How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Section.Paragraph)
Quote #1
In dreams his pale bride came to him out of a green and leafy canopy. Her nipples pipeclayed and her rib bones painted white. She wore a dress of gauze and her dark hair was carried up in combs of ivory, combs of shell. Her smile, her downturned eyes. In the morning it was snowing again. Beads of small gray ice strung along the lightwires overhead. (25.1)
We're not sure what to make of this particular dream, but we do want to point out the important role dreams play in the novel. They're often inscrutable, but sometimes they seem more or less like memories of the pre-apocalyptic world. This is one of the more inscrutable ones. The best we can do is to point you toward another quote:
Quote #2
[The Woman:] You can think of me as a faithless slut if you like. I've taken a new lover. He can give me what you cannot.
[The Man:] Death is not a lover.
Is the woman in The Man's dream a deathly bride? Is she tempting him to follow her into suicide? Is this "pale bride" his wife's ghost, or a memory of his wedding? We're not sure. But she seems like bad news and somehow connected to the icy landscape.
Quote #3
He mistrusted all of that. He said the right dreams for a man in peril were dreams of peril and all else was the call of languor and of death. He slept little and he slept poorly. He dreamt of walking in a flowering wood where birds flew before them he and the child and the sky was aching blue but he was learning how to wake himself from just such siren worlds. Lying there in the dark with the uncanny taste of a peach from some phantom orchard fading in his mouth. He thought if he lived long enough the world at last would all be lost. Like the dying world the newly blind inhabit, all of it slowing fading from memory. (26.1)
This passage explains The Man's stance on dreams fairly well. Good dreams mean you're getting soft and pining for a world that doesn't exist anymore. Bad dreams mean you're engaged with the bad world in front of you. Sounds pretty terrible, right? Even the escape hatch of a good dream is bolted shut in this novel.
Quote #4
And the dreams so rich in color. How else would death call you? Waking in the cold dawn it all turned to ash instantly. Like certain ancient frescoes entombed for centuries suddenly exposed to the day. (32.1)
Good dreams remind The Man of an ancient fresco that, suddenly exposed to the air, fades and crumbles. The Man continually reminds himself that the vibrant world he knew is gone – that it's literally ash. What an odd reversal of color and symbol. Usually we think of death as gray and colorless and life as vibrant and colorful. This isn't the case in The Road, where The Man confronts an ash-filled reality and a vivid death.
Quote #5
In his dream she was sick and he cared for her. The dream bore the look of sacrifice but he thought differently. He did not take care of her and she died alone somewhere in the dark and there is no other dream nor other waking world and there is no other tale to tell. (50.1)
Dreams offer The Man a false version of the world, and he constantly battles these mirages. This passage concerns his wife's suicide. In the version The Man would prefer, his wife takes ill and he cares for her. Once he shakes himself out of this falsehood, we get the facts: his wife died alone in the dark, and there isn't a way to sugarcoat it. There isn't an alternate reality or another story to tell. It makes us wonder, though, why is there so much animosity toward stories in a work of fiction? Is it that McCarthy just doesn't like certain types of fiction? (Can you imagine him reading romance novels?)
Quote #6
He woke whimpering in the night and the man held him. Shh, he said. Shh. It's okay.
[The Boy:] I had a bad dream.
[The Man:] I know.
[The Boy:] Should I tell you what it was?
[The Man:] If you want to.
[The Boy:] I had this penguin that you wound up and it would waddle and flap its flippers. And we were in that house that we used to live in and it came around the corner but nobody had wound it up and it was really scary.
[The Man:] Okay.
[The Boy:] It was a lot scarier in the dream.
[The Man:] I know. Dreams can be really scary.
[The Boy:] Why did I have that scary dream?
[The Man:] I dont know. But it's okay now. I'm going to put some wood on the fire. You go to sleep.
The boy didnt answer. Then he said: The winder wasnt turning. (60.1-60.12)
We hear plenty of The Man's dreams, but this is one of the few times The Boy shares a dream. It's a scary one, but according to The Man's take on dreams, bad dreams mean one is confronting reality instead of running from it. How does this dream relate to reality, though? What does it tell us about the world in which The Man and The Boy find themselves?
Well, we're actually unsure how to answer that question. Our best guess is that somehow the world itself – like the penguin – is mechanically progressing toward extinction. And, like the penguin without a winder, there's no way to stop it. On a gut level, though, we find The Boy's dream both frightening and funny. It's a penguin for crying out loud – that's a little silly. But don't children dream of things like penguins? And doesn't that make the dream believable? (And then frightening when you realize no one wound it?)
