Life in the Fire

As the reader, I hope that the boy and his father reach the coast, that they find some way to keep living. I believe that the boy will live, though. The boy seems to symbolize a new start because he hasn't experienced the past as the man has. He still sees good in things, such as Ely, and the boy he saw in the small town.

But for me the end is more than who dies. It's what lives. If the boy and his father die, I won't lie, it'll make me sad. But what lives after they're gone is their faith, their perseverance, their hold on things good in an evil world. Maybe this is the fire that the boy speaks of that they carry. The fire is hope when nobody would be surprised to find that they had given up, the value of being good, of the safekeeping of morals and standards and virtue.