McCarthy's ending in The Road seems to be both hopeful and hopeless. Why do you think he ended the story in this way?

This is a tough book to get through, isn't it?  I had to
take breaks it was so depressing.  But the hopeful note at the end of the story, after I
thought about it a while, suggests to me or represents that the struggle for humanity,
and the overwhelming and driving will human beings have for survival carries on, even
after the story is done.

McCarthy waits until the last few
pages of the book to suggest that there are, after all, others like the man and his son,
who have chosen to collect themselves and their families, protect them, and hold on to
what makes them humans and not mere animals.  They are starting again, and the boy
becomes a part of that at the end.

I think the line towards
the end of the book about the man who takes the boy in after his father's death is
especially telling. The man who comes to retrieve the boy suggests that there was
considerable debate between the survivors he is with about whether to come get the boy
or not.  And obviously the final decision is to rescue him.  This unselfish act, this
most important of human gestures--saving a life--is a hopeful ending on more levels than
just the rescue itself.

The hopelessness comes in that the
struggle isn't finished, and the odds are long for humanity in general.  Nothing is
"fixed" at the end, and we see no capacity for mankind to truly recover in the long
term, but there is still hope that it can and will at some future
point.