The Road Symbol Analysis

The road (presumably the town’s main street) is a place where people exchange gossip and watch one another pass by. It’s also a term that Mick and Mrs. Delaney use to refer to their neighbors and acquaintances (when Mrs. Delaney says “the road knows all about it,” what she means is that the people in town know). In the story, the road is a symbol of the gossip and judgment that pervade small-town life. For the Delaneys, this is both positive and negative: Mr. Dooley, for instance, crosses the road “evening after evening” to give Mick “the news behind the news,” and Mick clearly relishes being kept in the loop. In this way, the road connects a community and provides Mick with entertainment. However, while Mick relishes gossip that isn’t about him, the road quickly turns negative when Mick himself is in the spotlight. In order to get drunken Larry home from the bar, Mick has no choice but to drag Larry along the road. The town is so small, it seems, that there is no other route, which shows how privacy is impossible in small communities, even in one’s most vulnerable moments. Furthermore, as Mick and Larry walk home on the road, all the neighbors are outside watching them, gossiping, and laughing cruelly. The road, it seems, unites a community in public judgment and scorn, but not in mutual care—not one person, after all, offers to help. The neighbors then spread gossip that Mick was dragging his drunk child home (which is true), but also that he deliberately got Larry drunk for his own amusement (which is false). That this malicious rumor spreads so quickly (Mrs. Delaney has heard it within hours) shows that the road relishes destroying the reputations of others without regard to fact. Thus, even if the road has some advantages—namely, bringing people together—O’Connor paints a dark portrait of small-town community. After all, it might be better for people to not come together at all than for them to come together through cruelty.