Only With Each Other

As we are introduced to the book, we sense a cold feeling generated by the details of the setting. Described as a place where "nights [were] dark beyond darkness and the days more gray than what had gone before", (3) we immedietely infer the characters are experiencing a negative situation. The main character is accompanied by a child whom he stares at while the infant sleeps. Since the kid had been delineated as "the child sleeping beside him" (3), we deduce he is an indifferent character to the main one. Nevertheless, this image changes when the man states that "the child was his warrant".(5) Without knowing what type of guarantee he was, we can at least foresee that the infant is important in some way to the man. With many possibilities in our heads, only the fact that the child is the son is the one that remains. Although we detect coldness between the two characters through their way of dialogue as they don't say much more than "Yes. Of course", (10) we are certain of their familial relationship since the young boy calls the man "Papa".(5) Even though at the beginning we felt distance between the two individuals, we then know this was just a wrong assumption since love is abundant between the two characters. The man shows care for the youngster as "he held the boy shivering against him"(14) and always walks next to him as they moved through the roud heading to the south of the country.

Cormac McCarthy, the author of the novel, describes the surrounding in the following: "The city was mostly burned". (12) Due to the previous imagery description, the constant mention of ash, and the portrayal of the dead given by McCarthy as he depicts: "The mummied dead everywhere. The flesh cloven along the bones, the ligaments dried to tug and taut as wires", (24) we learn the characters are not the only ones living a negative situation. Knowing that the characters are experiencing difficulties to find food and cloth, deaths are present, and fires were exuberant, we understand the march of these males is one for survival. Hence, we can now answer our previous question about what type of assurance the boy was to the man. Fighting for their survival in a solitary country, we presume the minor is the man's only hope.