The Road 1- The Man and the Boy

The two protagonists in the story, the man and the boy, are a father and son traveling across the barren wasteland of their once great nation. throughout their journey they are plagued with trials and hardships one might expect from a post-apocalyptic world, shortages of food and water, deteriorating health, and the threat of constant attack by other survivors that have resorted to more desperate and barbaric methods of survival. The man and the boy  both are symbolic in the book in a few different ways. One of the most prominent symbolic meaning of the two is their representation of being good versus evil. The boy throughout the novel is told by his father that they are the good guys, that everyone they have met has been evil, that they "carry the fire". The boy is constantly questioning the fact of their goodness throughout the novel and is made unsure hen his father refuses to help other survivors that they encounter on the road. The father himself also represents humanity's tendency to mistrust people and to always question another's motives behind their actions. The man trusts nearly nobody on the road, and is wary of helping others if not absolutely necessary. The only other person he puts over himself is his son, who is above all others in the fathers mind. The father is entirely devoted to his son, and everything he does is to ensure the boy's safety. The father even admits that the only reason he still has motivation to live is to try and keep his son safe and to give him  a better life. The boy has an opposite meaning from his father. He represents humanity's natural compassion to another human, and the natural tendency to want to help a suffering person to the best of one's abilities. He is the symbol of innocence and it is clear he is less hardened to the world as his father. The boy expresses an extreme desire to be good and to feel as his life is not purposeless and evil. While they both represent different parts of humanity, they also represent the power of a father's love for his son, and humanity's will to survive.