The Road Quotes Essay

The Road: Revealing Traits through Indirect Characterization

By: Maddie Moore
2/13/13
English 3 AP
5th period

The Father

“He pushed the cart and both he and the boy carried knapsacks. In the knapsacks were essential things. In case they had to abandon the cart and make a run for it.” (pg 5) | Resourceful; KnowledgeableThe father is able to think ahead to situations that may happen to them. In doing so, he is well prepared for upcoming events whether they can not take the cart any farther or they get into a situation where they need to leave the cart. | “They passed through the city at noon of the day following. He kept the pistol to hand on the folded tarp on top of the cart. He kept the boy close to his side.” (pg 12) | Protective; AlertThe man is alert to the deserted town around him to make sure no “bad guy” comes to harm his son and gives the child a sense of protection as they walk through the suspicious town. | “They collected some old boxes and built a fire in the floor and he found some tools and emptied out the cart and sat working on the wheel. He pulled the bolt and bored out the collect with a hand drill and resleeved it with a section of pipe he’d cut to length with a hacksaw. Then he bolted it all back together and stood the cart upright and wheeled it around the floor. It ran fairly true. The boy sat watching everything.” (pg 16-17) | Resourceful; Role ModelWith the items that may seem useless in the journey, the father is able to use any spare item to make their journey last. While he is also fixing the wheel on the cart to make it run smoother, the father is also a role model to the child. The father knows that one day soon the father will die and the child will have no one but himself; therefore, as the child watches he gains greater knowledge upon how to use the resources around him to continue on an everlasting journey. | “ What is that, Papa? It’s a dam. What’s it for? It made the lake. Before they built the dam that was just a river down there. The damn used the water that ran through it to turn big fans called turbines that would generate electricity. To make lights. Yes. To make lights.” (pg 19-20) | KnowledgeableSince the boy was born in a time of the apocalypse, the boy does not understand some of the manmade items in the world such as the dam. It is up to the father to fill the child’s mind with intelligence and room for imagination. It is also another way the father can teach the son since he can not go to school to learn about these timeless objects. | “In a pocket of his knapsack he’d find a last half packet of cocoa and he fixed it for the boy and then poured his own cup with hot water and sat blowing at the rim.” (pg 34) | Kind Hearted; GenerousThe father gives the hot cocoa to the child because he is putting his son before himself. He also wants to give the boy as much pleasure there may be in the rotting world, and hot cocoa is such a simple and delicious delight to come across which makes the situation a little better. The father loves his son tremendously and would do anything to make him happy. | “The tattered oilcompany map had once been taped together but now it was just sorted into leaves and numbered with crayon in the corners for their assembly. He sorted through the limp pages and spread out those that answered to their location.” (pg 41) | Resourceful; IntelligentWith the map that has been torn into pieces, the father is able put the pieces back together and locate their location based on their surroundings. | “Because the bullet travels faster than sound. It will be in your brain before you can hear it. To hear it you will need a frontal lobe and things with names like colliculus and temporal gyrus and you wont have them anymore. They’ll just be soup. (pg 64) | IntelligenceThe father is proving how intelligent he is to the man with the truck so he can understand that the father is not playing around when he says he will

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