Suggestions
Use up and down arrows to review and enter to select.Please wait while we process your payment
If you don't see it, please check your spam folder. Sometimes it can end up there.
If you don't see it, please check your spam folder. Sometimes it can end up there.
Please wait while we process your payment
By signing up you agree to our terms and privacy policy.
Don’t have an account? Subscribe now
Create Your Account
Sign up for your FREE 7-day trial
Already have an account? Log in
Your Email
Choose Your Plan
Save over 50% with a SparkNotes PLUS Annual Plan!
Purchasing SparkNotes PLUS for a group?
Get Annual Plans at a discount when you buy 2 or more!
Price
$24.99 $18.74 /subscription + tax
Subtotal $37.48 + tax
Save 25% on 2-49 accounts
Save 30% on 50-99 accounts
Want 100 or more? Contact us for a customized plan.
Your Plan
Payment Details
Payment Summary
SparkNotes Plus
You'll be billed after your free trial ends.
7-Day Free Trial
Not Applicable
Renews February 3, 2023 January 27, 2023
Discounts (applied to next billing)
DUE NOW
US $0.00
SNPLUSROCKS20 | 20% Discount
This is not a valid promo code.
Discount Code (one code per order)
SparkNotes Plus subscription is $4.99/month or $24.99/year as selected above. The free trial period is the first 7 days of your subscription. TO CANCEL YOUR SUBSCRIPTION AND AVOID BEING CHARGED, YOU MUST CANCEL BEFORE THE END OF THE FREE TRIAL PERIOD. You may cancel your subscription on your Subscription and Billing page or contact Customer Support at custserv@bn.com. Your subscription will continue automatically once the free trial period is over. Free trial is available to new customers only.
Choose Your Plan
Payment Details
Payment Summary
For the next 7 days, you'll have access to awesome PLUS stuff like AP English test prep, No Fear Shakespeare translations and audio, a note-taking tool, personalized dashboard, & much more!
You’ve successfully purchased a group discount. Your group members can use the joining link below to redeem their group membership. You'll also receive an email with the link.
Members will be prompted to log in or create an account to redeem their group membership.
Thanks for creating a SparkNotes account! Continue to start your free trial.
Please wait while we process your payment
Your PLUS subscription has expired
Please wait while we process your payment
Please wait while we process your payment
“The world shrinking down about a raw core of parsible entities. The names of things slowly following those things into oblivion. Colors. The names of birds. Things to eat. Finally the names of things one believed to be true. More fragile than he would have thought. How much was gone already?”
Tracking their endless journey to the coast, the man considers the death of language at a stop on the road. He is usually obsessed with preventing physical death, but in this safe place he considers what will die out from human vocabulary. He imagines the names of things passing out of all knowledge—even the things he believed to be true, perhaps like the name of God. These names, he realizes, are far more fragile than he once thought. Since no color exists but ashen gray, why should anyone remember the name of red, orange, or yellow? For all intents and purposes, these colors will no longer exist. Birds will be extinct and their names forgotten. When the world dies, language will die with it. This quote expresses the sadness the man has for this loss. He may know the names of things that the boy does not. The death of language is certain, and it is happening all around him.
“He knelt there wheezing softly, his hands on his knees. I am going to die, he said. Tell me how I am to do that.”
After the safety of the bunker has passed and man and boy are on the road again, the man coughs up blood and wonders how he will die. In this heartbreaking phrase, the man questions not why he will die but how he will do it. He knows he will not last long, and that the boy will have to keep going without him. But how will he accomplish this? This phrasing sets death as a task like any other, and the very last one at that. The man is so focused on keeping the boy alive and continuing toward the coast, his death seems almost incidental to him. A vague annoyance. It is striking that he treats his own life with such disregard, when he treats the boy’s with so much devotion. But this underscores the point: he will die no matter what happens; it is inevitable. Death is coming for him, if not the boy, and it is a certainty he must face.
“Out on the roads the pilgrims fell over and died and the bleak and shrouded earth went trundling past the sun and returned again as trackless and as unremarked as the path of any nameless sisterworld in the ancient dark beyond.”
This bleak passage near the end of the story implies an insignificance in the deaths of all humans in the grand cosmic scale. The path of the Earth is described as “trackless” because the death of humanity means the loss of keeping track of days, months, and years. The planet will spin on without humanity, just like any “sisterworld” in the cosmos, devoid of life to document its passing. This passage is a perfect illustration of the theme of the certainty of the death. The lives of humans will run out, and all the things they kept track of will be lost. Everything will continue in the “ancient dark” of space but no one will be there to see it.
Please wait while we process your payment