The Road - Blog 3

"Oh my God, he whispered.  Oh my God" (138).  As the man and child were entering the second padlocked door, McCarthy used the same language he used when they were entering the first padlocked door.  This time, because the child had warned the man not to enter the room, and because of the repetition of the man's reaction, I was practically too afraid to read on to see what happened next, because I was expecting a room full of humans.  Needless to say, I was pretty relieved when the contents of this room was "the richness of a vanished world" instead of something horrific (139). 
"What he didnt find was a gun.  He took the battery lantern and walked over the floor and he checked the walls for any hidden compartment.  After a while he just sat on the bunk eating a bar of chocolate.  There was no gun and there wasnt going to be one" (143).  After reading this, I decided that I think guns symbolize something in The Road.  My first thought was that guns symbolize safety.  The revolver saved the man and child from the "bad guys" on the road by killing one of the "bad guys."  In this case, there was no gun, so they were not actually safe despite the fact their food was plentiful and they had shelter, because they were still very close to the house with the bad guys.  However, I am not sure a gun exactly symbolizes safety because when they were hiding in the ditch, the man gave the child the gun and told him to "put [the gun] in [his] mouth and point it up," to "do it quick and hard" (113).  The gun was going to kill the child.  This could still be safety, because suicide might have been the only way to be safe from the bad guys who were going to do worse things to the child than kill him.