The Road

“They were moving south. There’d be no surviving another winter here.” 

The traditional elements of plot, narrative, motivation and character in The Road are shorn down to the barest edge. This serves, then, as a synopsis of the plot; mere survival is the motivating force. Moreover, the quote introduces early on the very real stakes the characters face—if they do not keep moving, they will die.

“You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.” 

The primary characters of The Road interact infrequently with other characters, and the environment is almost purely hostile. Therefore, the only sounding board they have for reality is the man’s own fading memory of the past. Given the man’s pessimistic view of his own memory, this makes for a grim companion as he struggles to survive.

“He said the right dreams for a man in peril were dreams of peril and all else was the call of languor and death.” 

The only real rest or comfort in the world of The Road is death, and so the man frequently reminds himself and his charge of their responsibility to ward off it. The man’s dreams, frequently recounted, act as a good gauge of his level of alertness or despair. This quote also shows that not even dreams are able to provide solace for the man; to him, a good dream is a deadly distraction from the work of survival.