[justupvoting]

I don't think so; preserving goodness and decency comes at little personal cost to most of us, but McCarthy's effort in the book is at its core a depiction of these things surviving even the apocalypse, and at an incredible cost.

That fire they carry is not extinguished even in a world where all systems and pretenses at civilization have been ruined. It finds the wider flame, and decent folks to tend it.

It is one of the more optimistic works he's done, not despite the setting, but because.