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The Road is a novel of hopelessness and despair, with some dim hope keeping the main characters, a man and his son, alive. Mostly, the characters live dreadfully. They sleep cold under a tarp, they hide from cannibals, they starve for days on end—and yet they keep going. The man and the boy’s desperate march to the coast, to warmth, may all be for naught, but they make the journey anyway. The main conflict of the book is a simple one: stay alive. All of nature is against the man and the boy, and most of humanity too. They are hunted by survivors, many of them cannibals, but they maintain the hope of something better further down the road. The man is hopeless about his own life, but he retains some hope that he can provide for the boy and keep him alive. Indeed, the future survival of his son is the man’s only reason to continue.
The novel begins in medias res, in the middle of the action. The reader only gains perspective as to what brought the man and the boy to their current situation through flashbacks. This device lends immediate urgency to the plight of the man and boy. They must keep moving and they must find food. The flashbacks reveal that an environmental or nuclear disaster has destroyed nearly all natural life on the planet. By showing the man and boy hunting for canned food in abandoned houses in the present, the author reveals the outcome of this specific catastrophic event, and in the small portrait of a boy and his father, the author illustrates the universal outcome of such catastrophic devastation.
The inevitability of death on a dying world is a major theme in the novel. Events in the story reflect the chaos of the road, but everything points toward the ultimate climax of the father’s death. There is no telling what each day will bring. Sometimes it’s cannibals, sometimes it’s freezing rain, and sometimes it’s a warm reprieve. Mostly it is biting cold and danger. When the characters are sick, it foreshadows a specific looming danger that will ultimately lead to the demise of the man.
The decision to make the journey to the coast is made by the man; he reasons that they should get south to stay warm. This decision gives the characters a clear objective and thus drives the plot forward. However, the man has no idea whether achieving this objective will actually help them or not. Nevertheless, working toward a goal gives the man and boy some semblance of hope in an otherwise impossible situation. The man must frequently make many decisions like this, based on little information. He cannot know all he needs to. This causes him to take risks, which the boy questions or objects to. These risks often lead the man and his son into extremely dangerous situations, which nearly result in their death or capture. Stylistically, these incidents are presented briefly, in snippets. This presentation serves to highlight the unending monotony and terror of the road itself. Whatever happens to these characters, they will simply move on and fight a new challenge, so they may continue south on their journey to the coast. Therefore, the coast is more of a powerful idea than an actual place and represents the characters’ last hope.
The rising action of the novel consists of these many episodes along the road, some terrible and some mundane. The man and the boy barely avoid cannibals, but also manage to visit the house where the man grew up. They scavenge for scraps, like siphoning small amounts of oil from old bottles, but they also find a bunker filled with supplies. The bunker is the greatest stroke of luck they could hope for, but they cannot stay. Their safety depends upon movement. After spells of good and bad luck in turn, the man and boy finally reach the coast. They have reached their destination at last, but once there it is not clear what they should do. The coast is just as desolate, gray, and dead as everything that came before it. Their migration was spurred on by hunger and the need to scavenge new ground. But even at the coast, they must continue looking for food.
The incidents continue as father and son track the coastal lands. During this time, the boy and his father grow further apart. The father makes difficult decisions for them both but the son doesn’t always agree. When a thief steals their supplies, the father tracks him down and takes everything from him, essentially condemning the thief to death from exposure. The boy sees this as unnecessarily cruel, and he bitterly dissents. This incident marks a turning point in which the boy begins to assert his agency. As the father’s health declines and the boy continues to form an independent worldview, their roles subtly shift. The man’s impending death means the boy must not only become caretaker, but also contemplate what comes next.
The story’s climax occurs when the father finally succumbs to death. The boy sits with his Papa and weeps for all that has been lost between them. By some turn of good luck, a stranger approaches and offers the boy shelter. The boy’s father has taught him to be wary of cannibals, but the new man promises he is no cannibal. By trusting in and accepting help from the stranger, the boy marks the final break from his father. His father did his job of protecting the boy and keeping him alive. But now the boy must leave his father, and his father’s world, behind him, relying only on himself to make decisions and stay alive. The stranger has a wife and children, which represents the possibility of a truly hopeful future for the boy. In the end, it is the man’s fierce protectiveness and defensiveness that has kept the boy alive. However, it is the boy’s good nature, his belief in the possible goodness of others, and his decision to trust that opens a new world for him.
