About halfway through the novel, the boy starts using some surprising phrases. These don't seem like normal things for a young boy to say who hasn't been exposed to many different varieties of speech, and the father is quite surprised. The first time this happens is when the boy is able to take a warm bath at the house with the bunker and when the man asks "what do you think?" the boy replies "warm at last." (146, 147) The man is quite surprised, but when he asks the boy "where did you get that?" his reply is simply "I don't know." (147)
This scenario comes up again a little bit later when the two are about to stop on the hill. The boy asks the man "what are our long term goals?" and the man is very taken aback, how would a boy growing up in a dead world know about the existence of 'long term goals'? (160) Once again he asks the boy where he heard that, and once again the boy responds "I don't know." (160) However, this time, the man perseveres and the boy eventually responds: "you said it." (160)
I found McCarthy's inclusion of these two instances rather strange and unexpected. They show that the boy was listening; he has always been paying attention. Maybe even that he is trying to hold on to a world he never knew in the only way that he can: with the only things they have left, words.
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