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Plot summary

The Road follows an unnamed father and son journeying together toward the sea across a post-apocalyptic landscape, some years after a great, unexplained cataclysm has destroyed civilization and almost all life on Earth. The setting is extremely bleak; the sun is obscured by a layer of ash so thick that the pair must breathe through masks, and plants do not grow. The surviving remnants of humanity have been largely reduced to thoughtless violence and cannibalism. Realizing that they will not survive another winter in their present location, the father leads him through this desolate landscape towards the sea, sustained by a vague hope of finding other "good people" like them.

Overwhelmed by this desperate and apparently hopeless situation, the boy's mother, pregnant with him at the time of the cataclysm, has committed suicide some time before the story begins. The father coughs blood every morning and knows he is dying. He struggles to protect his son from the constant threats of attack, exposure, and starvation, as well as from what he sees as the boy's innocently well-meaning but dangerous desire to help the other wanderers they meet. They carry a pistol with two bullets, meant for protection or suicide if necessary. In the face of all of these obstacles, the man and the boy have only each other (they are "each the other's world entire"). The man maintains the pretense, and the boy holds on to the real faith, that there is a core of ethics left somewhere in humanity. They repeatedly assure one another that they are "the good guys", who are "carrying the fire".

On their journey the duo scrounge for food, encounter roving bands of cannibals, and contend with casual horrors such as a baby roasting on a spit and people being kept alive as their limbs are slowly harvested for food. In the end, having brought the boy south after extreme hardship but without finding the salvation he had hoped for, the father succumbs to his illness and dies, leaving the boy alone on the road. Three days later, however, the grieving boy encounters a man who has been tracking the father and son; this man, who has a wife and two children of his own, brings the boy to join his family. One of the children is a girl, implying the possibility of a future for the human race, despite the grim conditions. A brief epilogue meditates on nature and infinity in this altered environment.