Everyone has had to make a tough decision in their life before. In The Road, the man comes across a very tough decision of whether to help the man and child on the road, or not. The man decides not to help them and to only stay with his son. The man is right in not helping them for multiple reasons. First, he can not trust them, in this post apocalyptic world they cannot trust anyone because they might turn out to be cannibals. Another reason is because there is not anything the man could really do to help them. The man made the right decision even though his son is upset by it.
They cannot trust anyone in the post apocalyptic world.
“We need to get off the road.”
“Why, Papa?”
“Someone’s coming...”
“They could be good guys. Couldn’t they
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He looked at the shy out of old habit but there was nothing to see.” (McCarthy 87). This shows that he does not trust anyone and thinks everyone is a bad guy. The man considers everyone a threat, which he has to do in this world. "...not just professional killers but cannibals in search of a meal. The quest of the unnamed father and young son... is simply to survive and reach the warm south eastern shore." (Rollyson 2893). There are people going around killing people for fun and some that are killing for food. All they want to do is survive so the man is right in not helping they people because they could kill him and his son. “In the face of these inhospitable forces, the father must struggle to protect his son both from physical danger and from moral and emotional despair.” (Meyer). This means that in this world there are so many bad people that the man has to make tough decisions between protecting his son and helping other people who may turn out to be bad. In those circumstances he has to choose protecting his son because he cannot trust the other people. “Most significantly, at the end of the novel when the father is dying, the boy begs and pleads with his father to kill him as well, to take him into death. The man tells him that he cannot do that and that the boy must keep going, he must keep carrying the metaphorical fire that represents the will to live.” (Gale Reference). Even to the very end the man decides to keep his son