Literature Analysis # 2: The Road By Cormac McCarthy

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Literature Analysis

By Hayden Robel

“People are at their best when they are at their worst.”

- Jeff Bridges, Starman

GENERAL

1. Briefly summarize the plot of the novel you read, and explain how the narrative fulfills the author's purpose (based on your well-informed interpretation of same).

2. Succinctly describe the theme of the novel. Avoid cliches.

3. Describe the author's tone. Include a minimum of three excerpts that illustrate your point(s).

4. Describe a minimum of ten literary elements/techniques you observed that strengthened your understanding of the author's purpose, the text's theme and/or your sense of the tone. For each, please include textual support to help illustrate the point for your readers. (Please include edition and page numbers for easy reference.)

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1. Inhabiting a bleak and blasted post apocalyptic wasteland in what was once called the United States of America; Cormac McCarthy’s The Road chronicles the saga of the Man and his son the Boy as they travel in search of survival and their very own salvation. A merciless land of cannibalistic raiders, scare supplies such as food or water, the world of The Road is a character unto itself as well as the plot. McCarthy’s destitute epic places less importance on the peccadillo’s of plot, who the nameless Man and the Boy are than the actions and reactions of the morally ambiguous characters over the course of their journey along the road. Whether it be killing in cold blood of another human being (hostile or non), or intentionally avoiding helping a fellow starving survivor, the Man and the Boy travel along a moral crossway, neither black nor white, but gray that provides mankind the path to become angels or the route to become devils. "(The Man) You have to carry the fire. (The Boy) I don't know how to. (The Man) Yes you do. (The Boy) Is it real? (The Man) The fire? Yes it is. (The Boy) Where is it? I don’t know where it is. (The Man) Yes you do. It's inside you. It was always there. I can see it." The Man’s final breaths disturb the ashen soil, charred grounds on which he rest, on the road, his road, his journey over. His father’s words echoing within, the Boy continues walking, a new life, a new group of survivors, a new family, a new hope. A journey, a road with no destination, no ends, Cormac McCarthy, thru The Road and its characters, ultimately connotes this idea, message: hope. We must carry the torch of hope, fire within us, like the Boy, even when the road, our road is strewn with adversity we must always hope. The Road ends with this note as the Man dies and the Boy continues without a father but with a new perception of life: hope, for change, for the better, this is but one of Cormac McCarthy’s poignant purposes. On the road of life we must always hope.    

2. (I essentially communicated my perception of this novels penultimate theme above but here’s a snapshot) Cormac McCarthy’s The Road stands as a testament to man’s capacity for “good” and “evil”. A moral crossway, neither black nor white, but gray that provides man the path to become angels or the road to become devils. Through the killing of another being to live, to the illumination of one of life’s “ultimate truths”, hope, The Road conveys a menagerie of themes along it’s route. Good and evil, morality in general, Cormac McCarthy’s penultimate purpose (in my opinion) was to connote the theme of hope. Hope for change, for the better, on the road of life, no matter the inevitable challenges, we must always hope.

3. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, aside from JD Salinger’s approaches to character/dialogue, is easily the most influential work in my own writing. His expert craftsmanship of tone is unparallel when compared to modern contemporaries, hell, most writers in the medium to date (NONARGUABLE…jk…BUT NOT REALLY). Moody, haunting, provocative, really buzzwords can’t do the man justice, McCarthy’s tone is strikingly visual, gothic and depressive in imagery of its exceedingly dark world, as the following exemplifies.

·        “He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like groundfoxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.” (pg. 110)

·        "The world shrinking down about a raw core of parsible entities. The names of things slowly following those things into oblivion. Colors. The names of birds. Things to eat. Finally the names of things one believed to be true. More fragile than he would have thought. How much was gone already? The sacred idiom shorn of its referents and so of its reality." (pg. 75)

·        “Human bodies. Sprawled in every attitude. Dried and shrunken in their rotted clothes. The small wad of burning paper drew down to a wisp of flame and then died out leaving a faint pattern for just a moment in the incandescence like the shape of a flower, a molten rose. Then all was dark again.” (pg. 76)

4. Here we go.

·        “(The Man) You wanted to know what the bad guys looked like. Now you know. It may happen again. My job is to take care of you. I was appointed to do that by God. I will kill anyone who touches you. Do you understand? (The Boy) Yes. He sat there cowled in the blanket. After a while he looked up. (The Boy) Are we still the good guys? He said. (The Man) Yes. We're still the good guys." (pg. 65) The Man killed another, another human, another being, to protect his son. Was it justified? To bereave another of their life? There truly is no single answer, whether there is an answer at all, McCarthy’s The Road frequently poses such an ethically challenging scenarios. The Man killed to protect his loved one, to live, but did the road, reality, force the Man to kill? Or was it the man who chose to kill? The Road rarely delineates its morality, not “good” or “evil”, black or white, but shades of fathomless gray, not directly fueling the Man’s decision, only indirectly providing the theater, the backdrop for such an action. Cormac McCarthy’s a genius of tone, characterization, world building, basically all things written, no one can argue against this.

