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.

...the man raises his head to look and he comes face to face with a bearded man from the group, who is approaching them and unbuckling his belt. (full context)

The man points the pistol at the bearded man and tells him to keep walking quietly forward. The bearded man says he was just... (full context)

The bearded man asks if the man is a doctor, and he invites him to the truck to... (full context)

The bearded man calls the man “chickenshit” and pulls out a knife. The bearded man runs towards the... (full context)

...the pistol with the boy, who protests, and goes back to where he killed the bearded man . The man finds their cart but the boy’s knapsack is gone. The remains of... (full context)

...of it as a “golden chalice, good to house a god.” He realizes that the bearded man he killed was the first human other than the boy that he had spoken to... (full context)