The Road - Quotations

This is my child, he said. I wash a dead man's brains out of his hair. That is my job.

This quotation shows the type of grim journey father and son have encountered. Shows the genre of the novel as a thriller/mystery/horror.  My is a possessive pronoun shows that the child is his possession. Monosyllabic tone to it and has very little punctuation. The man sounds hollow with no emotion towards the child.

 Yes I am, he said. I am the one.

The father is letting his child know that he is the only one there to help him. Shows the change in their lives now as before all this occurred the child would have had more people there to have helped him and his father wouldn't have been the only one. Short sentences.


Tomatoes, peaches, beans, apricots. Canned hams. Corned beef.

Shows how the things we take as everyday essentials and don't think to much about eating and having in our cupboards are seen as luxuries to them at the moment. Listing the food items also makes the pace of reading them speed up and it shows the man’s excitement towards having these foods.

Are we still the good guys, he said.

Repetition of the letter "G" when pronounced can sound like the person speaking is worried and chocked up, which the child is. It also creates a childlike image, like there is good and bad guys in a film or a book, like what is happening isn't real. It's so drastic that it just feels like a dream.

We should go, Papa, he said. Yes, the man said. But he didn't.

Papa is a very strong headed man and is clever, he only wants to protect and do what’s best for his son and his son needs to learn have trust in his father. The duologue between father and son is limited, its small talk and I only think they do it just to hear a voice every known and again to stop them going crazy. I think this is because his father is so shocked at the situation he has been put in with his son, he cannot bring himself to talk about it with him, this is not the way he planned to bring his son up into the world, and it’s not your average father and son relationship which he would have much preferred.

The snow fell nor did it cease to fall.

This almost sounds Archaic as it uses the word "Nor". The snow also represents how chilling the novel is. Sympathy is created as we know that the child and his father are walking alone through America in the harshest of weathers.

Okay? Okay.

Again the conversations between father and son are limited and there’s no real emotion shown in it, during the novel there is no deep conversation it's just small talk. The little boy has so many questions about what’s going on and his father never seems interested, he's more focused on reaching the coast in time for winter.

They sat on the edge of the tub and pulled their shoes on and them he handed the boy the pan and soap and he took the stove and the little bottle of gas and the pistol and wrapped in their blankets and they went back across the yard to the bunker.

No punctuation used and is a very long sentence which is unusual as the book has many short sentences. You want to follow them and see what their next adventure is going to be and what’s round the corner for them. It's also very coincidental that the father is able to find all this stuff. He's a very cunning and wise man. It also says what nice things they bring over like soap and blankets, but also a pistol. It shows that even when they think they're safe they have to be alert and it creates suspense throughout the novel.

Tolling in the silence the minutes of the earth.

Creates a chilling image. Like there is no life on earth and they're the only people to have survived. "Tolling" like they don't know what to do with themselevs. Quite a powerful quotation as it creates sympathy and creates a very lonely image in your head.

She was gone and the coldness of it was her final gift. 

The child’s mother didn't want to be a burden on her husband; she also didn’t want him to witness her being brutally abused and even raped. She thought that if she went away it would be a gift to them as they wouldn’t have to go through seeing that. "Coldness" sums up the whole story, it’s a very cold and grim story and the event of the child’s mum killing herself represents this. It also uses the word "girt" as though it's a happy thing to have given to her child and husband but in fact it's the opposite, as they're now both alone.