John McCarthy's Novel Teaches Us To...

The Road is one of my all-time favorite books. If you want to understand "why", please read this older post: 

Son: We wouldn’t ever eat anybody, would we?

Father: No. Of course not.

Even if we were starving?

We’re starving now.

No matter what.

No. No matter what.

Because we’re the good guys.

Yes.

And we’re carrying the fire.

And we’re carrying the fire. Yes.

McCarthy has said that The Road is everything he wants to teach his son about growing up, about life, about being “a good guy.”

The father continually tells his son, that no matter what, “You must carry the fire.”

Yes, the fire is literal–the boy needs the fire for warmth and to cook but fire is metaphorical for compassion and love.

Because, the father believes it’s the fire that will spring the boy’s survival.

Daily Stoic has a beautiful piece on the same:

Everything depended on reaching the coast, yet waking in the night he knew that all of this was empty and no substance to it.” The coast was just an idea, a distant point on the horizon, that served as something to measure progress against. No more, no less. So the man kept going. He pushed his cart, he protected his son, he carried the fire. He tried to do what was right, tried not to be broken down by all that was happening around him, tried not to be corrupted by it.

All we can do is keep going. We keep buggering on, as Churchill did. We fight on. We stick to it. We endure. We survive. Maybe things will get better soon, maybe they won’t. But we’ll definitely keep moving. We’ll carry the fire. We’ll do what’s right. We won’t be broken down.