Nearly all The Road is told from the man’s perspective. His primary role is as a father, and his first thought is always towards the boy in his charge. Consequently, his threat perception is critically high, and every new face and circumstance is perceived as an intolerable infraction of the universe against his small family.

McCarthy reveals only scant details about the man’s life prior to the apocalyptic event. The reader knows that he was once married and that his wife killed herself rather than go on living in a world of horrors. The man is also resourceful; one of the first thing he did when the cataclysm happens was plug his bathtub and fill the tank full before the municipal water source ran out. He is an expert at rooting out hidden stashes of goods, as when he locates the hidden bunker that saves their lives, or when he remembers to check the hold of the sailboat for flares and a first aid kit.

He is taciturn around his son, though quick to apologize to him for the small hypocrisies he is forced by circumstance to engage in. This reserved attitude applies even to his own imminent death, which neither the boy nor the man acknowledges out loud.