Everything we ever thought to be
the goal of the man and the boy has suddenly happened. Now what? “Out
there was the gray beach with the slow combers rolling dull and the distant
sound of it… I’m sorry it’s not blue, he said. That’s okay, said the boy.”
(215) The road they had been following had been leading to the ocean, and the
only clear path that we had heard of as readers was getting to the beach. Now
that that was taken care of, the direction to follow seems a bit blurry. Both
the boy and the reader were probably disappointed to find out that the ocean is
no longer blue, because it stirs in us the doubt of if in real life, the ocean
will cease to be blue one day.
So the man and the boy get to the
ocean, and as cold as it may be, the boy is still a boy and decides to play
around and swim in it. He ends up being really cold, but still happy. The man
finds a boat, and decides to search it for food or anything that could be of
use. He finds can upon can of goods, some blankets, boots, and extra clothes.
When he finally takes all of it back to where the boy is, they realize that it
doesn’t all fit in the cart, so they decide to stay for a while near the ocean
and eat as much as they can.
One day, the boy gets really sick,
with a scarily high fever and vomit. The man makes him drink aspirin, as it is
the only medicine they have, but the boy is sick for a few days. It scares the
man a lot, and makes him wake up many times during the night to check that his
son’s heart is still beating. He knows that in the situation they are in, he
could die any moment. While the boy is sick, the man also has his own health
problems, as he starts coughing more frequently and sometimes even wakes up the
boy at night because of it. The decline in health of the two main characters is
worrying, and both the man and the reader are led to evaluate the probability
of them surviving in the same conditions much longer. Even though the boy
eventually gets better, the doubt is ever-present.
When the man and the boy are close
to resuming their journey along the road and the beach, an unexpected mishap
occurs. When they come back one day, the man sees boot footprints leading to
their camp, and as the worse of his fears comes true, he sees that a thief got a
hold of all of their possessions, including their cart, and left. They both run
out towards the road, and when they see a trace of snow on it, they run that
way for as long as they can. Finally, they reach the thief, and the man
threatens him with his pistol and tells him to get away from the cart. When he
finally does, the man makes him take all of his clothes off, and stay naked and
shoeless in the middle of the road. The boy can’t even look, as he’s terrified
and begging his father to let the man put on his clothes again. They leave, but
when the boy won’t talk to his father again, they go back and leave his clothes
on the road under a rock.
An argument takes place between
the man and the boy, as he tells his son that he’s not the one who has to worry
about everything, but the boy says “Yes I am, I am the one.” (259) I think that
is true, because the boy is in charge of worrying about people’s feelings. Also,
the man, to make it up to him, says “I wasn’t going to kill him… and after a
while the boy said: But we did kill him.” (260)
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