'He ran through the swale of seaoats where he left the cart but the cart was gone. Everything.'
The cruelness of the theft, after what these characters have had to go through intensifies our empathy for them, and yet they still fight back. Their willingness to still fight for their lives gives the novel a lighter touch, they're angered tempers finally leaving some emotion imprinted in their story. McCarthy uses short, snappy, emotive sentences to create a tense pace within the novel, giving the impression of their rapid heartbeats as they run after the theif to try and save themselves.
When they finally find the theif, i see a man as desperate, as starving and as frightened as the father and son are.
'Scrawny, sullen, bearded, filthy. His old plastic coat held together with tape.'
However, the father obviously sees one huge difference in them; the man had stolen and left them for dead. That, in the fathers books, makes him one of the bad guys.
'I'm starving, man. You would have done the same.
You took everything.'
The father is talking to the theif as if he's the one who caused the world to die, as if the father is blaming him (or people like him) for the mess the world has become. The 'good guys' as the father refers to him and his son have not stolen, sinned, etc, and yet they have to pay for others mistakes, and now he is making his beliefs clear to the theif by stripping him bear, as if this is all him and people like him deserve.
Once they have retrieved their belongings, it is apparent how the boy feels about his fathers' decisions, even though he knows his father is only trying to protect him. However, there is a limit to how much the father can protect a child, and he cannot relieve the boy of his psychological burdens which the world has given him.
'You're not the one who has to worry about everything.....
He looked up, his wet and grmiy face, Yes i am, he said. I am the one.'
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