How Does McCarthy Tell the Story in The Road from page 1-28?

McCarthy starts the story in media res with the man checking his child's breathing, the morning after the man proceeds to check the surroundings and then the man and the boy enter the road. During the day's journey the man reflects on childhood memories, the man finds some food in a smokehouse and also gives the boy his first can of coca cola. The man and boy visit the house the man grew up in and the man contemplates whether or not he is capable of killing himself and the boy to end the suffering.

The Road is told from the narrative perspective of a detached third person narrator, this voice allows McCarthy to indulge in a more lyrical style and allows more descriptive language. The voice also creates a mythical tone, making the story appear timeless. This timelessness and mythological sense can help the novel as a whole to be read with a didactic purpose warning mankind of the dangers of modern American society. 

In this section of The Road McCarthy uses repetition in order to replicate the bleakness of the post apocalyptic world he has created, words that are foregrounded through this repetition include "gray" and "ash" this lack of colour in the description of the world The Road is set in is crucial to the storytelling in this part. It is important that readers begin to connote the lack of colour to the present day setting and warmth and colour in language with the old world. In the present setting of the road the man is "sat by a gray window in the gray light" whereas in his childhood memory he is surrounded by "evergreens" and "yellow leaves." This makes it clear to the reader that the story is set in a version of earth that has decayed and died. 

McCarthy provides The Road with an ambiguous setting in order to illustrate that although this novel is set in America, it could be set anywhere, this forces the reader to make bonds and attachments to characters in The Road as they know that it could be any one of them. The Road is set in what appears to be the wake of nuclear war, the earth is covered in ash and nearly all life has died. McCarthy is deliberately ambiguous about the time setting of the novel, the man is unsure of the month but "he thought the month was October" by not revealing the actual time setting McCarthy shows that this post nuclear world has existed for a relatively long period of time and that timekeeping is not important in a universe where mankind has no significance. This lack of significance is presumed to come from the godlessness of the world in which The Road is set. The man describes this new scorched earth as "barren, silent, godless." McCarthy uses setting to exemplify the theme of godlessness that continues throughout the novel.

McCarthy uses a skeletal form of language that manages to incorporate both very limited, minimalistic punctuation and an incredibly detailed poetic prose style. The minimalism used in his punctuation could represent the decay of societal structure or maybe even be critical of of the excesses present within modern society. McCarthy could be highlighting the absurdity of things that are not necessary, this links to the theme throughout the novel of man's significance in a godless universe.

McCarthy uses this opening section of The Road to give the reader an insight into the story of the rest of the novel, he describes the darkness "like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world." McCarthy uses the word  "glaucoma" to describe the dimming of the landscape, it could also be representative of the gradual loss of morals in humanity throughout the novel. Morality proves itself to be a vital element of the novel and questions whether or not morality is inherent in humanity (the boy appears at many times to have a higher moral understanding than the man.) The Road seems to question the morality of present day America by including things already prevalent in today's society, references to grocery carts and cans of coca cola could indicate that the moral decline described was itself inherent in mankind. The word choice also makes the reader aware of the gradual decline and depression of the plot.

A key event used in the storytelling of this episode is the sight of the first snowflake. This snowflake has a narrative purpose in the sense that it emphasises the reason the man and boy are moving south, because the world is "cold and getting colder." McCarthy foregrounds this moment when the boy "caught it in his hand and watched it expire there like the last host of christendom." McCarthy suggests that christianity, arguably the foundation of American morality, has dissipated at the world's end. With this section McCarthy furthers the storytelling by ingraining in the reader the existential question at the core of the novel, why live in a dead world? 

Post Apocalyptic

-Collapse of societal structure as opposed to the end of the physical world.

Evidence of this in The Road:

Fall of Civilisation:

 Disgusting and disturbing scenes are commonplace throughout The Road and throughout McCarthy's fiction in general, this violence is a definitive sign of moral collapse and there is no societal structure in place to prevent this immoral actions taking place. McCarthy does more than just suggest that in this new dead world there is a lack of morals, by keeping relics from the old earth like the grocery cart and the can of coca cola McCarthy suggests that this evil was always intrinsic in humanity.

 The Road asks questions that McCarthy asked himself when raising his own son, in an interview McCarthy said that "he is so morally superior to me that I feel foolish correcting him about things" this character trait can also be found in the boy in The Road. The man has tried to distance himself from the boy but still the boy has what appears to be a fully developed moral conscience, despite being raised in a world where morality and ethics have lost meaning. This could be perceived to be a slightly more positive question from McCarthy about how inherent good or bad is in humans.

 The Road travels through a landscape utterly engulfed be decaying imagery; from the road melting to the buildings to actual corpses and food, the road can be described as a novel set in a rotting world. A key quote to summarise would be "cold and getting colder."If this decay is inherent in humanity then surely the fall of civilisation was always inevitable. 


Mythologising of the Past:

 McCarthy encapsulates the past like a myth through the use of elegiac language, throughout the novel certain sections are told with a sad but celebratory tone: the now presumed to be extinct brook trout are described with beauty "You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming." I partly wanted to include the whole quote due to the beauty of the language but also to highlight the amount of time McCarthy spends describing the extinct fish in comparison to the depth and length of dialogue in conversations between the man and the boy. The man specifically points out the dangers of dreaming of "siren worlds", "When your dreams are of some world that never was or of some world that never will be and you are happy again then you will have given up. Do you understand? And you cant give up. I wont let you." But the narration in the novel continues to paint a hazy, warm image of a beautiful past that may symbolise that the man has given up and now simply wants death's embrace.

