The Road Post 2

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?

One component of McCarthy’s style which interested me was the way that certain descriptions were used to emphasize the parts of the story which were not so stark and dark, the moments in which actual light and color appeared. When I first started reading The Road, my mental picture of the events which transpired in the book depicted a colorless world. However, as I began to read further into the book, I noticed small passages which, though they may not have been extremely colorful by themselves, were suddenly vibrant against the otherwise monochromatic world which McCarthy creates in The Road. One example of this vibrant language comes on pg 145, in which the man and the boy eat a simple meal: “He set out a bowl of biscuits covered with a handtowel and a plate of butter and a can of condensed milk. Salt and pepper. He looked at the boy. The boy looked drugged. He brought the frying pan from the stove and forked a piece of browned ham onto the boy’s plate and scooped scrambled eggs from the other pan and ladled out spoonfuls of baked beans and poured coffee into their cups.” This passage has no flowery prose or detailed imagery. McCarthy does not bate the reader with descriptions of the ham’s scent, or the texture of the eggs. No – these descriptions are sparse, so sparse that it almost seems like McCarthy was challenging himself to use as little imagery and description as possible when writing this passage. However, when we compare this passage to others, McCarthy’s description of the food seems to pop out at us, showing up as a small shred of color in a world which is otherwise dominated by descriptions in grey, white, and black.

I’m tentative when it comes to naming McCarthy’s audience. It’s simple to identify who the audience is when one sees books like “Lose 30 Pounds in 30 Days” or “Gun Mechanics”, but when one reads a piece of fiction, particularly one written with the style of The Road, defining the audience becomes a lot harder. Nevertheless, I feel that McCarthy wrote the book for people who have a lot a questions, particularly about mankind‘s future and human nature. This can be seen in the way that The Road envisions the world as it might be in the near future, while also reflecting on certain character traits which have been part of us for thousands of years. Like I said; I’m tentative when it comes to naming any “audience” McCarthy would have written the book for - I’m really just throwing ideas out there.