The road rat!!....

• What element of forshadowing is employed in this section and why? (pg 62)

• What does the description of the men teach us about them? (Characterisation pg 62-3)
• McCarthy uses a simile when describing the truck 'Lumbering and creaking like a ship'. Why does he do this?
• Why does Mccarthy describe the Road Rat in such detail? (Characterisation pg 65)
• Why is the Road Rats character so explicit whilst the man is so implicit?
• What do we learn about the man through his exchanges with the Road Rat? (Pg 68. Consider the Man's impressive medical knowledge, look at the description of the grabbing of the boy and the shooting of the Road Rat)
• "A single round left in the revolver. You will not face the truth. You will not" Who is the man echoing here? How do you believe these words are uttered?
• Why don't the other men chase after the boy and the man following the shooting? (there are clues on pg 73-4).
• It is not until page 77 that the man finally cleans the "gore" and "dead mans brains" from the boys face. Why? (Be aware that in the intervening pages he has kept him warm with blankets, fed him etc yet not cleaned his face)

In this section of the book, forshadowing is used "The boy took his truck from the pack and shaped roads in the ash with a stick. Th truck tooled along slowly." Later in this section they come across people along the road with a truck. It also goes on to say "He made truck noises." this shows that the boy came from a time where there were still enough trucks for him to make noises, and also for the noises to be something for him not to fear, as if they heard truck noises now it's mean someone bad is coming e.g the road rat. It also mentions that he is playing with ash, hinting towards the nuclear disaster and the earth being burnt.
On pages 62 and 63, McCarthy describes the men who came with the truck in great detail "They came shuffling through the ash casting their heads from side to side." This description reminds me of an unhuman like rable, though at this point it could still be argued that they are from the goverment as it then goes on to say "Some of them wearing canister masks. One in a biohazard suit." the goverment are the people most likely to have equipment such as this, to protect themselves. The biohazard suit also hints towards nuclear disaster, the man wearing it wishes to seperate himself physical from the world, he does not wish to be contaminated by the air, he could also be mentally seperating himself also from the things they are doing. The next few lines inform us though that these people are definately bad "Stained and filthy. Slouching along with clubs in their hands, lengths of pipes" these men are stained and filthy, they do not wash, they travel together in a pack and they intend to kill and eat those they come across. He also then writes a sentence of one word "Coughing." These men then become almost zombie like, they are the walking diseased, each of them are dying slowlying, stumbling on, eating flesh in a mindless rable. The man also describes them as having "hooded heads" like the grim reaper, further enforcing the idea that this is death coming for them.
McCarthy describes the truck as "Lumbering and creaking like a ship." I think this is to repersent the whole ongoing idea of Noah's ark, throughout the book references are made to birds e.g when the man remember how he woke one morning to see the birds flying south, the man is following the birds in hope of finding better things, such as in the bible Noah followed the dove, which led him to safety.
The Noah's ark reference is also continued on into McCarthy's description of the road rat, who he describes as having "a tattoo of a bird on his neck" the others are also going south, the road rat has a bird tatooed on his neck, his truck is described as a ship. I'm thinking maybe this is a metaphor for people's wrong doings and treatment of the planet, we will all eventually cause our own downfall and this time god will not chose to safe us.
The character of the road rat is very specific in they way that he talks. He uses informal words and answers in basic and simple sentences. I think this is done to show the difference between good and bad, the good guys try to retian the proper way of doing things such as with speech to keep some elements of humanity. In contrast to this, the bad guys talk in a basic and simple way, to show their loss of humainty. This is done to show that at the end, all things descend and we revert back to basic instincts of living to kill and survive. In a dead world, proper prunication doesn't matter for who is their to hear it?
The man talks with the road rat "What are you eating? - Whatever we can find. - Whatever you can find." when the road rat says it, he litterally means whatever they can find however, when the man repeats it back he means human, humans are whatever they can find as there basically is nothing else to find. Later in this section, after the man shoots the road rat, as instead of following them to kill/eat them they already have a ready killed meal before them, which they chose to eat instead, so they can save energy. Waste not want not! This shows the lack of sentimentality, mere minutes, seconds even before he was shot, the road rat walked amongst them as one of them, but he meant nothing to them so they ate him.
Towards the end of this event, the man remembers the words "You will not face the truth. You will not." These are his wife's parting words to him, said when she went of to kill herself. She killed herself as a sacrafice for him, and now he has wasted the bullet. If anything happens now, he will have no choice but to shoot the boy as there is but one bullet left in the gun. The man may be remembering this in a state of dispear towards the situation he now finds himself stuck in, and yet still he feels he cannot truely face the truth of it all, for if he does there is no hope left.
The man waits till the end of this section to wash "gore" and "dead mans brains" from his sons hair, he does other things such as providing his son with blankets and warmth and making sure they have somewhere to sleep. This is done because the boy will still live with it in his hair but in contrast he could die from exhaustion or cold. Washing the brains out is not a necessity so therefore it is not done straight away.