Writing Out The Apocalypse

The Road by Cormac McCarthy is the story of how humanity operates on a desolate earth. It follows two characters The man and the boy throughout their journey to the south, they encounter other survivors and deal with their own morals and humanity. However, all of these themes are enhanced by McCarthy’s writing techniques such as imagery, sentence structure, and symbolism. These devices allow the reader to immerse themselves in the dull world.

One reoccurring device that is used in The Road Is imagery. When readers first open the book they are bombarded with descriptions of sights, scents and sounds. McCarthy writes “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. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before. Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world. His hand rose and fell softly with each precious breath. He pushed away the plastic tarpaulin and raised himself in the stinking robes and blankets and looked toward the east for any light but there was none.” Just on the first page McCarthy allows readers to experience what the characters are living through and adds to the posthumous condition of nature and civilization.

Another writing technique that shines through is McCarthy's use of sentence structure. Throughout the story he coveys the complicated state of human relationships thriving through dire situations in this unique writing style. This is seen when the man and boy are resting after their journey and the boy inquires about mortality. “ Can I ask you something? he said. Yes. Of course. Are we going to die? Sometime. Not now. And we're still going south. Yes. So we'll be warm. Yes. Okay. Okay what? Nothing. Just okay. Go to sleep. Okay. I'm going to blow out the lamp. Is that okay? Yes. That's okay. And then later in the darkness: Can I ask you something? Yes. Of course you can. What would you do if I died? If you died I would want to die too.

So you could be with me? Yes. So I could be with you. Okay.” The first noticeable feature of the dialogue is the spacing. When conversations are had between the two characters it’s isolated from the rest of the text. This contrasts the to-the-point nature of how the talk goes to show the importance and meaning of their exchange though the nature of their speech. Another standout feature is the lack of quotation marks this allows the conversation to seamlessly flow back into imagery as to show that the characters are still on edge though talking. This allows readers to feel the tenseness in the dialogue and builds to the apocalyptic environment.

Lastly, McCarthy uses symbolism to portray the inner feelings of the characters. In a world with little substance McCarthy makes readers look closer and make connections like the duo they are following. We see this use of symbolism in the man’s refusal to dwell in dreams. “In dreams his pale bride came to him out of a green and leafy canopy. Her nipples pipeclayed and her rib bones painted white. She wore a dress of gauze and her dark hair was carried up in combs of ivory, combs of shell. Her smile, her downturned eyes. In the morning it was snowing again. Beads of small gray ice strung along the light-wires overhead. He mistrusted all of that. He said the right dreams for a man in peril were dreams of peril and all else was the call of languor and of death. He slept little and he slept poorly. He dreamt of walking in a flowering wood where birds flew before them he and the child and the sky was aching blue but he was learning how to wake himself from just such siren worlds. Lying there in the dark with the uncanny taste of a peach from some phantom orchard fading in his mouth. He thought if he lived long enough the world at last would all be lost. Like the dying world the newly blind inhabit, all of it slowly fading from memory.” This symbolic passage allows readers to understand the man’s feelings of faltering without explicit dialogue. The author chooses dreams to sybomlize the man’s fantasies of color and peace and how it contrasts his reality around him. It also allows the reader to explore the cause of the man’s stoic nature due to rejecting this false sense of happiness. This allows McCarthy to focus on the apocalypse portion of the story without explicitly stating the feelings of characters.

When writing this story McCarthy uses all of these features come together to create an experience that readers can immerse themselves into and reflect on how humanity can shine through even the apocalypse.