·        “Coming back he found the bones and the skin piled together with rocks over them. A pool of guts. He pushed at the bones with the toe of his shoe. They looked to have been boiled. No pieces of clothing. Dark was coming on again and it was already very cold and he turned and went out to where he'd left the boy and knelt and put his arms around him and held him.” (pg. 110) Cannibalism is but one abominable facet of the harsh world The Road travels along. Here Cormac characterizes not just the cruel capacities of desperate man but the Man’s, he a symbol (spoiler alert) of mankind’s, just as able capacity for compassion as a father cradles, cherishes, his son. Can I wax more poetic about you Mr. McCarthy? Yes.  

·        “…Eyes closed, arms oaring. Upright to what? Something nameless in the night, lode or matrix. To which he and the stars were common satellite. Like the great pendulum in its rotunda scribing through the long day movements of the universe of which you may say it knows nothing and yet know it must.” (pg. 19) Cormac is a spiritual man and commonly ties beliefs and God into his writing. What I could discern from the vague but visual imagery is McCarthy’s contemplation thru the Man’s midnight reflections of what fate or destiny might be inevitable upon their travels along the Road, but that’s just my ramblings. Anyways, wow, the pendulum simile is masterful.

·        “The trees in their ordered rows gnarled and black and the fallen limbs thick on the ground. He stopped and looked across the fields. Wind in the east. The soft ash moving in the furrows. Stopping. Moving again. He'd seen it all before. Shapes of dried blood in the stubble grass and gray coils of viscera where the slain had been field-dressed and hauled away. The wall beyond held a frieze of human heads, all faced alike, dried and caved with their taut grins and shrunken eyes. They wore gold rings in their leather ears and in the wind their sparse and ratty hair twisted about on their skulls. The teeth in their sockets like dental molds, the crude tattoos etched in some homebrewed woad faded in the beggared sunlight. The heads not truncheoned shapeless had been flayed of their skins and the raw skulls painted and signed across the forehead in a scrawl and one white bone skull had the plate sutures etched carefully in ink like a blueprint for assembly.” (pg. 140) Horrific and macabre imagery of human atrocity is featured prominently throughout The Road. Here we read the description of raider markers utilizing the corporeal remnant of their victims to postmark territory/ threaten any potential scavengers. In the words of Louis Armstrong, “what a wonderful world!”.

·        “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.” (pg. 168) EWWWW! Unlike his somewhat romanticized descriptions/imageries as exampled above, Cormac McCarthy uses simplicity or incredibly literal structure/syntax/diction/imagery etc. in order to leave no disgusting detail to the imagination. Stephen King would have a hard time emulating McCarthy’s execution here….gross.

·        “In those first years the roads were peopled with refugees shrouded up in their clothing. Wearing masks and goggles, sitting in their rags by the side of the road like ruined aviators. Their barrows heaped with shoddy. Towing wagons or carts. Their eyes bright in their skulls. Creedless shells of men tottering down the causeways like migrants in a feverland. The frailty of everything revealed at last. Old and troubling issues resolved into nothingness and night. The last instance of a thing takes the class with it. Turns out the light and is gone. Look around you. Ever is a long time. But the boy knew what he knew. That ever is no time at all.” (pg. 42) Cormac not only details the beginning behaviors of humans right after the unspecified apocalypse with this description laden/deliberately “simple” diction but the Boys lack of knowledge, frame of reference for the past. Unlike the Man, the Boys reality has only ever been the harsh actualities of post- apocalyptic Earth, such  is the cruel reality of the situation, the Boy will never live in peaceful society, the world as his father knew it. Question this though: Is that a bad thing?.....The more I think about it I-…Yep.

·        “Human bodies. Sprawled in every attitude. Dried and shrunken in their rotted clothes. The small wad of burning paper drew down to a wisp of flame and then died out leaving a faint pattern for just a moment in the incandescence like the shape of a flower, a molten rose. Then all was dark again.” (pg. 76) Sorry for the repeats but these passages were selected by me for a reason! (there golden/gross examples of rhetoric….)  I particularly “enjoy” (not the content/subject of course, sicko) McCarthy’s ironically beautiful simile here with “like the shape of a flower, a molten rose.” When describing the contrastingly horrendous gore of this passage.

·        “He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like groundfoxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.” (pg. 110) McCarthy…how can I ever achieve your level? Honestly the beautiful imagery here is not superficial but provocative in its connotative layers as The Man contemplates the apathy of the universe (“The crushing black vacuum of the universe.”) and ultimately his God, questioning how he may have such indifference to his creations suffering. Deep.  

