The Road [pg.1~50]

The Road

Skimming through the book, I realized it was an easy read. Most sentences consisted of 10 words more or less. Despite the seemigly simple structured sentences, The Road had some choppy sentences that were hard to interperet in a larger picture.

The book started out peculiar. From "He pushed away the plastic tarpaulin and raised himself in the stinking robes and blankets..." (pg. 3), I was able to assume that two of the main characters (names were never mentioned throughout the story) in the book were going through some troubles out in the wild. As I read on, I also noticed that the place they lived was perished by some kind of devestating force. "...he took the pistol from his belt and laid it on the cloth and then he just sat watching the boy sleep." (pg. 5) insinuates that the characters were under danger, or possibly being chased off by some hazardous threat. Until pg. 50, the author depicts the situation the characters are confronting.

But it wasn't actually the plot of the story that caught my eyes; it was the author's strange writing style. The author used some unique styles in terms of grammar and writing format. Some of the noticeable structures are as the following:

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  the use of repeated "and"s in one sentence ("the boy had found some crayons and painted and..." pg. 17)
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  exclusion of quotation marks ("Death is not a lover.//Please dont do this" pg. 57)
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  removal of apostrophies ("I cant do it alone" pg. 57)

Cormac McCarthy simply ignored some of the most basic grammar rules, and this was actually making all the senteces look choppy. The reason he used this style, I don't know, but surely he succeded in making the readers delve into his book.