The Road (but not the one not taken)

Then they set out along the blacktop in the gun-metal light, shuffling through the ash, each the other’s world entire.

1. Describe the tone, mood and atmosphere of the opening pages of the novel. Examine the dream in the opening pages as a way of establishing a sense of foreboding.

The novel begins (and has throughout) a rather dreary, melancholic tone, being set in a post-apocalyptic world. Immediately there is a sense of detachment that readers sense as the novel never mentions either character by name, but rather by ‘the boy’ or ‘the man’. The setting itself – the ‘woods in the dark’, the ‘cold of the night’ sets them in a colourless world seemingly devoid of light and happiness. The lack of colours in the novel apart from black, grey, and white makes the setting seem literally drained of life and emotion. Motifs associated with those colours include death, mystery, depression, loss, etc. The dream consists of a creature in a cave that represented the ‘inward parts of some granitic beast’, slightly contrasting because the inward parts of most animals are soft and fleshy, rather than granitic and hard. This gives the idea that the ‘beast’ of a cave is rotten and dead, long forgotten, all of the fleshy bits eaten away by the world; the man and the boy – alive and whole – are walking into something dead, almost like they are being consumed by the beast. It felt like McCarthy was using the creature to represent the future of the man and the boy – half dead, half alive, thin, starving, acting like an animal, remnants of their past selves, with ‘sightless eyes’ and ‘alabaster bones’.

2. Find details which describe the landscape in these pages. Overall, what image does McCarthy create of the devastation of the earth in this world?

The landscape of the novel is constantly described as still and dead, with no life in it. Dust and ash seem to be commonly found in its descriptions, alluding to the possibility that the world is buried, waiting to be uncovered. Again the lack of colour is apparent in the descriptions, ‘long grey dusks, long grey dawns’, ‘aluminium houses’, ‘the blackness[at night] was sightless and impenetrable’. This makes it seem like the world was constantly suffocated, crushed and covered by the darkness, squashing out any sense of life, fitting with the post-apocalyptic theme. McCarthy’s focus on the lack of life in the setting of the novel really emphasises the life – and the fragility of the lives-  of the man and the boy, them being the only beacons of life in a world full of nothing. Both the man and the boy are susceptible to anything that the world threw at them, the lack of other people in the opening pages highlights just how isolated and fragile they are, thin, weary and hungry, trying to survive another winter. ‘Gun-metal light’ gives a sense of foreboding, that the idea of light being the only source of “life” in the novel was described to an object that takes a life. What gives life in the end will take it away from you – they will die on earth when earth is the only thing sustaining their life.

3. What do you notice about the narrative style of writing? What might be the reason for choices McCarthy makes stylistically? Look at the effects of crafting such as: use of imagery, poetic and metaphoric features, syntax and punctuation, other?

The narrative style of writing is unique due to several factors: the lack of clear punctuation (commas, the lack of quotations for speech etc), the lack of clear paragraphs, and the ambiguity of perspective. The novel seems to be in third person, but the perspective starts off with the man’s, then switches to the boy’s about two third’s through as the man’s life begins to end. Another motif noticed in the beginning pages are the links to religion – mainly christianity – watching a snowflake ‘expire [on his hand] like the last host of christendom’, giving religious connotations to the child –  ‘if he is not the word of God God never spoke’.