In our present world, dead people are buried. They are mourned. They are acknowledged, and remembered. In our world, at least in the parts of it where people would read this book, death is feared, death is exalted, and above all, death is remarkable. Why is death so unremarkable in this story?
Humans, in The Road, die like animals -- with no fuss, no funeral, no tears. Dead bodies, too, have lost all of their sacredness, as far as I can tell. At one point, the man finds a trailer, and looks inside only to see "human bodies. Sprawled in every attitude. Dried and shrunken in their rotten clothes." (47) He sees them, but he does not react, except to leave. He experiences no repulsion, no fear, no anger, no curiosity -- no typical human reactions. He has, essentially, lost his human response to death. He has no reaction, because there is nothing to provoke one -- nothing out of the ordinary to comment on. His one concession to his humanity is to keep his discovery from his son. This seems hugely significant, that in the face of massacres, he is largely psychopathic, but expects the opposite from his son.
The man, like the cannibals he encounters, sees dead humans the way most people (today) see dead meat, without emotion. But he prevents his son from seeing them at all, from gaining any of the perspective his father has effortlessly acquired. This is his sole goal in life, to help his son. He protects his son, as best he can, against everything he can. This is his answer to the question he asks, almost rhetorically, on page 49 -- "Who is anybody?" While he has his son, he is the protector. Who else could he ever be?
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