How is Cormac able to make the post-apocalyptic world of
The
Road seem so real and utterly terrifying? Which descriptive
passages are especially vivid and visceral in their depiction of
this blasted landscape? What do you find to be the most horrifying
features of this world and the survivors who inhabit it?
All of that seems to fit a post-apocalyptic world, so it seems feasible and real.McCarthy helps to make it so terrifying by hinting and alluding at the terrors before we actually see them. Consider this moment, when he is remembering a conversation with his wife after the bombs where she says,That passage alone strikes fear into anyone's heart, and McCarthy introduces it before they actually encounter any of these nasty "survivors," so that we too can feel the same dread when they run across the first ones of the book, in the truck. Then, McCarthy makes good on his allusions by indicating that after he shot the man, his comrades boiled him and ate him.So, McCarthy makes the horrors true, as he describes it from the narrator's own eyes. This is terrifying, especially as they keep running into these types. We now know, and believe, what might happen, which makes their plight that much more grave.
ReplyDeleteA good author has the ability to explain a scenario he/she conjures by putting it in good, artistic detail. Fortunately, Cormac McCarthy has this ability to think of a post-apocalyptic, nightmarish world of The Road and put it all down on paper. He starts with the landscape, adding words to make The Road appear as if something terrible has happened, such as ash, clouds, and darkness. He blends these words in with elements of nature, i.e. blanketing the trees with ash and soot. The reader then interprets these images and believes that something definitely went wrong.
ReplyDeleteBecause we still live under the possibility that something bad could happen, and therefore end in a scenario much like the road, we find that reading this book can be strange or frightening. McCarthy uses this to manipulate his readers (any author knows that a boring book won't capture the attentions of an audience unless he introduces something spectacular and awe-inspiring). I find that the first passage on page 8 captures the tone and atmosphere very well. McCarthy says, "Charred and limbless trunks of trees stretching away on every side. Ash moving over the road and the sagging hands of blind wire strung from the blackened lightpoles whining thinly in the wind. A burned house in a clearing and beyond that a reach of meadowlands stark and gray and a raw red mudbank where roadworks lay abandoned." Just from that passage, I am able to pull from these details that the characters' nightmares lie within the elements of the book.