Extract work - Voice

“they never heard the dog again . . . the dog that he remembers followed us for two days” (page 87 – 91)

Context: the man and the boy have just walked through a vey empty and unsettling town, hearing a dog as they leave. This happens just a few pages before the "army in tennis shoes" section. 

"The use of repeated free indirect speech in the voice of the man is characteristic of this part of the novel. This causes more tension, as the man uses a mixture of connectives and short sentences whilst he is speaking, rather than commas or longer sentences."

Free indirect speech of the man example: "They made their way back through the wet streets to the viaduct and collected the coats and the blanket...". Free indirect speech - when the writer writes as if the character is speaking, it isn't actually speech or from the character's point of view but just SOUNDS as though it is. The free indirect speech of the man is always very methodical and basic. Simplistic language is used and he often lists things with none/very few adjectives of adverbs.

A Limited Palette

Cormac McCarthy writes with a limited palette in The Road, like a painter choosing a restricted range of colours. Certain adjectives crop up repeatedly, for instance, ‘gray’ and ‘ashen’. The dialogue often follows a similar pattern, ending with the father asking the boy if he’s ‘okay’ and the boy responding ‘okay.’ The sentence structures are also often highly repetitive, with simple and compound sentences being used rather than complex ones.
Here are some possible literary analyses of why this limited palette might have been chosen by the writer. 

1. Choose those you most agree with and find examples from the text to illustrate the analysis being made. 

1. The limited linguistic palette and repetitive techniques echo the monotony of the post-apocalyptic world that is described: 

“This is my child, he said. I wash a dead man's brains out of his hair. That is my job.” 

“He got up and walked out to the road. The black shape of it running from dark to dark."

1. There is a powerfully poetic effect in the simplicity of the language. By avoiding rhetorical flourishes and elaborate language the writer makes a stronger impact. 

“Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before.” 

“Freeze this frame. Now call down your dark and your cold and be damned.”

It’s easy to oversimplify when talking about a writer’s style and although Cormac McCarthy is known for the spareness of his prose, there are also moments of rich lyricism in The Road. 

1. Have a look again at the opening page of the novel, where the man is described waking from a dream. Phrases like the following are full of figurative language and poetic vocabulary: ‘Like pilgrims in a fable swallowed up and lost among the inward parts of some granitic beast.’ Dreams and moments of waking seem to be evoked in this more lush language. 
2. Find other examples of this in the novel. 

“And the dreams so rich in color. How else would death call you? Waking in the cold dawn it all turned to ash instantly. Like certain ancient frescoes entombed for centuries suddenly exposed to the day.” 

"Crouching there pale and naked and translucent, its alabaster bones cast up in shadow on the rocks behind it. Its bowels, its beating heart. The brain that pulsed in a dull glass bell. It swung its head from side to side and then gave out a low moan and turned and lurched away and loped soundlessly into the dark.” 

3. Can you think of other instances where the language is of a different kind? Find examples and explain what the qualities of the language are and why you think language is being used in this way.

“And perhaps beyond those shrouded swells another man did walk with another child on the dead gray sands. Slept but a sea apart on another beach among the bitter ashes of the world or stood in their rags lost to the same indifferent sun.” - The language here is similar to the 'dream language', it is very poetic and less simplistic. It may have been used to highlight that this quote is different from the rest of the book, it shows how bittersweet the man is, in the most truthful way: he hopes, but almost in a realistic manner, "lost to the same indifferent sun". 

4.Look again at the literary analysis statements above. Either re-write one of these analytical statements or draft your own to reflect your discoveries about the variations in McCarthy’s prose style.

The simplistic language and limited palette used by McCarthy throughout the duration of the novel highlights the bleakness of the characters immediate surroundings. McCathy uses more poetic language when wanting to make a statement clearer through his writing; when he wants to highlight that a certain quote is different from his basic, repetitive, american horror text. 

