The End is only the Beginning

Finishing this book was nearly impossible. As I reached the end, the thought of the book ending was a relief and terribly frightening. The end could only be two different outcomes, they would finally reach safety, or they would die. It turned out to be neither, or a combination of both. The father had to die in order for the boy to go on and survive and to live the life he had always wanted. He finally gets to meet another little boy and his father’s paranoia was not present to keep him from human contact. The scene where the father died was heartbreaking, but only his death could set the boy free. The boy can only carry the fire if he carried on without his father.
The boy is the flame, a Jesus figure in the book. When the father left the man naked in the cold to die, the father tries to convince him that only he carries the burden and that the boy should not burden himself with such things. The boy responds “Yes I am, he said. I am the one.” This line works on a couple of different levels emphasizing the boy’s role as a messiah. First, he bluntly states that he is the One. He is the one carrying the flame; he is the light in this dark world. He is a hope to his father and to others. He was the only hope for the man that was left behind to die, “The thief looked at the child and what he saw was very sobering to him. He laid the knife on top of the blankets, backed away, and stood.” The thief knew that the man would not kill him because the child was there. The child’s presence was enough to give him some hope, regardless of the fact that he later was left to die. The line works in a second level. The boy is the one that carries the man’s sins. The man does things that the boy does not approve of and the man continues his way on the road while the boy carries these things on his conscience. He is paying for his sins like Jesus died on the cross in order to pay for everyone else’s sins.
The boy is the light that this dark, barren, and hopeless world is missing. He is pure, but he still understands what the world really is. He has no high expectations of anything, but he has morals and standards that he wants to stand by. The man is here to take him as far as he can, but he dies because he begins to hold him back. The man is making him be an accomplice to things he simply does not approve of. The father has taught him everything he possibly can. The boy does not need him anymore. For sometime now the boy has surprised the father with a few phrases that the man has either never said or hasn’t said in a very long time, and he cannot understand how his son understands how to use them. For a long time now, the language has been broken and communication has been faltering before them, but in moments like this, language lives through the boy in a way that it hasn’t lived through the man in a very long time.
Their separation was necessary, but it was very sad. I am happy for the boy that he has found a different life with other kids where can possibly enjoy life rather than just dragging himself through a road that leads nowhere. The father is very cowardly and he could never bring himself to end his son’s life. The thought of doing that is absolutely heartbreaking, but I guess it is more bearable to allow the boy to fend for himself and to die on his own than for him, for the father, to have to live through that. Thankfully the child will not have to die alone, but he will know his father left him alone to live in a dark, lonely world.