Desolation, Gray, Emptiness in The Road

The world of The Road there is nothing but a “Cold. Desolate. Birdless.” (215) wasteland. There is nothing alive nor anything with color, and this emptiness has seeped into the hearts of the main characters, though mostly the father. Their hearts and minds have become as cold and as desolate as the wastes around them. With all they have seen, all they have done, there is nothing else to do but cut yourself off from the pain and emotion, and this is exactly the father wishes for, “If only my heart were stone.” (11). And at some point he is able to cut off a big part of that emotion and the wasteland is then “As gray as his heart.” (27), but not letting yourself feel and cutting off that portion of your heart will inevitably lead to loss of one’s identity and sense of self. Like the world around them these characters lose all sense of identity and become nothing more than a husk, nothing but an animal looking to survive, and most of the time that is exactly what they have to be. They do not have the freedom to be anything, and the moments when they do have that freedom are fleeting and ephemeral. The father says it best himself, “I’m not anything.” (64), these characters even lack one of the most important parts of identity - a name. At no point in this book do we ever learn the names of the boy or of the father, and in the end they remain mysteries, much like the wasteland they inhabit, cold, and gray, and desolate.