Throughout the novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy, there have been themes of sadness, despair, destruction, and a loss of hope. These themes, however, did not apply to the son. The son symbolizes hope, future, and morality for the man and other who come across him.
Though in section five we might have seen a disappearance in these symbols in the boy and a slow replacement of the themes that grip every man, woman, and child of this desolate world. We see this disappearance specifically when they go to the first house, and the effects that grip him afterword.
After they went to the first house and witnessed the horrifying things that humans could and would do to each other, it set something off in the boy. The boy was now fearing for his life at every given time in section six. No longer did the boy have any bravery and innocence to trust random people, as he had seen the horrifying things that men could do. When the man and his son reach the house with the bunker, and settle down to sleep. (scene before they found the bunker) the man says: “But when he bent to see into the boy’s face under the hood of the blanket he very much feared that something was gone that could not be put right again”(McCarthy 136). This quote alludes to the fact that the boy lost his innocence at that first house, and innocence can never be repaired or put back again, the only hope and future they have now is in the morals of the boy and his choice on whether or not to continue with them.
The boy does decide to continue with his morals, he may have lost his innocence, but he had not lost his hope for good people in the world. He exemplifies this behavior when they are in the bunker and he prays to the owners over the food: “Dear people, thank you for all this food and stuff. We know that you saved it for yourself and if you were here we wouldn’t eat it no matter how hungry we were and we’re sorry that you didnt get to eat it and we hope that you’re safe in heaven with God”(McCarthy 146). This quote is important because even though the child lost his innocence, he still has his morals and the goodness of the past world. This quote is also important because he says ‘safe in heaven with God’, making it look to the reader that the boy still has hope for safety and happiness past this world. The world might be full of destruction, fear, sadness, and despair, but there is always a hope for something better and something to be unafraid of.
The boy might still be afraid of the world that is around him, and his innocence may have disappeared with the witnessing of the first house, but his morals still remain and continue to guide both his father and himself into a world of hope.
