Reading and Writing to Find Out Who We Are and What We Think
July 16, 2009 at 7:12 am
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I’m seeing a lot of good work on this novel. I know hat it’s a heavy read for the summer and that the style can be a challenge. I see that many if not most of you want to interpret the thematic elements of the novel without looking at the writing. The plot of the novel is very straightforward. A father and son walk down a road to get to another place, not very interesting. Along the way they meet some people who try and steal their stuff and others who may want to kill, and maybe eat, them. Again, this isn’t new. I’ve seen this same thing many times in other post apocalyptic stories.
But this feels different. It’s more disturbing, somehow sadder than the others. I usually walk away from books like this with some catharsis and a sense that the end couldn’t be that bad. But McCarthy is different. This novel unsettles me. Some of it is the way that McCarthy never really explains what happened to the world. There’s the part where the man and his wife, “watch the cities burn” but the details are withheld, or ignored in a way that pushes the two main characters to the forefront. By removing details, and reducing the dialog to its bare bones-he even strips away the conventions of punctuation-McCarthy’s character’s become more vivid. He invites us to become invested in their struggle because it is primal and basic. A father wants to protect his son. A son wants to become a man. It’s just that simple and the fact hat world as we know it has ceased to exist doesn’t really matter. The dialog is bare and simple because the emotions are bare and simple. When those moments of terror occur, the boy gets sick at the boat, or as the father slowly dies, I feel it instead of reading it. The father’s last talk with the boy is as poigniant because it’s not a big speech. McCarthy makes it small enough to fit inside his reader’s chest but it’s universal. That’s what distinguishes McCarthy’s writing for me.
Peace,
RK
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Just stumbled across this. Thought I’d say that I really agree with your last paragraph…couldn’t have said it better myself. His style really pushed the books to the limits of literary depression.
G
I’m really glad that you brought that up Mr.K. As i read The Road I couldn’t understand why I feared the outcome of the father and his son nor could I understand why an author would have, as i frequently called it, such horrible grammar. But now seeing that the two come together, I have to say McCarthy is one clever fellow.
I gotta say this.
The Road did not move me.
I don’t know if it’s just because I haven’t lived in poverty, or that it was just so gray and boring.
The only thing that sparked something inside, was when the father told the boy to “keep doing it the way they always did it.”
Then the boy went off with some strange man. And I don’t think he was gonna do it “the way they always did.”
This must be symbolic for change? I guess this subtraction of respect is the reoccuring theme in all three of the books that were required summer reading this year.
Maybe it’s me.
I don’t know.
On second thought.
Who am I kidding. It IS me.
I agree with you Mr. Kreinbring. With McCarthy really taking everything down to just the bare bones of the story I believe allows the set up of the true picture of how the book is suppose to be read. Allowing you to see and feel the emotions of the book and how they can inspire you that even if something horrible happens you can always keep moving, see the final destination, strive to get there and hopefully you will.
Surprise, I also agree with Mr. Kreinbring.. When I play the story out in my head, they speak directly. I don’t see long emotional pauses and speeches about the hard life, there’s no room nor need for it. BUT, I see Katrina’s point about how the boy just left with the new strange man, when in the past, the man would’ve held a gun to him, and either run or taken him out. Although I do find this strange, I also see it as the boy moving on and carrying the fire, maybe even sharing it with this new group of survivors, ‘there’s always light at the end of the tunnel’ type thing.
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