“And perhaps beyond those shrouded swells another man did walk with another child on the dead gray sands. Slept but a sea apart on another beach among the bitter ashes of the world or stood in their rags lost to the same indifferent sun.” ― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Symbols

Whilst reading through my friend's blog from when he studied The Road, I saw a post on symbols, which I thought I would change into my own words to help with revision purposes.


Water.
We cannot live on Earth without water, all humans and animals need water to survive. When the man has to purify the water using the cloth it shows how bad the new world has become, as the one thing that stops the world from being completely inhabitable, has become corrupted.


Ash.
Ash is the scraps that are left after a fire which cannot burn, and are everywhere on the road. Ash is useless and dirty, and in the novel could represent all the people left on the road, they are the scraps of humanity that the fire couldn't destroy - it destroyed other either through immediate action such as being in the explosion/fire/whatever ended the earth, or mentally, like the man's wife killing herself. The only humans left on the road are useless and dirty, like the road rats, or the people with the child sex slaves, society has turned to ash, and all they have left to do it float about of the road, as the fire couldn't burn them.


Fire.
Fire is similar to water, it has always been needed in some way to survive, whether that be keeping warm, cooking food or for light. Cave men used to make fire by scraping the wall to create sparks, so when the man and the boy have to make fires to keep warm - a use of fires that is no longer needed in this world - it shows how the world is regressing to its old simple, basic and uncivilised ways.


Sight/Sightlessness and Time.
The man doesn't plan for the future anymore - he has lost sight of it, he only sees where the road will lead him and the boy next, which in this case is the coast. The coast is as far as he plans ahead, possibly in a way where he doesn't even expect them to get there, but uses the idea of heading to the coast more for hope for the boy, so they can keep motivation for 'carrying the fire'. The man's lack of sight for the future is also shown though when they get to the coast and they have no plans on where to go or what to do next. The ideas about sight and sightlessness link in with the idea of time. McCarthy only talks about the passing of days. There is no description into the passing of weeks, months or years, but detailed description into 'morning', 'evening' and 'night'. The detail into the passing of days and as to why the man has lost sight of the future is because in the new world, it is basic survival day by day. They cannot plan for the future because they don't know how long their future is.


Religious Imagery.
The man talks about how God isn't on the road/with them anymore, but has the juxtaposing idea that the boy is the word of God: "If he is not the word of God then God never spoke". This gives the idea that the boy could be like the son of God - the only hope for earth, (which is why they are carrying the fire?). The idea of the boy being like Jesus is also symbolised by when his father died the boy waited 3 days before coming out the woods, like how Jesus rose from the dead on the third day. Then he meets a man who could help him survive. His father would never let them meet or help people when on the road, so his being helped by this man is doing something that was never allowed, like the curtain being ripped in the temple, a metaphorical curtain has been ripped so now the boy can go live with the new family.

TheRoadRat Questions

The Road Rat (pages 63-75). The boy plays with an old toy truck in the road, "the boy took his truck from the pack and shaped roads in the ash", foreshadowing the truck which wakes the man. The simile of "lumbering and creaking like a ship" shows how everyone is on a journey, as boats are used for long trips, or could show how there is a lack of faith, when reading the book with biblical connotations, as the main boat in the bible would be the Ark, which saves animals and Noah’s family from the end of the rest of the world, except this 'ship' isn't like the ark, as if the man and the boy entered it wouldn't save them. The Road Rat’s description makes him sound stereotypically like a redneck, which is another contextual reference. When the man converses with the Road Rat, he discusses in great the anatomy of brains, using medical terminology. This results in questions about what the man did in the old world; "Are you a doctor?" "I'm not anything".  The description of the man shooting the Road Rat also causes question, as he quickly does a drop-roll sequence and shoots him, showing he knows a lot about guns or has at least had training. "A single round left in the revolver. You will not face the truth", is the man thinking/speaking these words, remembering what his wife said. They could be uttered in a way that shows he is starting to believe what his wife said, or as though he is angry that she left the boy. Later on when the man and the boy walk past where the men from the truck camped, it’s clear why they didn't chase the man, "he found the bones and the skin piled together", so they didn't feel too upset or in need of justice, as he provided them with a meal. The man cares for the boy, but doesn’t clean the brains out of his hair, showing how cleaning no longer matters in the new world. It doesn't help you survive, so it isn't of any importance.

