The Road Rat Questions....

On page 62, McCarthy talks about the boy playing with his truck and drawing trails in the road with a stick and ash. This at first seems out of place in the novel, as previously the boy acts like the product of the disintegrating world, he shows no resemblance to what we associate a child to be so the reader wonders why this is. It is only then later in the book when the roadrat appears in a truck that the relevance is shown that the boy was acting as a foreshadowing element of the book. It is symbolic of the fact that everything good which happens in the book is a minor representation of something bad that either has or is going to happen. The part where the boy is drawing lines in the sand is later shown to mirror the cracks in the road that they come across, the point being that it is man who have ruined the world and deserve to suffer for it; in the bible God floods the world, in the road, he has blown it up and completely killed it. The time they are in could just be part of God’s cycle of cleansing the world before starting afresh.

The description of the men tells us that they possibly used to be members of the government; they each wear a ‘biohazard suit’ which initially gives the impression that they are significant members of a society, a collective group who are scouring the road as a job for a purpose. Then the reader learns that the suits are ‘stained and filthy’ suggesting that their humanity is also stained and the reader realises that the men have no purpose to be cleaning up the road and the disintegration of the world has been mirrored by the corruption of their humanity. This is backed up by the way that they are carrying ‘lengths of pipe’, in our society, those wearing biohazard suits are the ones trying to stop those which weapons; the fact that they are now combined shows that there is no distinction between good and bad any more, all men are equal and all are living in an ‘every man for himself world’ even the man who seems to be trying to do everything right by his son is carrying a pistol showing that to survive, even good guys have to become murders. The men also have ‘hooded heads’ showing that they resemble the grim reaper and death in every way possible, they are very intimidating to the man and the boy who’s efforts to stay alive seem to have all been for no reason at this point. Finally, when the men are first seen, ‘the first of them were already coming into view’; the way that they are described collectively as ‘them’ shows that the man didn’t even need to stop and look to see who it was, it shows the reader that to the man and the boy, any other human being is a threat and a bad guy; there is no need for them to stop and check and have faith in people as they know almost for certain that all other people are bad. It also suggests that the man knew that they were coming; he seems to know who is bad as he has had an image of the men in his head, when he saw them he didn’t go into great detail about them, just skimmed over their general appearance to show the reader that he has possibly encountered them before and they could be the reason he has only two bullets left.

McCarthy makes a biblical reference when describing the truck as ‘lumbering and creaking like a ship’; he ties in the references to the bible in this part of the book, the fact that the man and the boy are following the birds south to be by the sea and the roadrat’s truck sounds like a ship links in with the story of Noah’s ark. God used this story to restart the world and only kept very few people alive to do so. It could be interpreted though, that this time, God is killing the world; unlike last time where he wrecked the planet, this time mankind have done it for him, so rather than giving them another chance, he is letting the bad people ride the ship and rule the place, and even though the good people try to listen to the birds, there’s never going to be a rainbow waiting for them when they get to the coast, just a thief who steals all of their belongings and turns the man into a murderer after he leaves him naked in the road. This could symbolise God giving up on humanity all together, and to justify this, he is turning all the good people into murderers in order to not feel bad about doing it.

On page 65, the roadrat is described in great detail; McCarthy does this for several reasons, he needs the reader to understand that in the post apocalyptic world, the good guys are very complex and rare beings and can’t be pinpointed to a specific description as there is no definition of a good person in this world as they are so few and far between that no one can justify one man being better than another. The bad guys however, are a common occurrence; due to the way that the reader see’s the world through an omniscient narrator, we assume that the world is how it has been described and that most of the people still alive are bad so there is a lot to be known about them. It is symbolising that, like the bible, the story is supposed to be very black and white: the good people are good and the bad people are bad. This is why the reader never has time when encountering the bad people to reflect on them as we are supposed to see them as bad and never think about their circumstances, they are the bad people and we should see them as such. Interestingly thought, the good people aren’t described as being all good; the way that the atmosphere is literally always grey, shows us that there is room for interpretation as far as the good people are concerned and that the good characters are in fact just human beings, not biblical characters.

The roadrat is particularly explicit when he talks to the man. He doesn’t seem to care who knows what about his life and what he’s doing as he has nothing to live for; if the man kills him then it may be a blessing to him. It also seems to be a statement about education; the roadrat uses simple language and swears when talking as if it is just an average thing which he says, suggesting that all forms of humanity have been removed from the world, people don’t even speak correctly anymore and the world seems to be going forwards in time, yet backwards in development. It also backs up the earlier paragraphs about the stereotypical bad guy who we know so much about because there are so many. Another reason for this use of language could be to show that the roadrat feels no threat from the man; he has friends with him and totally outnumbers the man and his two bullets so feels confident enough to be as casual in his language as he wants as he feels no harm can come from it. This is a contrast to the man whose implicit language creates a sense of mystery around his character and backs up the idea that you can’t put a mark on a good guy. If we learnt too much about the man then we would learn a definition of a supposed good guy and the point of the book would be lost. We would also then have to learn about how he really feels and cares for his son, which would again, totally dismiss the caged creation of a good man on the road.

We learn from the experience with the roadrat how educated the man is; although McCarthy never gives any details away, we learn that he knows words such as ‘frontal lobe’ and other words relating to the brain, suggesting that at some point he must have had some form of education and to quite a high level. This scene also teaches the reader, more worryingly, that the man knows how to kill. In a few seconds he manages to pull the pistol out of his belt, kneel in the correct position, aim, pull the trigger, hit the roadrat and miss his son despite the two being inches away from each other. This shows the reader that he has done it before and provides an explanation to why the wife had to leave the two of them and why the man started with so many bullets and now only has two, and after this scene, one. It shows the reader that he has had practice in killing and from this moment on, there is always a question in the reader’s mind as to whether he is actually a good guy; the biblical reference to the world being ‘gray’ is proven hear as the reader can’t work out whether the man is good or bad. He is doing his best to look after his son, but at the same time is a murderer.

‘A single round left in the revolver. You will not face the truth. You will not.’ This quote from the man’s wife can be interpreted in two different ways; it can either be read as the wife getting mad at the man for not accepting the truth and being angry that he can’t face what is eventually going to happen. She is clearly terrified and the way that her husband would rather live in a state of ignorance than accept the truth frustrates her. The alternative however, is that she is begging him not to see the truth, as if he does, he will have to kill his son and then turn  the pistol on himself; if he realises the truth then he will lose all hope and spirit and his son will suffer for it. For this reason, the woman could be interpreted to be begging for her husband never to accept what has happened to the world, and to never give up.

The other men don’t chase after the man and the boy after they shoot the roadrat as they eat their friend. This shows the serious decline in humanity; people are acting like animals. The man who was once their friend and only a few hours previously was alive and looking for food with them, is now the end to their starvation. It also shows just how hungry these people are. They could have had the opportunity to gain three bodies to eat, yet they were so hungry that they didn’t have the energy to chase after the other two, just saw food and sat down to eat it like animals.

It takes the man along time after the shooting to wipe the ‘gore’ off of the boy’s face for the simple reason that it isn’t life threatening to be covered in someone’s guts. However horrific it may seem, the man kept the boy warm, he fed him and found a safe place for them to set up camp, but didn’t wash his son’s face and hair until all the essential things were taken care of as there is no point, in the apocalyptic world of worrying over anything that isn’t completely life threatening.