The Boy's mother states (pretty confidently) the habits of the "bloodcults" roaming the roads. They rape, steal, and murder without discretion. Not to mention the fact that they're cannibals. The world has become predictably violent, meaning that The Woman is able to say with absolute certainty what these "bloodcults" will do if given the chance. The Man doesn't argue with her.

There's plenty of violence in The Road. The gangs roving the road don't play nice, and this means The Boy and The Man have to do some pretty unsavory things, too, in order to survive. But it's important to remember the presence (and threat) of self-violence in the novel. The Woman commits suicide to avoid violation by others. The Man also has two bullets saved in the pistol to kill himself and The Boy if things take a turn for the worse.

This is a complicated exchanged between The Man and The Boy. In a sense, The Man does know, in their terrible situation, how to keep going. You find someone to devote yourself to (e.g. The Boy) and spend every waking moment fulfilling that purpose. But he can't tell that to The Boy. For one, he doesn't express his feelings like that. And two, it would heap too much pressure on The Boy. Most people, particularly sons and daughters, just get weirded out when you tell them they're the purpose and meaning of your life.

Ouch. The Boy's mother leaves without so much as a good-bye. We think this passage functions as a barometer of how bad things get in The Road. It's not that The Boy's mother is really cruel (OK, maybe she's a little cruel) but that the world now strikes her as incredibly hopeless. She chooses not to fight against that hopelessness. Of course, The Boy still has his father's love, but you can imagine the absence The Boy must feel because his mother leaves so suddenly.

The plot of The Road allows McCarthy to explore memory and the past in really startling ways. Don't we often feel guilty when we start to forget the face of someone we loved? Because the previous world has vanished in the novel, and because survival demands that one focus on the present, McCarthy has an opportunity to explore the guilt of forgetting concretely. Very concretely: the Man leaves a picture of his wife on the road. He then kneels in the ashes like a penitent. How much more concrete can you get? There are none of the abstract, big words here you might find in flightier explorations of memory. The loss of the past in The Road is universal and shared instead of being limited to the thoughts of one character.