The Road: Pages 189-246 Summary & Analysis

One night the boy wakes up from a bad dream and he won’t tell the man about it. The man tells him that if he tries to escape into a better world of dreams he will have given up, and the man won’t let him give up. They finally set out again, but the man is weak from his sickness and feeling “faint of heart” despite his encouraging speech.

As they go down the road they come to a place where dead bodies are trapped in the melted blacktop, their faces twisted in pain. The boy accepts that “what you put in your head is there forever” with a strange calm. He asks why the people didn’t leave the road when it was melting, and the man says because everything else was on fire too.

They go further and the man has a bad coughing fit. Then they sit in the road and eat and the boy says he thinks someone is following them. The man agrees, and suggests that they hide and see who they are. They hide the cart and go up a hill to watch. The boy falls asleep and then the man sees four people, three men and a pregnant woman, coming down the road. They cross a bridge and disappear down the road.

The man studies the map and the boy suggests that they haven’t gone as far as the man thinks they have. The next day they see smoke in the distance and they go investigate it, as the man says they are desperate for food again. When the reach the fire the strangers have fled. The boy is scared but they come closer to see what the strangers were cooking, and they find a human infant roasting over the coals. The boy looks away, traumatized.

The man worries that the boy won’t talk anymore. They make camp and the man checks the map again. They’re still far from the coast, and the man doesn’t know what they’ll find there if they make it. They pass through a mill town and then stop to rest. The boy wishes aloud that they could have saved that baby and taken it with them. They find a creek and the boy goes off to drink from it, running for the first time in a long while.

They go a few days without food and start getting weaker, sometimes sleeping right in the road. The boy sees a distant, well-camouflaged house and they set off for it. On the way the man finds three arrowheads made of white quartz on the ground. When they come to the house the boy is scared to go in, but the man eventually convinces him.

They wander through the empty rooms and find some cans of vegetables. The man says they might be poison so they have to cook them very well. They bring wood into the house and start a fire in the fireplace. The man takes off the boy’s shoes and whispers words of comfort to him. The man cooks the food and the boy falls asleep at the dining room table.

The next day the boy insists that they not go upstairs, but the man wants to search for food or blankets. The boy argues but then gives up, accepting that the man will have his way. The man does find more blankets upstairs and they stay in the house for four days. They take baths and the man cuts their hair. It rains the whole time. The man finds a wheelbarrow and some new shoes for them.

The man thinks about his goal of reaching the coast and realizes that he has no reason to hope the coast is better. He can’t tell but it seems like the world is getting darker every day. They leave the house and go through a small town grocery store, where the boy stares at a mounted deer head for a long time. They spend long days traveling through open, ashy country.

One day they catch their first sight of the ocean in the distance. It is gray and lifeless, filled with ash and slag. The boy looks disappointed and the man apologizes that it isn’t blue. They make their way down to the ocean and sit on the lifeless beach. The boy asks if there could be ships out there, or another father and son sitting on the other side of the ocean. The man says it’s possible.

The boy asks if he can go swimming and the man allows it. The boy runs out and plays in the freezing surf, and when he comes back he is crying, but he won’t tell the man why. At night they make a fire on the beach. The man wonders if there are still “deathships” out at sea, or maybe giant squid miles below the ocean’s surface. The man remembers a night long ago, before the disaster, when he cooked crabs on the beach, and watched his sleeping wife, and felt that God had made the world a perfect place.

The next morning they search the beach and the man calls them “beachcombers.” They come to a rock jetty and see a large sailboat on its side a little ways offshore. The man makes them wait and watch for a while, and then they walk further along the beach, among the “senseless” tideline of fish bones and rubble.

The man decides to explore the boat. He gives the boy the pistol and tells him to wait on the beach, and the man strips and swims through the icy water. He reaches the boat, which is called “Pájaro de Esperanza” (“Bird of Hope”), and climbs aboard. He finds the boat looted only by the waves and “some terrible force” that swept everything away. He expects something horrible but there is nothing. The man finds some new seaworthy clothes and puts them on.

He finds some books and papers written in Spanish, and then a waterproof bag that he fills with odds and ends. He regularly checks on the boy, who sits huddled on the beach and eventually falls asleep. In a locker the man finds a heavy box and inside is an old brass sextant. It is in perfect condition, complex and beautiful, and it is “the first thing he’d seen in a long time that stirred him.” He puts the sextant back in the locker.

The man gathers up some rope and examines the galley. There are lots of cans of food, but only a few seem unspoiled. He notices that he is being especially practical about this “windfall,” but at the same time he isn’t sure that it’s good luck at all, as “there were few nights lying in the dark that he did not envy the dead.”

The man swims ashore and greets the boy with his finds. He tells the boy that they have to find shelter, as it smells like rain is coming. They travel a while and then realize that the boy left the pistol on the beach. The boy sobs and apologizes, but the man comforts him. They turn back for the pistol, eventually find it, and then get caught by the darkness on their way back to the cart.

They stumble forward in the blackness, which is occasionally lit by flashes of lightning. It starts to rain, and eventually the man hears the rain against the tarp, and they find the cart. They fall asleep under the tarp, and when they wake up there is a corpse washed up by the waves. They spend the morning offloading the ship, with the boy staying on the beach and dragging the seabag in by the rope.

Afterward the man has a coughing fit and tastes blood. He recognizes that he is dying. Later he decides to make one last trip out to the boat, even though the boy says he’s scared. The man explores the boat again, and after some careful searching he finds a first-aid kit, a flarepistol, and some flares.

The man swims back to shore and tells the boy about his finds. The boy asks if the flarepistol is to shoot someone, and the man says that it might set them on fire. The boy realizes that there is no one to signal for, but the man offers to shoot it off that night “like a celebration.” The boy asks about the people on the boat, and whether they are dead. The man says they are probably dead, as he knows the boy worries about taking things from living people.

The boy asks about how many people there are in the world, and the man says he doesn’t think there are very many. The boy asks if humans could be alive somewhere other than on earth. The man says probably not. After a while he assures the boy that there are other people, and that they will find them. While the man makes dinner the boy builds a town in the sand. The boy asks if they could write a message for the “good guys,” but the man says the “bad guys” might see it too, which makes the boy sad.

That night the man loads the flarepistol and fires it over the ocean. It explodes like a firecracker in the darkness. The boy says it would be hard for anybody to see it from far away, and the man realizes that by “anybody” the boy means both the good guys and God.