Character Interpretation

In The Road, the boy's main character trait is his innocence.  As the story starts out, he is very innocent.  At least, as compared to the father.  He was raised to believe that everyone around him will try to kill him, if given the chance.  His father showed him how to kill himself in case anyone tried to kidnap him.  There are far worse things than death in this world, and the boy, who is most likely 8 years old, knows of all of them.  Near the beginning of the story a bandit holds a knife to his throat, and his father has to shoot the bandit.  This is the first thing that really breaks the boy; he doesn't talk for a long time afterward.  In a town they are scavenging, later in the book, they see a dog, which bounds away immediately.  While going through a house, the boy sees another child looking at them from out the window.  He keeps begging his father to try to find him, but the father is too pragmatic; he realizes that they couldn't support the other child.  The boy doesn't care about this; whether through empathy or a desire for companionship, he wanted to find them at any cost.  Farther in, the pair are searching through an old mansion.  They check the basement for supplies and find several emaciated, wounded people locked in there.  As they try to run away, a group of people arrive, the ones keeping those people down there, presumably as cattle.  The man and boy run, and the boy is once again broken.  Even farther in, the pair hide as a band of people pass by, including a pregnant woman.  They go down the road in the same direction, and find a campfire.  In the words of the book; "He was standing there checking the perimeter when the boy turned and buried his face against him.  He looked quickly to see what had happened.  What is it? he said.  He turned and looked again. What the boy had seen was a charred human infant headless and gutted and blackening on the spit.  He bent and picked the boy up and started for the road with him, holding him close. I'm sorry, he whispered. I'm sorry."

The boy is corrupted by the events that happen around him, showing the cruelty of the new world and how the innocent cannot survive; as without the father to be a foil to his optimism, the boy would've starved or been taken by bandits.