5. McCarthy's novel is a stark contrast to Kerouac's in terms of language. While Kerouac is lyrical, loud, and colorful, McCarthy's style is dark and sparse. How does McCarthy's style lend to the story itself? Cite text for support. Who is his audience? How can you tell?
McCarthy’s novel is the polar opposite of Kerouac’s, when it comes to the style of their writing. On The Road is full of long, beautiful sentences, jam-packed with poetic descriptions, and imagery that simply blows the reader’s mind. This fits Kerouac’s book, though, since it is the story of writers, and journeying, and the lyrical writing fits whimsical tone of the book.
While the writing of McCarthy’s novel is by no means lyrical or whimsical, the writing very much fits the tone of the book – just as it does in Kerouac’s book. The Road is not a happy book like On the Road is; it is the story of survival in a world where almost everything is gone, and it tells the heartbreaking story of a boy whose mother is gone, and who is trying to make his way through life with only his father at his side – his father whom he loses at the end of the book. The writing here is tense, sparse, and dark - just like the book is. At one point, the boy and his father come across a truck full of dead bodies. The manner in which
McCarthy wrote this chilling scene, I feel, captures the dark, sparseness of both the writing and the book. McCarthy wrote:
He wafted away the smoke and looked down into the trailer. The small fire burning in the floor seemed a long way down. He shielded the glare of it with his and when he did he could see almost to the rear of the box. Human bodies. Sprawled in every attitude. Dried and shrunken in their rotted clothes. The small wad of burning paper drew down to a wisp of flame and then died out leaving a faint pattern for just a moment in the incandescence like the shape of a flower, a molten rose. Then all was dark again. (47)
There is no embellishment to the horrors of what the man is seeing, no unnecessary details. It feels to me as if the image of the burning magazine papers, and the uncharacteristic details McCarthy wrote them with, is representative of the occasional hopes in the boy and man’s lives, and the rare light in the darkness.
2 comments:
I really like what you said about how there is "no embellishment to the horrors the man is seeing, no unnecessary details" in The Road. Another writer might have felt a need to go into how the man felt at finding all the bodies, or what it reminded him of, but stating it so simply makes it more shocking, like its an everyday occurence, worth no extra time.
Another place this happens is where they find the farm where humans are harvested. It's stated simply, but shockingly. "Huddled against the back wall were naked people, male and female, all trying to hide, shielding their face with their hands." (110)
I don't know what else to compare this to, but McCarthy's writing style reminds me of a well-directed horror movie- the most horrific parts are not what is detailed, but what is not. Your imagination creates worse images then what anyone could write. It's like the part where the father and the son find the infant roasting on the stick- its only one or two lines, but your mind takes the idea and stretches it out until it becomes nightmarish.
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