How does the boy change throughout The Road?

Fundamentally, the boy matures in the course of the
novel.  It makes sense that at the opening, his wide eyes and acknowledgement of "Papa"
makes him seem quite young.  However, the experience of rootlessness and survival make
him someone that becomes a figure of change throughout the narrative.  There is an
innocence about the boy that becomes supplanted with a vision of experience.  The boy
was born after the catastrophe and the father began to teach him lessons about what
happened, but ended up refusing to continue:

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He could not enkindle in the heart of the child
what was ashes in his
own.

This helps to bring out
the innocent and infant- like perception that the father has of his son, towards whom
the father sees safety and protection as the reason for being in the world.  Over the
course of the novel and the experience of finding warmer weather, the son matures into a
more experienced and "grown up" vision in respect to the both the situation and the
relationship with the father.  As the narrative develops, the boy is seen as one who is
conscious of others, aware of the distinctions of good and evil. When the boy confirms
with his father that they would not descend into cannibalism because both of them "are
the good guys," it speaks volumes to how the boy grows and changes.  The boy recognizes
the need and purpose for a moral order and structure, and understands that it is up to
he and his father to represent this reality.  Despite the current situation that negates
such an order, the son emerges as a "fire bearer" of the father in representing the
notion for good in a setting devoid of it.  The boy speaks in objection to cruelty of
abandoning a naked man on the road who had done wrong to the father and son.  Through
situations like these, he emerges as a strong vision of being "the one," the salvation
of humanity at a point where condemnation seems to be the existing order.  It is here
where the boy changes from one of frail dependence on the father to one who has the
capacity to live on his own.  When the father can no longer take care of himself, the
son recognizes the responsibility he has to both himself and the values imparted within
him by the father to live and to become "the one."  It is through this that one sees
changes in the boy.