Quote:
Originally Posted by SeattleUte
The payoff for the father contining to try is really just those few years he spent with his son amid that blasted environment. That should be enough, hard as such a life was, the novel tells us.
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Actually no, McCarthy argues, in the man's actions at the end, that that is NOT enough. Being together is what it was, but it is not enough. After promising that he would take the boy with him to the grave to "save him" he cannot do so. We've always had luck, he says, do what we have done before. Go forth my son. Despite the odds.
It is not his to grant mercy that extinguishes faith, no matter how desperate.
....
The hopeful ending with the shotgun wielding man and his group....
McCarthy bookends the book, in a way with women. The boy's abandonment by his mother's suicide. Then at the end, "the woman" appears again, not his mother, but a woman, who is portrayed as dear to the boy. In the gap between these two women, is the man. By bookending the novel with women, McCarthy may have intended to magnify the idea that this was an exploration of what it is to be a man, and what it is to be a father. What is it specifically that a man can give to his son?