The beginning of the road, as I previously stated, gave a summary-like feel. It involved the man and the boy making their way south, with not much happening overall. The way the beginning was written had an interesting effect on me as a reader. This has never happened to me before, but the way the book was dark, impersonal and slow for some reason made me imagine the events in black and white. I always visualize the events of books as I am reading, but usually I imagine real people, often people I know, as the characters. The first time I pictured the events in color was the first time a major event occurred in the book, which was the man shooting the "bad guy." The second quarter of the book was far more exciting that the first in my opinion, and although the general style of writing remains the same, the reader's perception of the book (at least from my own experience) is far different. No longer a summary of two people travelling south, this is now an intense story that left me aching to read more. McCarthy's style of writing without quotation marks contributes greatly to the dark tone of the novel. One of the most surprising scenes in the book was when the man and the boy stumble upon a chamber where people are being kept to be eaten. I cannot put my finger on why, but it seems to me that the passage would have lost something had McCarthy taken a more orthodox approach to writing;
Huddled against the back wall were naked people, male and female, all trying to hide, shielding their faces with their hands. On the mattress lay a man with his legs gone to the hip and the stumps of them blackened and burnt. The smell was hideous. Jesus, he whispered. Then one by one they turned and blinked in the pitiful light. Help us, they whispered. Please help us. Christ, he said. Oh Christ. He turned and grabbed the boy. Hurry, he said. Hurry. He'd dropped the lighter. No time to look. He pushed the boy up the stairs. Help us, they called. Hurry.
The almost casual approach at writing is interestingly affected when discussing such a dark subject. It makes the passage even more disturbing to me. Also, the lack of chapters helps to put the reader in the minds of the characters, in that there is no break to this hell. Chapters break up the story into small, manageable portions, and often in books some amount of time has passed in between chapters. The lack of chapters helps to remind the reader that this story is continuous and each new day in the story has the same goal for the main characters: survive.
Nice discussion of the effect of some of the stylistic choices. As for the example you included, I think the lack of quotation marks makes the reader move more quickly through the section, thus creating a rush much like the characters feel.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed your discussion of seeing the book in black and white versus color. It's an interesting way to think about a reader's response to the text.
Hey Andrew, you raised some really interesting points that I never thought about. I really liked hearing about how you pictured it in black and white because, now that I think of it, this would be the exact type of story that a film version could choose black and white for style. Apocalypse stories have done that before, like 1968's Night of the Living Dead. Also, I really enjoyed your point about the chapters, as once again, it was something I never considered. It makes sense that the lack of chapters contribute to the drawn-out feel of the struggle that these characters must endure. Again, I saw the lack of chapters as just a random stylistic choice on McCarthy's part, but you've found meaning behind it which I think is really interesting. (As you can tell, the thing I'm loving the most about reading other people's blog posts about this book is hearing the points that others make that I never thought of before, and that I agree with).
ReplyDeleteJust a couple of questions. What do you think is next for these characters? Right now, they found all that food, but knowing this book, I doubt this recent joy is going to last. And I don't know about you, but while I have been loving the buildup and the lack of showing what the bad guys do, I do want to see more of them going forward. Again, I don't know about you, but I'd love to know more about why the world is the way it is.