The End

-          Response in 25 words

Tawdry

Yet, provoking an emotion

Revolves- display of past, moving forward, foreshadows a contended ending in contrast

Cliché, unimaginative and predictable

Any other a disappointment

Arguing for a Statement - 2

“There is a powerfully poetic effect in the simplicity of the language, by avoiding rhetorical flourish, and elaborate language McCarthy makes a stronger impact’

McCarthy’s simplistic language reflects the lack of emotion expressed from the characters, this is evident in key scenes, such as; when the mother leaves them. Her inconsiderate attitude towards her husband could be interpreted to her trying to make it easier for him, his memory of her is bitter and therefore less painful. By not trying to encourage the reader to empathise with any characters and rather have a negative perception towards them the reader also is made to find building relations difficult- as so do the characters in such a ‘gloomy world, which is slowly dimming’.

The slow, bleak rhythm highlights the never ending road in which they must follow, the monosyllabic tone encourages this and any increase in pace is therefore highlighted.

However, these ‘climax’s’ are extremely brief, for example; when the father is shot in the leg and we follow him into the house, the excitement is over within a few paragraphs, this ensures they make no emotional attachment and do not dwell on the past as we must not do also.

When emotion is portrayed and we experience rhetorical flourishes, the simplistic language only further reminds us that they are ‘the living in a dead world’, whilst they are alive they still feel emotions, but once this emotional expression has been shown, e.g. finding the mutilated, naked bodies and the father’s fear and desperation to leave, our sympathy lasts until it is resolved and we are back to simplistic and monosyllabic tone, where we are reminded the road must continue.

McCarthy’s blunt description highlights the reality as he does not try to hide it under complex language, and rhetorical flourishes.

The father and son’s conversations express a slight poetic rhythm; this is constant and remains throughout their conversations through the novel, ‘What if somebody finds it? They won’t find it. I hope they don’t. They won’t. ’ this is also evident through McCarthy’s narration; ‘The hour. There is no later. This is later’ again the use of blunt simplistic language emphases their reality, achieved by the short, clear points and this poetic rhythm almost creates empathy ‘all things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one’s heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes. So, he whispered to the sleeping boy. I have you.’ The moments of elaborate, expressive language are rare and therefore create a greater impact.

Arguing for a Statement

“The death of everything living – plants, trees, creatures, and most other human beings- is evoked through the bleakness and ‘deadness’ of the language” – 30 minutes

McCarthy’s simplistic language is compensated by his use of imagery and complex metaphors ‘Query: How does the never to be differ from what never was?’- the reader is regularly left to debate the meaning behind specific quotes, here for example McCarthy uses imagery to reflect humanity, and their unnecessary disappointment over something which was never to be, rather than bluntly stating this the complex description highlights the ‘living in a dead world’ reality through the novel, and could reflect trying to create interest and ‘excitement’ in a dead world.

When describing the corpses McCarthy is again blunt, highlighting the bleak reality, ‘people sitting on the sidewalk in the dawn half immolate and smoking in their clothes. Like failed sectarian suicides.’  Personifying the dead, and suggesting they were suicides further reinforces the frequent death of all things. The concept of time following this quote represents the unity of the remaining living eventually separating and resorting to death as a better option ‘within a year…by day the dead impaled on spikes along the road’. The frequent time change and yet slow monosyllabic language/pace reflects their lives passing by, wasted, whilst their never-ending journey along the road continues.

Dialogue and exposition between characters continues a similar theme of ‘the living in a dead world’ conversations between all characters is bleak, emotionless and non-naturalistic, highlighting the distance in all relationships. For example, the mother- when leaving- expresses no emotion, although this could be interpreted to make it easier for the father (evoking emotion on the reader) ‘you remember what you want to forget and forget what you want to remember’, her dis-concern contrasts the father’s pleading for her to stay ‘I don’t care. I don’t care if you cry. It doesn’t mean anything to me’. McCarthy creates a highly clichéd image of the women, and a traditional domestic scene, an attempt to create normality, as he continues religious themes also, ‘weaker sex’, ‘suicide being a sin’ etc.

The ‘dead’ language reflects the death of all surrounding the characters, McCarthy perhaps uses short separate sentences to isolate information, and reflect the father and son being entirely alone as; ‘ On this road are no God spoke men. They are gone and I am left.’  Their journey, and the mother is summarised in the first paragraph ‘some cold glaucoma dimming away the world’ the mother has physically lost her eyesight as a result of this world, and all the remaining living are slowly dying, an idea reflected through the deeper darkness we experience further into the novel, resulting in the father breaking his one promise- not to leave the boy- and following the corpses and his wife’s example to death.