The End

1. I think the novel ends when the man dies. This is because the whole book has been from the man’s point of view, it is his narrative throughout. In this way The Road can be viewed as his journey, and the boy acts as his conscience when he strays too far from his humanity and threatens to do something evil. When he dies, the narrative changes and from then it is from the boy’s point of view. The man starts to dream as he is dying; he mentions “old dreams encroached” as it is the one from the very beginning of the book. It links the whole books together, bringing it back full circle, we get the sense at the beginning that they are doomed to die, and in the end that becomes true. As well as this their physical journey is done, the man is never going to move from that spot.

He says about the “fading light” the light has always symbolised hope, and it is the thing that keeps him going. When he says that it is fading it also symbolises the loss of hope, and when it dies so does he, as he has no will to continue. The man also says that he has “reached the point of no return.” He has no optimism, he knows this is where he is going to die and he had accepted it.

For me, the ending of The Road is best described through XII “undermine what has gone before”. This is because throughout the entirety of the novel the man says that he will kill his son when the time comes. However, when he is lying there dying and he had the opportunity to do what he has promised to do, he doesn’t. The man says that he can’t even when the boy is begging him to do it. Even though the man tries to be emotionally distant from the boy, in the end his emotions come to the surface, proving that he does have them after all.

2. Change of narrative view, light has gone out as has his hope. It links back to the beginning and the dream he had - cave.