Campbell-The Road

In The Road, the reader is given a graphic description of despair that the man in boy ore living during some undefined apocalyptic event that has rendered the world’s landscape a barren land of ash.  This landscape of waste is equally depicted in the film as well.  As the reader and viewer progress through the book as well as the film the overwhelming since hopelessness and despair that surround the man and boy, is tempered by the man’s sense of duty to his son and his will to survive and hope against all hope. This hope against all hope theme were defined by the man’s constant mention of “The Fire Inside” as well as “The Good Guys”. The man and boy had a goal of reaching the coast and sea. Perhaps this was a metaphor for rebirth or baptism where the water of the sea would wash away the sins of man and bring new hope. In any case, this was the driving force for the man and boy to continue on when weaker souls would have and were ending their own lives for fear of meeting a horrible death and being the served as a meal.  The cannibalism described in the book and movie represented the moral corruption of man in the face of un-paralleled hardship. One particular and disturbing section of the book that was not depicted in the movie was when the man and boy saw a group of people that had been trailing them. The group included three men and a pregnant woman. The man and boy positioned themselves in a manner such that the group would pass them while they observed them. Eventually the group passed and the man and boy waited a bit before continuing on. Eventually the man and boy came upon a camp site which had been left by the group in which the charred remains of an infant were left. Eventually the man and boy arrive at the coast, while it was not as they envisioned, it did offer a brief spark until eventually the man’s failing health caught with them and he died. Perhaps he had lost the will to fight off the impending death feeling that he had giving his son a chance at better life once they reached the coast. While the death of the man was expected, it seemed to dash all chance of hope that is until the boy was approached by the man on the beach. In the end hope was once again restored when the man revealed he had two children and his wife with him in the book and the addition of a dog in the movie. In the book the woman was more vocal than in the movie and she spoke of God and there seemed to be some time that had passed since his father’s death, where as in the movie she provide the sense of hope and warmth by saying she was glad to see him. It is hard to say what happened to the boy after that, the optimist would hope that he made it further south and the he and his new companions found “The Good Guys”  in a place were some sense of humanity was restored and the world begins to heal itself.