The Road 8

The Road 8

  • Submitted By: citiboy2008
  • Date Submitted: 10/15/2009 7:30 PM
  • Category: English
  • Words: 932
  • Page: 4
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2009-2010 SUMMER READING ASSIGNMENT
THE ROAD BY CORMAC McCARTHY
Q1) Cormac McCarthy has a distinctive feature in his writing that is, he mentions a dream and reality both in a passage and this feature is found in poetry much more than narrative prose. Narratives emphasis on the plot while poetry focuses on mood and feeling, and McCarthy’s narrative has a mood, so that is why it is more poetic than being in narrative prose. Another feature of his narratives is his exceptional grammar that gives the prose a poetic look. For example the first sentence of his book “The Road” is, “When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. (pg. 3)” Well, this is certainly not incorrect in grammar, but it is a long sentence that consists of a lot of “ands” and makes it seem realistic, how the father is feeling at that moment looking at his child, tired and exhausted, and striving hard for the survival of both of them, so McCarthy uses long sentences to make the reader feel the unlimited exhaustion that any person on the road would feel. That is a poetic style. He also uses imagery, metaphor and similes in his narratives. There is one more example, “Then they set out along the blacktop in teh gun-metal light, shuffling through the ash, each the other's world's entire.In this sentence metaphor and imagery is used to portray the “light” and brief language in this sentence proofs how much the father and the son love each other. This proves that McCarthy’s narratives are more poetic than narratives.
Q3) The earth to human beings seems realistic and recognizable because we are living on it since the day we were born. McCarthy and his only son walk on a deserted looking road with houses, cars, trucks, supermarkets etc. And, actually we too live in that world. We know everything that is to be known about this earth. And McCarthy is a narrator who has lived in two entirely different worlds; a world before the...

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