During the night, the boy holds his father. When the boy wakes up, his father is dead. The boy weeps, goes to the road, then returns to his father's side to hold his hand, crying his name. The boy remains by his father for three days. Finally, he returns to the road. He notices that someone is approaching. The boy stands by the road with the pistol in his hand. He has piled blankets over the man's body. This preservation of the son into the next scene, into the next generation, suggests the hopeful alternative for human civilization rather than the one that characterized the father’s generation of death and destruction, of the seeming total indifference of the world.
The Road's denouement is thus a rescue. It is the redeeming act that the father seems to have been looking for. The journey, at least from the father’s point of view, was to ensure his son’s survival. He suggested that it was mission appointed by God in order that the boy be protected. Finally, at the conclusion of the novel, it appears that this goal has been achieved. The boy now has a family again and some kind of home, and he is presumably going to be relatively safe once again, perhaps no longer to wander the road.
