The Road to a Quest What is a quest? If unaware as to what a quest is, it is a long search for something. What makes up a quest? What primarily makes up a quest is a questor, where the questors are going, stated reason for the quest, challenges and trials, and the real reason for the quest. Quests can be seen anywhere from movies to books. In the book The Road by Cormac McCarthy for example. That is a great story of a quest and survival. An important part of a quest is completing it. In the story The Road it has everything to make up a quest, but The Man and The Boy could not complete it. The two questors are The Man and The Boy. The story never identified their names. The Man is a great survivalist. He has great skills as to tracking, and using the weapons around him. Everything he does is dedicated for The Boy. The book establishes this very early on, “When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out and touch the child sleeping beside him” (McCarthy 1). The Boy is very mature, and smart for his age. The book does not tell his age but it is easy to tell he is young. He is very thoughtful of others, and wants to help others. An example of this is, “We should go get him, Papa. We could get him and take him with us. We could take him and we could take the dog. The dog could catch something to eat” (McCarthy 73). They both may be different types of people, but they need each other. The place where The Man and The Boy are heading is to the coast. They use a torn up map to navigate there. The reason to go there is it was becoming winter, and the coast would hopefully be warm. The Man and The Boy Discuss here, “And we’re still going south. Yes. So we’ll be warm. Yes” (McCarthy 9). Another reason is to find food. They have to keep on moving to find food, or ultimately they will starve to death. The last reason is just to survive. If they do not keep moving they will be found by others and killed. So going to the Coast is the only way The Man and The Boy could survive. Many challenges came along the way to the coast. The major challenge is hunger and sickness. The Man and The Boy throughout the quest never have much food. They got lucky once and found a bunker full of food. They stay there for a little while, but had to go eventually. Also sickness was a major issue since there was no medicine, or medical facilities. The Man is basically sick the whole story. Another challenge was other people. They would kill you for just a can of food. The Man had to kill someone who had a knife to the Boys throat. With great survival instinct, “He dove and grabbed the boy and rolled and came up holding him against his chest with the knife at his throat. The man had already dropped to the ground and he swung with him and leveled the pistol and fired from a two-handed position balanced on both knees at a distance of six feet” (McCarthy 56). The Man also was shot with arrow which made it so he could barely walk. Many challenges came there way, which slowed them down, but did not stop them. The real reason why The Man and The Boy is going to coast is because there nowhere else to go. They had no idea really if it would be warm at the coast, or if anything awaits them there. Another reason was for the Man to teach the Boy how to survive. He knows he was sick, so he has to teach the Boy how to make it on his own. It seems as though The Man was almost prone to sickness, “When he woke he was sick. He’d come down with a fever” (McCarthy 157). So going to the Coast was their quest, but teaching The Boy how to survive is part of it. The Road has everything to be a quest. It has questors which are The Man and The Boy. It has a place to go like the coast, and a reason to go there. The Road includes many challenges. Also it has the real reason for the quest. Just like what was said before though, the quest could not be completed.