In the ending pages of The Road, the woman is glad to see the boy alive, and she is also happy because she senses that this boy may carry a messianic message.
Before he dies, the father instructs his son about what life was like prior to the holocaust that they have experienced. He tells his son the names of creatures, and he describes activities in which he engaged with nature as a boy....
In the ending pages of The Road, the woman is glad to see the boy alive, and she is also happy because she senses that this boy may carry a messianic message.
Before he dies, the father instructs his son about what life was like prior to the holocaust that they have experienced. He tells his son the names of creatures, and he describes activities in which he engaged with nature as a boy. In other words, the father attempts to instill in his son the memories of a world that once held beauty and was full of life and bounty. At times, he cries as he watches over his sleeping son:
He wasn't sure what it was about, but he thought it was about beauty or goodness.
It seems, then, that the woman who so gladly greets the boy perceives in this child a promise for the future. She tells the boy that
...the breath of God was his breath yet though it pass from man to man through all of time.
Thus, she may well view the boy as a promise for the future, as the things that he holds in his memory are those that long outlive individuals—those things of beauty and goodness of which his father has spoken. These things, she may feel, can be passed on by the boy and then from one to another. They are the "breath of God" of which she speaks.
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