I actually liked the ending of The Road and nobody gets why

Everyone I talk to says the ending of Cormac McCarthy's The Road was too hopeful or didn't make sense. But for me, that ending worked. The kid finding that family felt earned after all the suffering. It wasn't some fairy tale, it was just a tiny break in the darkness. I get why people hate it, but I think the whole book was building toward that one sliver of trust. Has anyone else felt like the popular take on a book's ending is just flat out wrong?

2 comments

Log in to join the discussion

Log In

2 Comments

zara_perez622mo ago

Found a half-dead kitten in a gutter once, nursed it back, and it ran off three days later.

1

patricia_rodriguez2mo ago

Did the hope feel forced to you or did it just match how dark everything was? The thing is, the book never promised anything good, so that family felt like pure luck instead of a reward. McCarthy kept the world brutal, so a small break like that felt more real to me than a total downer.

-1