Quote #7
The boy was sitting on the steps when he saw something move at the rear of the house across the road. A face was looking at him. A boy, about his age, wrapped in an outsized wool coat with the sleeves turned back. He stood up. He ran across the road and up the drive. No one there. He looked toward the house and then he ran to the bottom of the yard through the dead weeds to a still black creek. Come back, he called. I wont hurt you. He was standing there crying when his father came sprinting across the road and seized him by the arm.
[The Man:] What are you doing? he hissed. What are you doing?
[The Boy:] There's a little boy, Papa. There's a little boy.
[The Man:] There's no little boy. What are you doing? (131.1-131.4)
Most of the "versions of reality" in The Road are dreams, but this one seems to be a hallucination. The Boy, whether from weariness or despair, imagines another boy – eerily similar to himself – across the road. There's tons of emotional projection in his vision: What happens if he, too, ends up abandoned? Is his own boyhood disappearing? Has he become frightful even to himself?
Quote #8
When he woke the fire had burned down and it was very cold. The boy was sitting up wrapped in his blanket.
[The Man:] What is it?
[The Boy:] Nothing. I had a bad dream.
[The Man:] What did you dream about?
[The Boy:] Nothing.
[The Man:] Are you okay?
[The Boy:] No.
He put his arms around him and held him. It's okay, he said.
[The Boy:] I was crying. But you didnt wake up.
[The Man:] I'm sorry. I was just so tired.
[The Boy:] I meant in the dream. (252.1-252.11)
Sometimes McCarthy pulls the rug right out from under us. The Boy's dream is really disturbing because The Man doesn't wake up in it. We also think there's a bit of old-fashioned foreshadowing here: later, The Man will die while The Boy sleeps next to him. As The Man says in The Road, nightmares reflect the reality they face in this post-apocalyptic world.
Quote #9
He'd come down with a fever and they lay in the woods like fugitives. Nowhere to build a fire. Nowhere safe. The boy sat in the leaves watching him. His eyes brimming. Are you going to die, Papa? he said. Are you going to die?
[The Man:] No. I'm just sick.
[The Boy:] I'm really scared.
[The Man:] I know. It's all right. I'm going to get better. You'll see.
His dreams brightened. The vanished world returned. (257.1-258.1)
It's not much of a secret in The Road that The Man is going to die. All The Man's coughing and ruminating about death pretty much gives it away, and we cringe when he says, "It's all right. I'm going to get better. You'll see." We know he's not going to get better. The fact that his "dreams brightened" only further confirms that he's not long for this world. This passage also validates The Man's theory about dreams: You know you're in trouble when you're having good ones.
Quote #10
One night the boy woke from a dream and would not tell him what it was.
You dont have to tell me, the man said. It's all right.
[The Boy:] I'm scared.
[The Man:] It's all right.
[The Boy:] No it's not.
[The Man:] It's just a dream.
[The Boy:] I'm really scared.
[The Man:] I know.
The boy turned away. The man held him. Listen to me, he said.
[The Boy:] What.
[The Man:] When your dreams are of some world that never was or of some world that never will be and you are happy again then you will have given up. Do you understand? And you cant give up. I wont let you. (262.1-262.11)
Sometimes we wonder about The Man. Why does he persist if the only outcome – for him and The Boy – is misery? Is there some drive that keeps him and The Boy alive beyond happiness, and that keeps a lot of the folks on the road going? Certainly, his love for The Boy figures strongly in The Man's decision. But it could also be argued that it would be best expressed by a merciful double-suicide. Maybe The Woman had it right. It's a measure of how terrible things get in the novel when suicide seems like the good option.
Quote #11
He woke in the darkness, coughing softly. He lay listening. The boy sat by the fire wrapped in a blanket watching him. Drip of water. A fading light. Old dreams encroached upon the waking world. The dripping was in the cave. The light was a candle which the boy bore in a ringstick of beaten copper. The wax spattered on the stones. Tracks of unknown creatures in the mortified loess. In that cold corridor they had reached the point of no return which was measured from the first solely by the light they carried with them. (383.1)
We're unsure about this dream. It's definitely important, though, because a similar one appears in the first paragraph of the novel. (Perhaps it has something to do with traveling through an evil and fallen world?) We do want to point out this little factoid: The Boy is literally carrying the fire here. (OK, it's a candle – but that's good enough, right?) So, as The Man gets closer and closer to death, he dreams (or imagines?) that The Boy holds their candle in the dark cave of the world.