Ellie Morlino
AP Literature
3/9/15
Period 1
The Road by Cormac McCarthy In
The Road
, Cormac McCarthy switches between two main styles of writing. When he is starts to get emotional, passionate , or lyrical, McCarthy tends to use many words that may feel ancient and somewhat forgotten to the english language (even though they still exist). This way of reminding us of older and more interesting words is one of his strong suits when he writes. Because of the rarity of these words and the odd, archaic presentation, McCarthy uses these passages so that one recognises their lost beauty. But Just because Mccarthy is using forgotten words doesn’t mean that he is hard to understand.There is an extremely powerful simplicity to
The Road
. Even though he's using rare words, he is using them completely accurately and always within a relatively understandable form. McCarthy also doesn’t use quotation marks or much punctuation.In this novel, He rarely capitalizes proper nouns, uses apostrophes, etc.
There are a couple really large overarching themes throughout T he Road: Love, isolation,
Mortality, Spirituality, Violence, the past, survival, and compassion. The majority, if not all, of these essential themes are classic for a post­ apocalyptic novel such as this one, but
McCarthy’s writing brings them to life in a very unique way that one won’t find in an average novel of this genre.Although there is a lot of violence in the novel,