Moving Forward

Throughout the book, the man and his son have been walking down the road, searching for food and hiding from the cannibals. However, they are not just wandering erratically through the ashes. They are heading south in hopes of reaching the coast. But what will they find there? How different is the coast to the place they’re in now? From what I have read so far, everything is covered in ash, barren, desolate and dead. Could the ocean have survived whatever destroyed the land? Is it conceivable to think that there could be anything on the coast that could save them? Unfortunately, they have no other choice but to go and hope for the best.

The path towards the coast, however, is not easy or reasonable in any way. The man claims it will only take two weeks or three, but there are many obstacles that they must overcome in order to get there. First of all, the man seems to be sick. If he gets too weak, they won't be able to move anymore. His son fears the worst, and his nightmares prove that he knows his father might die. One night he wakes up crying and as the man consoles him, he says, "I was crying. But you didn't wake up...in the dream"(183). If the man dies, will the son survive? Most likely, he won’t and the man understands the simplicity of this situation. He must remain living to protect his son. He must sacrifice entirely to the survival of his child, because to him, he is the only hope left of civilization, and the only reason he has decided to stay alive.
Another problem they have had to deal with throughout the novel is the threat of the cannibals. It seems that they are getting more savage and beastly as they run out of food. They have become so frantic that they have reached the extreme of eating a newborn child. The human infant, roasted on the coals of a dead fire, represents the death of humanity and the total loss of principles. Any hope that civilization would rise out of the ashes lay charred and defiled by savageness. This makes it even more essential for the man to keep himself and his son alive. They are clearly one of the last "good guys", and it is up to them to keep humanity from sinking hopelessly into the dark depths of brutality.

 For this reason, they must get to the coast somehow. The coast symbolizes hope and survival. The man and his son walk towards it as their only possibility of salvation. There's nothing that ensures that they’ll find something, but the fact of having a goal is what keeps them moving on. Without this goal of reaching the coast, they might just as well have stayed in the bunker forever until the supplies ran out or the “bad guys” found them. They have their little light shining through the fog, giving them one last reason to stay alive.

This symbol can be related to the green light mentioned in The Great Gatsby. It would stimulate Jay Gatsby to try harder, leading him forward, despite there being no guarantee that he would indeed achieve it. The ability to fight blindly for a dream, regardless of all odds is what relates Gatsby to the man and his son.  Hopefully, they won't have Gatsby's bad luck, and theirs will lead them towards salvation, and the possibility of salvaging what’s left of civilization.