I think that McCarthy's book could be characterized as a question of what humans are capable of. We are characterized as capable of great cruelty, and great compassion. And how, are we capable of such polar opposites? What makes us turn good and evil?
To start, the man loves the boy, and would do anything to save him, would even die for him. To the woman, this love reaches the extent of killing her son to save him. She expresses her fears of both her and the boy being raped, killed, and eaten. "I'd take him with me if it werent for you. You know I would. It's the right thing to do." (56) Another great compassion is the man letting the woman kill herself. "She would do it with a flake of obsidion. He'd taught her himself." (58) He knows that she can't live like this, in constant fear, knowing how the end will come, so he lets her go, no matter how much it hurts him.
The cruelty is much easier to find. To survive, bands of cannibals roam the Road, looking for people to eat. At one point, the boy and his father find a house, and go inside, looking for food. What they find, is a pantry of humans, being harvested for food. "Help us, they whispered. Please help us." (110) He doesn't, because he has to save his son, which could be characterized as a compassion, and a great cruelty, something his son questions. "And we couldn't help them, because they'd eat us too...And thats why we couldn't help them." (127) So maybe the answer is there: that cruelty is caused by a need to survive. The cannibals need to eat, and so they don't have the conscience that causes the father to starve rather than eat another person.
And the question remains: what cruelty caused us to destroy our world?
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