The Road

I have now finished The Road for a second time. I like the ending a lot. After two hundred and fifty pages of depression and bleak outlooks, the last couple of pages finally give the reader some hope.

I have heard a couple of different interesting theories about the final section. One is that the family that takes the boy in is farming children to eat. I heard this theory before I reread the ending, and it upset me greatly. Now that I have looked at it further, however, I don't see this theory as accurate as all. First of all, the amount of resources it would take to farm children is completely unrealistic. The most benificial practice for the adults to partake in would be eating the children as soon as they are born. It takes too much time and food to grow them up to be not a whole lot more massive than they would be early in life. Also, I think the last two pages destroys this idea. The boy talks about the future, and how they see fish at one point in the mountains. If he's been kept alive for that long, it is extremely unlikely that he will be killed and eaten by the family protecting him.

Another theory I've heard is that the boy dies with the man. As the man said earlier in the book, the only dreams for men in peril are of peril. Any other kind is bad news. The boy experiences these good things at the very end, and it almost seems too good to be true. This theory states that the boy has passed away or is currently in the process of passing away, and these are his last dreams.

I don't believe in either of these theories, though they are interesting. I think the ending is much more straightforward- the boy lives happily ever after. The end.