The Road: Pages 124-156 Summary & Analysis

In the evening a storm breaks over them and they stop for a long, cold night. In the morning they wrap themselves up like “mendicant friars” and set out again. That evening the boy wants to have a fire, but the man confesses that he dropped the lighter. Later the boy asks if the bad guys were going to kill and eat those people, and the man admits that they were. The boy accepts that they couldn’t help the people because otherwise they would be killed and eaten too.

They keep traveling, and pass through towns with billboards that have been painted over to warn people away. They stop to eat the last apples, and after some coaxing the boy asks if they would ever eat people. The man assures him that they wouldn’t, even if they were starving – which they are now – because they are the “good guys,” and they’re “carrying the fire.” As they move on the man starts fires by raking pliers against rock. Several days pass without food and the boy is so thin he looks like an “alien.”

The man starts to think that death is near and he finds himself sobbing sometimes at night. He realizes he isn’t crying about death but about “beauty or goodness,” things he hasn’t thought about in a long time. He dreams that the boy is dead and he wakes up in terror, but the boy is fine. They search through charred, empty houses and find nothing. One day the man steps out of a house and suddenly sees the “absolute truth of the world,” that the earth is lonely and cold in an endless black universe, and the man and the boy are just “two hunted animals” crawling across its surface on “borrowed time.”

The man starts dreaming about his wife again and now he doesn’t want to wake up. He thinks about how the act of remembering changes the memory somehow, so he must be careful with the precious past. One day they walk through a house in a field and the man sees their reflection in a mirror. He raises the pistol at first but the boy stops him, saying “it’s us.” The man finds some morning glory seeds in a shed and pockets them, but he doesn’t know why. He finds a can of gasoline too.

The man walks back towards the house and then stops in the yard, feeling faint and wondering how many more days they have until death takes them. As he lingers he feels a hollow space in the yard. He digs up the dirt and finds a locked hatch in the ground. The boy is terrified and begs the man not to open it. The man says it’s okay, but he takes the boy onto the porch to calm down for a while first. The man makes a new lamp out of a bottle. He sees the boy’s face and fears he has been irrevocably damaged.

Finally the man goes back to open the hatch door. He lights the lamp first and gives it to the boy. He reassures the boy that this door isn’t like the other one, and that because they are the good guys they have to keep trying. The man breaks the lock with a shovel and opens the door. He kisses the boy’s forehead before he climbs down the stairs.

The man descends into a concrete bunker, and he whispers for the boy to follow him down. The bunker is filled with canned food, supplies, and cots. The man and the boy stare in wonder. They find a lantern and the boy reads the words on all the different cans, the “richness of a vanished world.” The boy wonders aloud if it’s all real, but then he worries that the owners of all this food are still alive, as he doesn’t want to steal. The man assures the boy that the owners are dead, and they would want them to take the food and supplies, as they were “good guys” too.

They have pears and peaches for dinner, and the man notices that the boy is still wary, probably fearing that he will wake up in the darkness at any moment. After dinner the man puts the boy to bed in a cot and jams the hatch door shut with pliers. Then he starts going through all the cans and supplies, sorting everything. He finds some gold coins and some rifle shells, but no gun. He eats some chocolate and goes to sleep.

The man and the boy sleep for a whole day and a half. When he wakes up the man has to change his perspective, as he had been prepared to die before they found all these supplies. He makes coffee and cooks breakfast for the boy, who wakes up and looks “drugged” with wonder at the bounty. The boy suggests that they thank the people who left all these supplies. The boy says a makeshift prayer thanking them for the food and hoping that they are “safe in heaven with God.”

Later they leave the bunker and go up to the house, carrying water and a little stove. The man fills a hot bath for the boy, and the boy says he is “warm at last.” Afterward they wash their jeans in the water and then return to the bunker. The man says they can only stay there another day or two, because it’s dangerous, but he also reassures the boy that no one will find them. After the boy falls asleep the man drags a mattress over the hatch cover to hide it. Then he whittles five wooden bullets and puts them in the pistol so it looks fully loaded. He kisses the boy, looks around at “this tiny paradise,” and goes to sleep.

The man and boy explore the nearby town and find a new grocery cart to carry supplies. The boy wishes they could live in the bunker forever, but the man says someone might find them. The man says they probably won’t meet any “good guys” on the road, so he has to stay scared and cautious most of the time.

They return to the bunker and the man cuts the boy’s hair. Then he cuts his own hair and shaves off his beard. They eat a “sumptuous meal by candlelight,” play checkers, and go to sleep. It’s raining when the man wakes up, and he remembers that he dreamed about strange creatures. The man thinks about how he is like an alien to the boy, “a being from a planet that no longer existed.” He recognizes that he can never rebuild the memory of that lost world for the boy. He partly regrets finding the bunker, as a piece of him always longs for death.

The man jury rigs a tank of gas and they spend the rest of the day eating and sleeping, delayed in their exit by the rain. That night they pack the grocery cart with supplies. The next morning they bathe again, eat breakfast, and leave the bunker to set off on the road again.