  A key scene to understand McCarthy's mythological portrayal of the past is the section in which the man remembers his happiest childhood memory, a fishing trip with his uncle. The scene is certainly described warmly by McCarthy but like a myth the tale seems to have some purpose in the sense that it offers the man a warning. The description of "twisted stumps, grey and weathered" and "a dead perch lolling belly up in the clear water" are similar to the dead trees and dead life that the man is now surrounded by. McCarthy even ends this scene with "This the day to shape the days on." This is a myth recounted by the man that foreshadows how the rest of his life will be, it even predicts the man's relationship with his son, "neither of them said a word."

 Through the mythologising of the past McCarthy possibly brings a didactic sense to the text. The only things remaining in this dead world are functional buildings, anything remotely artful or soulful have long been left behind. This could reflect on capitalism's focus on efficiency and function and its effect on alienating workers. McCarthy is predicting what may happen if as a society we don't pay more attention to individual human needs, all characters met throughout the novel appear alienated, some even forging names (Ely) but most are nameless. McCarthy warns that if we continue in the same direction mankind will leave nothing in its wake.


Thoughts and Actions of Time Represented in our Imaginings of the end. (Post apocalyptic genre):

 The Road is part of a genre that uses modern day fears and creates an ending based on these fears. For example in the 50s and 60s the fear of invasion and a mindless enemy lead to films such as invasion of the body snatchers and dawn of the dead. The question is what modern day fear McCarthy is trying to display in The Road.

 One possible interpretation is that McCarthy wants us as a species to be more soulful, the relics of the previous world are all ones of consumerism and function but McCarthy wants us to "carry the fire" The boy having been raised in a world without purpose is determined to preserve human life and to seek some meaning of spirituality and meaning desp

             


                                           Man's insignificance in a godless universe...

The Road so far...

"Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world." (Page 1)
   - Glaucoma is a disease of the eyes in which vision is gradually impaired until blindness, Cormac McCarthy uses this as a metaphor to describe a number of things and to help establish the tone and mood of the novel at an early stage. Firstly, McCarthy uses the word to describe the dimming of the landscape, it could also be representative of the gradual loss of morals in humanity throughout the novel. Morality proves itself to be a vital element of the novel and questions whether or not morality is inherent in humanity (the boy appears at many times to have a higher moral understanding than the man.) The Road seems to question the morality of present day America by including things already prevalent in today's society, references to grocery carts and cans of coca cola could indicate that the moral decline described was itself inherent in mankind. The word choice also makes the reader aware of the gradual decline and depression of the plot.

"Like pilgrims in a fable" (Page 1)
   - "Pilgrims" is another important word choice from McCarthy, The Road like many of his other works features strong religious themes with heavy sacramental imagery throughout. In a sense the Man and Boy's journey on the road is like a religious pilgrimage; the destination, rather than some deep spiritual realisation, is a journey to the man's death led by the boy. The choice of "pilgrim" also gives the reader insight into the boy's affiliations with God "if he was not the word of God God never spoke." Another thing questioned in the novel is the existence of God in a dead world. Ely becomes an important character in questioning the boy's connection to God and "the fire" and makes the reader question the validity of their pilgrimage to death. The fire becomes a central motif for the boy's sacred nature and the motif adds to the boy's christ like iconography. It is interesting to mention that the novel's draft title was "The Grail."

"Each the other's world entire" (Page 4)
   - This quote is important in McCarthy's characterisation of the man and the boy, it shows that it is their belief in each other that allows them to continue living in a dead world. The question is whether the only reason they mean so much to each other is due to the lack of anything else to be part of their world. They are "each the other's world entire" but that is only because there is nothing else left. 

Tone
   - McCarthy creates an overbearing sense of melancholia throughout the novel representative of the post apocalyptic deteriorating society the man and boy now belong to. McCarthy combines this sadness and mourning with what could be described as a celebration of the world as it is today. This elegiac tone is created through the juxtaposition of the description of the post apocalyptic world in full detail alongside the various analeptic scenes. For example the beautiful description of fishing with the man's uncle in page 11 "His straw hat. His cob pipe in his teeth and a thin drool swinging from the pipe bowl" is placed just after the description of a corpse "A corpse in the doorway dried to leather."

"His hand rose and fell softly with each precious breath"
   - The key word in this quote is "precious" it allows the reader to know that at the heart of this story of declination and hollow morals and a dead world is the story of the relationship between a father and son, it is without a doubt that the boy is "precious" to the man. The real interest in this is a matter of what justifies something as precious in this post apocalyptic world, the man seems to see at least a part of the boy's value in his ability as a ladder to god, one last beacon of hope in a dim, grey world. But his viewpoint is criticised during the section in which the man and boy meet Ely. Ely claims that there is no God, something that a real prophet would surely not do, Ely points out that "there are no god spoke men on the road" it is important not to take Ely's claims too seriously as there is no real proof that his name is Ely and his name is spelt differently from the biblical Eli. 

"He kept constant watch behind him in the mirror." (Page 24)
   - This quote highlights just how inhospitable the environment is in The Road, danger surrounds them in the darkening landscape and it is a matter of vital importance for survival that all corners are watched. Cormac McCarthy is also providing the reader with more evidence for the man's previous occupation, it becomes clear that the man was not an ordinary person before the end of the world. His survival instincts and medical knowledge show that he is intelligent and well trained but also add to a sense of reality to the novel. It is important to remember that in actuality surviving a disaster of this scale would be extremely difficult in such a small group. The mirror attached to the grocery cart also builds a sense of paranoia within the novel, a theme prevalent in fiction of the postmodern genre. The man at many times in the book seems paranoid, it is up to the reader to decide whether or not this is always justified. 

Images the road makes me think of...