Post-Apocalyptic Literature

10 observations on the features, themes and functions of post-apocalyptic fiction.  

1.

Protected bastions of humanity in a sea of inhospitable waste or wilderness or danger, such as enclosed cities, underground caverns, and bunkers. - This feature appears in The Road though the bunker, which resembles salvation, as the man and the boy find peace and safety here for a few days, protecting themselves from the outside world.

2.

Marauding gangs of bandits. - There are a lot of these in The Road; the 'road-rats', the group of people who own the house with the basement of bodies, the group who put the baby on the fire...

3.

‘Apocalypse’ derives from the Greek word for ‘revelation’. - Revelation is often used in the semantic field of religion and christianity, and the last book of the bible is called 'Revelations'. Some definitions of revelations are: "a surprising and previously unknown fact that has been disclosed to others." and "the divine or supernatural disclosure to humans of something relating to human existence.Fall of civilisation." Revelations could be an underlying theme in The Road, as there are some references to God and christianity, such as 'If he isn't the word of God God never spoke". Dreams is also a very sting theme throughout the novel, and revelations - especially biblical ones- are often delivered through dreams.

5.

Mythologizing of the past. - There is a small amount of discussion about the past in The Road, and most of it is down through flash backs and so isn't mythologized.

6.

The thoughts and actions of the survivors are what counts. - You could say no, as the man has numerous flashbacks and dreams to his wife, who committed suicide (so is obviously dead) and her actions seemed to have influenced him quite a lot, for example "the coldness of it was he only gift" when talking about her suicide, taught him to be distant from the boy so he doesn't get too attached. Another quote is "Suppose you were the last one left? Suppose you did that to yourself?" showing that to be the last one alive wouldn't be a good thing. Although there are manny times at which it seems that if death is inevitable then that person no longer matters - the man not wanting to help the people who will definitely die.

7.

Humanity has always imagined its own destruction. Each generation believes the end is somewhere round the corner, and our catastrophic fantasies are a good barometer of what’s currently troubling us. - In The Road, the readers do not know what has caused the end of the world - although we can make educated guesses. For example, it could have been due to global warming - the forest fires and dead nature, or it could have been an atomic bomb, the light and the noise and the toxic air etc. Global warming is secondly human's own doing, while the atomic bomb would be primary. It is unknown whether humans caused the end of the world in The Road, but it seems probable.

8.

Post-apocalyptic novels are a dark, bleak and often illuminating genre. - This is true with The Road to a certain extent, as it is dark and it is bleak. It is dark and bleak in its description, in its characters and in its story. But it is, as the statement says, also an illuminating genre. I don't fully understand what it means by that but i think it means it illuminates/lights up certain aspects of the world and life that you wouldn't have thought of before, and i agree. "'The Road' offers nothing in the way if escape or comfort, but its fearless wisdom is more indelible than reassurance could ever be."

9.

Punishment for our wicked overreaching. - In the road this occurs a few times, for example the road rat with missing fingers. It is never a main theme or topic explored however I don't think. Even though there are numerous cases where it is clear punishment has been take too far - like the road rat, and the dead bodies on spears by the side of the road - I don't think it is ever looked into in the same detail as dreams or simplicity.

10.

A chaotic dark age, in which robber bands, bizarre millenarian religious sects, nomads, hunters and foragers of all sorts are found. The remains of the industrial society – its rotting industrial plants, its collapsed cities – litter the landscape, archaeology rather than evidence of recent catastrophe. - The Road does seem chaotic, society has completely broken down and the remaining survivors mainly seem to be greatly corrupted, turning into cannibals and murderers. The earth too has become littered with the absence of anything living. No animals, dead nature, dead people. 

TheRoad Review

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