BA#1 Cormac McCarthy's The Road

I. In The Road there are many secrets that the author keeps from the reader. For one, we have no idea what the real names of "the boy" or "papa" are, also we don't know how this catastrophe happened or how a select amount of people were able to survive. The world has turned into a wasteland with the characters left with basically nothing to survive but a grocery cart filled with some equipment and nap sacks with the essentials in them in case they need to abandon the cart. I feel in the story when "papa" finds the coca-cola in the broken machine and the boy realizes he wants him to have it because "It's because I wont ever get to drink another one, isnt it?" really expresses the boys understanding of the world he lives in, the only word he has known.
II. This is similar to "carried away" because secrets are kept about the truth of the dead body in the factory said to be Jack Agnew. The man who finds and for some reason touches the head did not think to look if it was Jack Agnew but that he thought it was.
III. I feel that Cormac McCarthy really didn't want us to have a whole lot of clues about whats going on. He leaves a lot of open ends in the book, especially with the lack of chapters which also seems to be significant with the direction that the story is going. More information would be a big help.