This is my child, he said. I wash a dead man’s brains out of his hair. That is my job.

With the word ‘my’ he is showing that the child is his and no one else’s, if there was anyone else then it would have been ‘our’. By the way that he says it, its shows he wants people to know that it is his child, that he is proud for it to be his child, and so people know not to mess with the child because they are his. By using the word ‘job’ it can say that he has to work to look after the child and although he doesn’t get paid in money, he gets paid in other aspects. This can infer that the theme of the story might be the love that is shared between the father and son and what happens within that. It also shows characterisation that the father of the son is very protective and as you can tell he says this very monotone so you can tell he is not a very jolly person.

Yes I am, he said. I am the one.

The short sentences in this quote can show us that the person who says it is being very blunt, and they are either not happy about being ‘the one’ or is ashamed about it.

Tomatoes, peaches, beans, apricots. Canned hams, corned beef.

With him listing his food, you can tell by the size of the list that he is starved because he can list all of the food he has whereas most people will not be able to do that. Also, by the end of the list you can tell he is getting more excited as he has started to go into more detail by the end of the list. You can tell that the story is a story of someone who is going to be starved for a long time as all of the foods that he has listed are very well at being kept preserved, they don’t go out of date easily, so this could be because of planning ahead.

Are we still the good guys, he said.

This can show that the person who says this is doubting his faith in himself as he is questioning him self. It can also tell us that he may have had an epiphany within the story and has realised that he may actually not be the good guys, this could also show that this could be after a climax in the story as he could have something terrible and is regretting it.

We should go, Papa, he said. Yes, the man said. But he didn’t.

Throughout the book it is all about struggle and them living on the road, but as you can tell with the way the little boy says ‘Papa’ you can see that he is of a higher class and probably shouldn’t have to struggle, this can mean that someone bad has happened to them or the country that higher class people have to struggle for food. By the way that he doesn’t move you can infer that he either doesn’t want to move because he can’t or because he’s holding on to something either physical or emotional that he doesn’t want to let go of.

The snow did not fall nor did it cease to fall

The normal pathetic fallacy for snow is a happy environment and normally when you have a father and son in the snow you think about them playing in the snow having a good time, but it is the complete opposite for this, the father and son do not want to play in the snow, in fact they would like the snow to disappear so they can go back to normal and not freeze and get pneumonia, which can tell us that the book is a little boring as they are given a reason to be happy but they chose to ignore is anyway.  

Okay? Okay.

The way that he answers his own question could tell that he is alone so there is no one else so answer it or that he is insecure about saying okay so he needs to question himself about it. This could tell us a lot about his character, it could tell us that he is a quite insecure person and he needs to check everything he does with himself but it could also say the complete opposite and say that he never doubts himself so this is a change, and he doesn’t change his mind because he doesn’t actually in the end say ‘Okay’.

Tolling in the silence the minutes of the earth.

The word silence makes it sound they are on their own, which they are, and can make the novel sound like it is literally a father and son walking down a road and there is minimal interruption from other people. This gives the novel and eerie sense as the world is silence, not to just a little bit of the earth but the whole earth, this could also make us question what happened as it must have been so catastrophic because it made the whole world silent.