McCarthy uses several devices of language to communicate the tone of the story, the most prominent of which is the lack of color. In my memory, except for a description of the sea as being blue ("I'm sorry it's not blue." (p. 215)), the only colors McCarthy uses to describe the world of The Road are white, gray, and black. There's one passage that I can't find because it was tied to a specific point in the plot of the book that described the days: (something like)"The gray dawns turn to gray dusks". (If someone knows the passage that I'm talking about, please share it.) This lack of color is used to show the contrast between the black, white, and gray of the landscape and the fire being carried by the man and the boy.
The other main interesting use I saw was the delivery of dialogue. When I read the qoute-less text, I didn't see the man and boy talking. I could hear their voices, but so many of the conversations took place in the middle of the night, all I saw was darkness. This emphasizes the short, simple, kurt back-and-forth between father and son. It also made it easier to pick out themes in the speech and see the characters more clearly. Although both characters had very clear, different voices, sometimes the dialogue would be such a blank text that it was hard to discriminate the speech of the man from that of his son.
Both of these devices took the focus away from the flowery intricacies of language and forces the reader instead to see the characters, story, relationships, meaning, emotion, setting, and place more clearly.
I think a large audience for The Road is the father. Any father. My dad, who originally gave me the book when I first read it, balled his eyes out for almost the entirety of his read through of it and became agitatingly clingy. There's something about the dad & lad relationship that's eerily well-captured in the book. Thus, it's also for sons. The book looks into the mind of a father in a manner that surprises children.
2 comments:
I have a few things to say about this that are all kind of random and short, so here goes:
1. THAT'S ADORABLE THAT YOUR DAD CRIED! It's actually funny that you mention your dad in this, because I thought of you and your dad when I was reading "The Road." One thing you told me is your dad made a deal with you for him to take care of you for the first 20 years of your life or so, and for you to take care of him for the last 20 years of his life or so (though you articulated it much better). I think this promise, which is kind of an unspoken promise between all children and their parents, was perfectly shown in the end of "The Road" when the father falls ill.
2. The passage you're looking for is, "long gray dusks, long gray dawns" (7).
I was also keeping track of the colors mentioned in the book, as their rarity seemed symbolic, and interestingly enough, there are actually a handful of colors mentioned. Orange is described once when the man and the boy are caught in a forest fire--the man actually stops instead of running because his world has been void of color for so long. Then, in the man's memory of the day that most shaped him, there are yellow leaves among the birches, though this is a memory of happier times when color was not so scarce.
Thought I'd share.
Hey guys, thought I'd pipe in with some of my own color stories because I was tracking the SAME THING. Probably not the most original thought, but I noticed that for the most part color only popped up when, like Sophie was beginning to say, a sign of something good, or in a memory reminiscent of when times were good. I'm pretty sure the first time a non-gray or gray-related color is mentioned is on page 17, when he and the Boy find a shriveled smoked ham, and, upon opening it, find the "deep red and salty meat inside." And after that, it seemed most often colors were used in dreams or flashbacks; "And the dreams were so rich in color." (21). So, there you go.
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