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?