In "The Road," after knowing what happens to the father and the son, does this book end in despair or with hope?

I believe that this novel ends with a sense of hope and brightness.  The boy coming across a real family that was willing to take him in was a beacon of luck and light in his thus far very dreary and difficult existence.  The fact that there is a family out there that is still together, that is willing to take yet another person into it, confirms what the father had been trying to teach the boy the entire time, that "the fire" is still alive and well in some human hearts, despite the brutality and misery that existed all around them.  Overall, the book is incredibly depressing and anxious, fraught with near-death and the ugliest sides of human nature.  However, the recurring theme of human goodness being alive in the boy and the father, in love, decency and compassion, runs throughout the story, and flares again at the end.

If the father had died and the boy had been all alone, that would have truly been a tale of despair, and a commentary on the lack of any redemption in human nature.  However, that is not how McCarthy, who once called the writing of this book "a love story to my son," chose to end it.  He gave us a small glimmer of happiness, of normalcy, of a potential for human goodness to thrive and find a place in the ashen world where human hopes and civilization was nearing extinction.  I hope that those thoughts helped; good luck!