Death and Survival (Reflective)

          Destruction, survival, isolation, and death are prominent themes in The Road. Most life has been wiped out by some unnamed catastrophic event. Cities are destroyed; plant life is gone; animals have disappeared. Civilization has broken down, and chaos reigns in its place. No matter where the man and the boy go, houses have no roofs and are rotting from the rain and wind. Most living creatures and plants have not survived the disaster that has destroyed civilization. For example, cows are extinct, and the boy has never before seen birds or fish. The earth is in ashes. Its thorough inclusion in the novel almost gives it the status of a character. The constant threat of death, from starvation, exposure, illness, or murderm, also makes the everyday things in the novel much richer than it otherwise would be. Simple actions like eating, finding clean water, or exchanging a few kind words with another human have much more value then we consider them to have today. Throughout the book you also become more increasinlgy aware that the father is dying. 
          When the he dreams of his wife, who also experienced death, he considers those dreams to be the call of death beckoning him from the bleak reality of his present life. Yet even though his wife chose to take her own life due to her own selfishness, death is actually what pushed the father and boy onward. The father pressed on so that he, and especially his son, may achieve survival and escape from all of the things threatening their lives. He also does this without maliciously harming anyone like we see many other people have done at this time. The only situation that the father is willing to kill someone is if they are threatening the life of his son. Although the father does die in the end, there still may be a glimmer of hope. The deforestation and ash described in The Road would release nutrients from the land into rivers, lakes and the ocean, encouraging further growth. Eventually, slower-growing species would begin to reemerge, we just don't get to see that far in the future when reading this novel. So maybe the son did successfully escape the death that lurked behind he and his father on thier journey, and maybe he did end up having somewhat of a happy ending. I suppose that's something we will never truly know.