March Tournament. . . Of Books!

So a man and a woman never introduced or foreshadowed that rescue and shelter the boy, rending moot the worry that the father had for his son is not deus ex machina to you?
The last speech of the father in which he proclaims his son's luck does not either:
1) leave you betrayed at an insincere narrator, or
2) leave you betrayed at an insincere author...

after you have wiped the tears from your eyes of course. The actions of the father work against any belief in the ability of his son to survive without him. If this was the plan of either the narrator or the author, there were ways to foreshadow it. To make it believable by either laying the groundwork for the father's belief, that he already believes, or show outward "effects" of it to allow for a late or deathbed belief.

Finally, I love the choice of letting the son not have to directly disprove him (about being unable to fend for himself), but we also didn't get to hear the father's inner argument against killing the son. It just happened after the fact (after the father was incapacitated).

The style of the book was great. The emotion was powerful. The last few pages were disappointing. I didn't think deus ex machina was the only solution for the son. I didn't expect it from this author and it if it was out of place in any world, it was out of place in a world where people eat each other rather than help each other. That just further pushed it towards the unbelievable.

It could have been believable. It just needed more pages, before and after to work on it.

IMHO.

For one, there is certainly a hint that there might be other "good people" on the Road. The son asks it several times. Asks of others "will they carry the fire too?" The fact that the father has held out hope against hopelessness gives a small sign that others might do the same. He also makes a fundamental choice when he chooses not to kill his son when he gets sick, and that choice (to some extent) is rewarded. The father doesn't ever believe that the son could live without him. He also realizes that he can not kill his son--even if thats what a non-existant God demands of him.

Which brings me to the last pointt: I don't think that a Deus Ex Machina, if that's what it is, can be entirely unexpected in a story about a Father and a Son (or in one where they meet a man named Eli on the Road). There is definitely a biblical, parable-like element to the book.