Quote 19
[The Veteran:] Where's the man you were with?
[The Boy:] He died.
[. . .]
[The Veteran:] I think you should come with me.
[The Boy:] Are you one of the good guys?
The man pulled his hood back from his face. His hair was long and matted. He looked at the sky. As if there were anything there to be seen. He looked at the boy. Yeah, he said. I'm one of the good guys.
[. . .]
[The Boy:] Are you carrying the fire?
[The Veteran:] Am I what?
[The Boy:] Carrying the fire.
[The Veteran:] You're kind of weirded out, arent you?
[The Boy:] No.
[The Veteran:] Just a little.
[The Boy:] Yeah.
[The Veteran:] That's okay.
[The Boy:] So are you?
[The Veteran:] What, carrying the fire?
[The Boy:] Yes.
[The Veteran:] Yeah, we are.
[The Boy:] Do you have any kids?
[The Veteran:] We do.
[. . .]
[The Boy:] And you didnt eat them.
[The Veteran:] No.
[The Boy:] You dont eat people.
[The Veteran:] No. We dont eat people.
[The Boy:] And I can go with you?
[The Veteran:] Yes. You can.
[The Boy:] Okay then.
[The Veteran:] Okay. (386.2-386.49)
In an unexpected turn of events, someone good (or at least someone who seems good) does appear on the road. It turns out The Man and The Boy are not the only ones.
McCarthy has foreshadowed The Man's death pretty much throughout the whole book, so it's no surprise when he dies. With the destruction of the world and the father's death, McCarthy has written himself into a pretty bleak corner. But we think this is actually a pretty happy ending. Other good people have survived, and The Boy doesn't end up alone.
They passed through the city at noon of the day following. He kept the pistol to hand on the folded tarp on top of the cart. He kept the boy close to his side. The city was mostly burned. No sign of life. Cars in the streets caked with ash, everything covered with ash and dust. Fossil tracks in the dried sludge. A corpse in a doorway dried to leather. Grimacing at the day. He pulled the boy closer. Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said. You might want to think about that.
[The Boy:] You forget some things, dont you?
[The Man:] Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget. (14.1)
Memory becomes both plague and salvation for The Man. The barren landscape that he and The Boy wander across has little in common with the world The Man remembers. It's all ashes and death. So the memories The Man has of a more or less normal world – our world – highlight just how terrible things have gotten. Memory is necessarily tinged with sadness and loss for The Man. That said, he also recalls moments of terrific beauty from the former world, and these provide sustenance and hope – though only occasionally. It would be more accurate, we think, for The Man to say he remembers a lot of things but that he can't help pairing all memories with loss (see 226.1 below).
They slipped out of their backpacks and left them on the terrace and kicked their way through the trash on the porch and pushed into the kitchen. The boy held on to his hand. All much as he'd remembered it. The rooms empty. In the small room off the diningroom there was a bare iron cot, a metal foldingtable. The same castiron coalgrate in the small fireplace. The pine paneling was gone from the walls leaving just the furring strips. He stood there. He felt with his thumb in the painted wood of the mantle the pinholes from tacks that had held stockings forty years ago. This is where we used to have Christmas when I was a boy. He turned and looked out at the waste of the yard. A tangle of dead lilac. The shape of a hedge. On cold winter nights when the electricity was out in a storm we would sit at the fire here, me and my sisters, doing our homework. The boy watched him. Watched shapes claiming him he could not see. We should go, Papa, he said. Yes, the man said. But he didnt. (39.1)
The Man often fears the pre-apocalyptic world will claim him. In fact, he distrusts comforting dreams set in the former world. This is sort of what's going on in this passage. The Man and The Boy visit The Man's childhood home and memories filter into The Man's consciousness. There's one problem, though: these sorts of happy memories prevent The Man from focusing on their survival. They make him want to give up. They also serve, we think, to alienate him from The Boy, since The Boy never experienced the former world. And perhaps The Boy is somehow dimly aware of this alienation when he "watched shapes claiming him [The Man] he could not see."