For how filled with action and tension the story of The Road is, it is somewhat difficult to pin down a precise climax. Overall, the narrative is sparse, disjointed, and unrelenting. Most logically, by understanding the ending of the story, we should identify the climax as the moment that the man's fate is sealed. It is difficult to pinpoint this precise scene, however. He seems somewhat doomed from the start. The story ends with the boy being taken into the care of some of the other "good guys." Therefore, the climax is most reasonably the moment that the man and the boy, two characters with devotion to one another that has kept them both alive, have to say goodbye to one another.

The climax begins to build after the man shoots the archer who shot him, and has an intense human realization. He questions whether there are truly good or bad people. The boy and the man abandon their cart, the item that has been the closest thing to a hearth for them for the entirety of their miserable journey. Soon after, the man can move no further. It is at this moment that the reader has to question everything. Even though the man is telling the boy that he has to go on alone and carry the fire, it seems incredibly unlikely to the reader that the boy can survive on his own. We even question whether it would indeed have been better for the pair to use the bullets on themselves at the beginning of the story.

For three days while the boy stays beside his father's corpse, we are left with this question. However, this incredibly tense climax eventually resolves when the man with the shotgun, one of the "good guys," finds the boy and invites the child to join him.