What's Your predication of the Boy's future after the end of the Road. Sure he got picked up by a decent family with better means to defend themselves. But would he actually reach adulthood? Marry? Have kids of his own? I'd think the odds are still against him, or any long term human survival in that desolate world.

I personally like to think that these people band together with other "good guy" groups, they remember how to generate electricity, they build a HUGE bio-dome with those special lights that allow plants to grow indoors and they wait out this whole world covered in sun-blocking ash crisis while happily eating strawberries from some seeds they found in an old grocery store. It could TOTALLY happen! Okay, so maybe that's a bit of a 'light' answer for a very dark book, but I suppose my point is that McCarthy asks his readers to examine themselves to find their own ending. Are you a glass half full or a glass half empty person, are you full of hope or faith? I think the predictions we make about the boys future will reflect our own personalities. In my case, I'm a rediculously optimistic person with faith that somehow, some way, humans will always travel The Road...

I think I was more interested in why they waited so long before approaching the boy? Were they waiting for the man to die? Were they afraid of his paranoia and thought it was the only way to save the boy? Or did they think that the two of them were just as bad as the cannibals because of the way they treated the people they met along the way?

Jane, I agree that predictions can be dependent on personalities. I'm kind of approaching this more analytically. Not counting Miracles, what are likely scenarios of what happens next.