In the novel The Road, Cormac McCarthy uses many binaries. A binary opposition is a pair of related terms or concepts that are opposite in meaning; one of which is Light versus Dark. The common idea of light versus dark is that light is always good and darkness is always evil. However this idea tends to be too much of a generalization. Not all of the people who follow "the light" are good and many good people do happen to follow the dark.
             Despite all of the issues with Light versus Dark it really is a simple thing. All it comes down to is ones personal point of view. Someone who looks upon the world as a bad place to live, who feels no hope that anything could get better, is someone who lives with a "dark" mind. People of this sort aren't necessarily FOLLOWERS of the dark but they ARE the basic orientation of darkness. On the other hand someone who always finds the positive things in life and finds the good in almost everything is someone whose basic orientation is of the light. Neither of these is right or wrong, and each of these can make plausible arguments for their points of view.
             Since people who follow the light tend to be optimistic, positive, and hopeful people the boy from The Road falls under this character. Throughout the novel the boy remained to always be positive and optimistic about the south. He is filled with innocence since he has known no other world. "Maybe he understood for the first time that to the boy he was himself an alien. A being from a planet that no longer existed. The tales of which were suspect. He could not construct for the child's pleasure the world he'd lost without constructing the loss as well and he thought perhaps the child had known this better than he." (129-130) The man sees light in two ways. The first one is through the boy. "He knew only that the child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke."(5) The boy is the man...