Later, facing death by starvation once again, the boy spots a house in the distance, and the house turns out to have food in it (202). Still later, the man finds a flare gun on an abandoned sailboat "a gun that is crucial in a later encounter (240). And, of course, there is the boy's encounter with the shotgun-toting veteran after the death of his father (281). Are these events little miracles "the hand of God reaching into the burned-out hellscape to protect the child "or are they just strokes of good fortune? The answer to this question remains unclear. There are hints of divine activity, but they are never more than hints. For instance, the name of the abandoned sailboat is "Pajaro de Esperanza " "bird of hope. The bird of hope is the dove. In the Old Testament, a dove carrying an olive leaf signals to Noah that the waters of the flood are receding (Genesis 8:11). But the sailboat named after the dove brings a message of despair; it originates from Tenerife, a Spanish island off the coast of Africa. It brings the message that the catastrophe that constitutes the backdrop of The Road is worldwide.
A particularly tantalizing illustration of this ambiguity is the father and son's encounter with an old man who may or may not be named "Ely " (McCarthy 161). This character resembles the Old Testament prophet Elijah in certain ways (see Snyder 81).
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Elijah predicted a drought (1 Kings 17:1); Ely says he knew that the catastrophe (or something like it) was coming ""I always believed in it " (McCarthy 168). Ely wonders about being the last person left alive: "Suppose you were the last one left? Suppose you did that to yourself? " (169). Elijah tells God that "the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away " (1 Kings 19:10, emphasis added).