The Road Rat

What element of foreshadowing is employed in this section and why?

What does the description of the men tell us about them?
The men are described as "stained and filthy", "slouching along with clubs in their hands" and "coughing". These descriptions present the idea that the men are violent and ill and therefore desperate for any of the necessities to survive. The idea that they are subhuman is hinted at as they are stained and filthy, therefore unable to clean and care for themselves, giving the reader the impression that humanity is deteriorating.

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?
Although the Road Rat only makes a brief appearance in the novel, he is vitally important to one of the major themes of the novel, the idea of what is good and what is bad. The vivid, gruesome imagery deployed by McCarthy reinforces what a disgusting character the Road Rat is, with phrases such as "eyes collared in cups of grime and deeply suck", hinting at the possibility he is dying as he has sunken eyes. His knife is mentioned to reinforce the violence and danger the men carry but describing the men in such a macabre way make the man's action when he kills him appear much worse. The man's position as the 'good guy' is turned around, making him a 'bad guy' when he shoots the Road Rat, but by knowing what bad people the Road Rat and his men are, the man comes across as even worse than them for killing them.

Why is the Road Rat's character so explicit whilst the man is so implicit?
The more we know about the Road Rat and the less about the man allows us to make our own assumptions about the man from his responses to the Road Rat. The man has been preaching to the boy that they are the 'good guys', but as soon as the man's actions are revealed we begin to doubt his morals and whether or not he is just as bad as everybody else.

What do we learn about the man through his exchanges with the Road Rat?
The man has a vast medical knowledge beyond most people's, using words such as "frontal lobe", "colliculus" and "temporal gyrus", suggesting he had came from a medical background prior to the new apocalyptic world. He shows his instinctive need to protect his son by quickly reacting to when the Road Rat holds up his knife and "grabbed the boy and rolled and came up holding him against his chest with the knife at his throat" as the man "fired from a two-handed position" and killed him. His prompt response shows his fear of the boy dying and his accuracy suggests he has had experience with guns in the past. He does not have to think about whether it is morally right or wrong to shoot the Road Rat because for him, killing anyone who puts his son in danger is the right choice.

"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?
I believe the realisation that they only have one bullet left would have been a horrific discovery for the man because there is now no room left for failure, they have to succeed now to get to the South as there is no way to kill themselves if they fail. The man echoes his wife here as she was determined to make him realise how hopeless their attempts were and to make them "face the truth" but the man is unwilling to accept that she was right as he feels remorse that she gave up on them.

Why don't the other men chase after the boy and the man following the shooting?
When the man returns to see where the men went, he finds "dried blood dark in the leaves", bones and "a pool of guts", suggesting that the men feared the man's ability to kill one of them and ate the Road Rat's body before quickly moving on to avoid the same fate happening to one of them. They probably viewed themselves as the 'bad guys' so for one of them to be defeated would worry them that something else, worse than them, was out there.

It is not until page 77 that the man finally clears the "gore and "dead man's brains" from the boys face. Why?
There is irony here between the cannibals in the truck and the boy and the man, as the cannibals ate the remains of the man's body to stay alive but the man washed them away from his face, leaving them and not using them for any benefit to themselves. He redeems part of his 'good guy' façade by doing this as they try and get rid of the reminders of the bad things that happen to them to start afresh.