History Literature / TheRoad

* VirtuousVegetarianism: The Man and and Boy [[spoiler: and the family at the end]] are essentially this world’s version of vegetarians, which just translates to non-cannibalism, but they are the most virtues characters in the story.

* BornLucky: The Man suspects this of his son – as much as anyone can be born luck y AfterTheEnd, anyway. By all the available evidence, he's right.

* CosyCatastrophe: Heavily averted, the Man and the Boy are always tired, hungry and can almost never fully relax for fear of other humans looking to cannibalise, rape or steal from them roaming the wasteland, although they do have a few moments of respite that are relatively cosy considering the circumstances such as when they spend a few days in the bunker and a farmhouse.

* HappyFlashback: The Man actively tries to discourage these. They just make him want to [[DrivenToSuicide end it]]. [[spoiler:When he does have one pleasant flashback of himself and his wife before everything went to Hell, upon waking up he realizes that his days are numbered.]]

* HopeSpot: The Man finds a still-stocked and untouched bomb shelter, giving them a short time with comfortable beds, food, and even hot baths. Since he knows others will find it as well, and that the supplies would be better used to sustain them on their ongoing journey, they don't stay more than a few precious days.

* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: The Man coldly disregards the well-being of other survivors he passes without any trace of remorse out of necessity for the survival of him and his son. However, it's clear that he cares for his son and values the boy's life over his own.

* MeaningfulEcho: The Man and the Boy tell each other throughout that they're "still the good guys". [[spoiler:As he dies]] he tells the Boy, "You're the best guy. [[TearJerker You always were]]."

* NoHonorAmongThieves: After the Man kills one of the cannibals to save the Boy, he returns some time later to find the remains of the bandit, only a pile of inedible organs, skin, and boiled bones. Considering the depths they've been reduced to, it makes sense they wouldn't let anything go to waste, not even a teammate.

* SchmuckBait: Averted. The Man finds a jar of preserved fruit in an abandoned house. It looks very nice, but "other people hadn't trusted it, and in the end, neither did he."

* NeverTrustATrailer: Despite her name being prominently listed, Charlize Theron only appears in flashbacks.

* NothingButSkinAndBones: Due to living in a destroyed world where they're constantly starving, both the Man and the Boy have painfully emaciated-looking bodies. The Boy, when looking at a mirror, actually seems shocked at how skinny they both are.
--->'''The Boy:''' We look skinny.
--->'''The Man:''' We ''are'' skinny.

%% SceneryDissonance: Type 1. The film contains some horrific things, although whether or not the washed-out, decaying landscape is beautiful or not can be debated.
%% The above is not an example of the trope, perhaps of a trope about how the scenery fits the mood.

%%* ThrowTheDogABone: On top of [[spoiler: the Boy finding a new family in the end like in the book, it's implied that %%life will go on. The Boy finds a beetle in one late scene, and the credits feature sounds of birds and animals]].
%% Ambiguous at best: it's strongly implied that the sounds of birds and mammals are a reference to what has been lost, %%not what will be

* LivingIsMoreThanSurviving: The Woman. She is DrivenToSuicide by the fact that she, the Man, and the Boy now have nothing to live for but brute survival.

* OnlySaneMan: Some see the Woman as this, since she preferred to die rather than slowly starve in the ruined world.

* NoHonorAmongThieves: After the Man kills one of the cannibals to save the Boy, he returns some time later to find the remains of the bandit, only a pile of inedible organs, skin, and boiled bones. Considering the depths they've been reduced to, it makes sense they wouldn't let anything go to waste, not even a teammate.

[[caption-width-right:332: This. Gets. '''DIRE''']]

* HappyFlashback: The Man actively tries to discourage these. They just make him want to [[DrivenToSuicide end it]].

* RealIsBrown: Combined with relentless SceneryGorn like woah. Much of the movie was filmed in an abandoned strip-mine, which is about as close as you can get to a RealLife post-apocalyptic wasteland.

-->- ''Literature/{{Darkness}},'' '''Creator/LordByron'''

-->- ''[[https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43825/darkness-56d222aeeee1b Darkness,]]'' '''Creator/LordByron'''

* BornAfterTheEnd: The Boy was born after the catastrophe.
* BornLucky: The Man suspects this of his son –as much as anyone can be BornLucky AfterTheEnd, anyway. By all the available evidence, he's right.

* DrivenToSuicide: [[spoiler:The mother, and the father still carries a gun with two bullets in case the urge becomes overwhelming for him too.]] Justified, given the situation.

* ImAHumanitarian: The only way for most people to eat, now that the biosphere's dying out. The Man and the Boy are amongst the few survivors who ''don't'' indulge in this. [[spoiler: As well as the group that finds the Boy at the end.]]

* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: The Man coldly disregards the well-being of other survivors he passes without any trace of remorse out of necessity for the survival of him and his son. However, it's clear that he cares for his son and values his life over his own.

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:The Man has died, but the Boy finds a new, slightly more prosperous family to take care of him. Of course, they're still in a dying world]].

* BreakTheCutie: The Boy is repeatedly subjected to this, most severely when they discover [[spoiler: the cannibal larder]].

* CrapsackWorld: Less a WorldHalfEmpty than a world almost completely drained. ''The Road'' arguably features the most thoroughly Crapsack World in all of highbrow literature, surpassed only by ''Literature/IHaveNoMouthAndIMustScream''. The entire biosphere is dead–a frozen terrestrial corpse covered in lung-choking ash. Nightmarish cannibal degenerates, their starving prey, and occasional patches of fungus are the remains of life on earth [[spoiler: for most of the novel]]. In a flashback at the outset, two of the main characters debate whether killing themselves is the only moral decision they have left. [[spoiler: The conclusion gives a glimmer of hope by revealing small pockets of life and humanity that may allow the biosphere to recover to a degree, but it also implies that the earth as we knew it is irrevocably lost.]] Interestingly, [=McCarthy=]'s vision of "life" amid total ecological ruin has been credited as so harrowing that it makes The Road a uniquely powerful demonstration of how everything we value depends on the environment, and thus one of the most important environmental works ever written.
* CreepyBasement: [[spoiler: One filled with people that the cannibals have been eating alive, piece by piece, over a long period of time]].