The Road Sections 1-10 Quotes
The Road Sections 1-10 Quotes
How we cite the quotes:
Citations follow this format: (Section.Paragraph)
Quote 1
When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. (1.1)
For all of the violence in this book, McCarthy opens it surprisingly tenderly. Some writers say the whole short story or novel should be present in the first paragraph. McCarthy goes one step further: here's the whole book in the first sentence. To sum up: It's dark and cold and nasty outside, but these characters love each other.
Quote 2
When it was light enough to use the binoculars he glassed the valley below. Everything paling away into the murk. The soft ash blowing in loose swirls over the blacktop. He studied what he could see. The segments of road down there among dead trees. Looking for anything of color. Any movement. Any trace of standing smoke. He lowered the glasses and pulled down the cotton mask from his face and wiped his nose on the back of his wrist and then glassed the country again. Then he just sat there holding the binoculars and watching the ashen daylight congeal over the land. He knew that the child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke. (3.1)
Although it seems like The Boy might believe in God, it's not all that clear whether The Man does. However, The Man does believe in the sanctity of The Boy. Meaning, he believes that The Boy is holy – maybe the only thing holy left in the world. This provides The Man with purpose: if he can protect The Boy, he's doing something good. It's his "warrant" – in a sense, the sacred activity that authorizes The Man to live.
Quote 3
He pushed away the plastic tarpaulin and raised himself in the stinking robes and blankets and looked toward the east for any light but there was none. In the dream from which he'd wakened he had wandered in a cave where the child led him by the hand. Their light playing over the wet flowstone walls. Like pilgrims in a fable swallowed up and lost among the inward parts of some granitic beast. (1.1)
We think the dream here refers to the biblical story of Jonah and the Whale. So Jonah, a good man and a prophet, is supposed to go to Nineveh and tell the people there to repent or else. He doesn't and ends up being swallowed by a whale. The Man and The Boy are kind of like Jonah, only the whole world has become the belly of the whale. They're wandering a world of desperate hunger, a maw (or stomach!) terrible enough to discourage anyone.