I haven't seen the movie 'The Road' but with regard to the book and its ending, I actually found the ending, and even the whole story in some ways hopeful and redemptive. Johnson is right that it is a story on two levels, at one level it is absolute horror, but on another level it is very hopeful, and in the book at least rises well above sentimentality.

Ultimately the Boy and even his Father have not given up. I did not see the Father in the book as having lost all faith in humanity. The Boy helps to maintain his Father's faith, and in turn the Father sees that he has to teach his son to continue to have faith. Together they are keeping alive the dying embers of civilization in a horribly ruined world, at at the end, when it seems like there might be nothing left they find people like themselves. I could see in a hollywood movie how they might take this over the top, but as I say, even in the book I found this very redemptive.

The Road is the literary antidote to Lord of the Flies and Blindness and the like. These books are underpinned by the belief that the social contract is very tenuously maintained and that given some type of breakdown or panic everyone will revert to a pre-Hobbesian state of nature. The Road argues that even in the worst anarchy and social collapse there will always be good people who will struggle against the worst of our impulses to maintain human decency and ultimately civilization. Fundamentally The Road is based on a strongly held belief in humanity.