·        “They walked into the little clearing, the boy clutching his hand. They'd taken everything with them except whatever black thing was skewered over the coals. He was standing there checking the perimeter when the boy turned and buried his face against him. He looked quickly to see what had happened. What is it? he said. What is it? The boy shook his head. Oh Papa, he said. He turned and looked again. What the boy had seen was a charred human infant headless and gutted and blackening on the spit. He bent and picked the boy up and started for the road with him, holding him close. I'm sorry, he whispered. I'm sorry.” (pg. 276) Chilling, that’s all I can amount to say. Cormac manages (with his use of decidedly simple or literal syntax/structure and matter of fact diction description) to muster a mixture of conflicting emotions as I read this excerpt where in the father cradles the charred corpse of an infant. I can only imagine the horror a father, the Man, endures, imagine what he maybe thinking: “What about my son?” he says out of guilt, he says sorry not for himself but the hell the boy will live his entire life within, the hell of the world, the never-ending road of life.   

·        "(The Man) You have to carry the fire. (The Boy) I don't know how to. (The Man) Yes you do. (The Boy) Is it real? (The Man) The fire? Yes it is. (The Boy) Where is it? I don’t know where it is. (The Man) Yes you do. It's inside you. It was always there. I can see it." (pg. 234) As the Man treads on the threshold of death, he illuminates the Boy, and the reader, of one of life’s “ultimate truths”. The Man, enlightened by the harsh realities of the road, describes a fire, one present within, perpetual and never completely waning. The Man describes the fire of hope, the most fundamental element within all of mankind, all of us, telling the boy that he must live on, and hope, hope for change, for the better, survive the fire. A fire kindled by the fluttering embers of charred landscapes of The Road, the road depicting once again it is a character, depicting its capacity for “evil” as well as “good”, our capacities. Cormac, please, teach me.

CHARACTERIZATION

1. Describe two examples of direct characterization and two examples of indirect characterization.  Why does the author use both approaches, and to what end (i.e., what is your lasting impression of the character as a result)?

2. Does the author's syntax and/or diction change when s/he focuses on character?  How?  Example(s)?

3. Is the protagonist static or dynamic?  Flat or round?  Explain.

4. After reading the book did you come away feeling like you'd met a person or read a character?  Analyze one textual example that illustrates your reaction.

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                  1.

Direct Characterization

·        EXAMPLE 1:

“(The Boy) Can I ask you something?

(The Man) Yes. Of course you can.

(The Boy) What would you do if I died?

(The Man) If you died I would want to die too.

(The Boy) So you could be with me?

(The Man) Yes. So I could be with you.

(The Boy) Okay.” (pg. 11)

·        EXAMPLE 2:

The boy lay with his head in the man's lap. After a while he said: They're going to kill those people, aren't they?

(The Man) Yes.

(The Boy) Why do they have to do that?

(The Man) I don’t know.

(The Boy) Are they going to eat them?

(The Man) I don’t know.

(The Boy) They're going to eat them, aren’t they?

(The Man) Yes.

(The Boy) And we couldn’t help them because then they'd eat us too.

(The Man) Yes.

(The Boy) And that's why we couldn’t help them.

(The Man) Yes.

(The Boy) Okay. (pg. 194)

Indirect characterization

·        EXAMPLE 1:

“The roadrat let go of the belt and it fell in the roadway with the gear hanging from it. A canteen. An old canvas army pouch. A leather sheath for a knife. When he looked up the roadrat was holding the knife in his hand. He'd only taken two steps but he was almost between him and the child.

(The Man) What do you think you're going to do with that?

He didn’t answer. He was a big man but he was quick. He dove and grabbed the boy and rolled and came up holding him against his chest with the knife at his throat. The man had already dropped to the ground and he swung with him and leveled the pistol and fired from a two-handed position balanced on both knees at a distance of six feet. The man fell back instantly and lay with blood bubbling from the hole in his forehead.”

·        EXAMPLE 2:

“They walked into the little clearing, the boy clutching his hand. They'd taken everything with them except whatever black thing was skewered over the coals. He was standing there checking the perimeter when the boy turned and buried his face against him. He looked quickly to see what had happened. What is it? he said. What is it? The boy shook his head. Oh Papa, he said. He turned and looked again. What the boy had seen was a charred human infant headless and gutted and blackening on the spit. He bent and picked the boy up and started for the road with him, holding him close. I'm sorry, he whispered. I'm sorry.” (pg. 276)

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Cormac McCarthy is undeniably a master of the written craft. Like most writers worth there weight he employs a myriad of modes of characterization such as direct and in. Utilizing direct/indirect characterization as depicted in the examples, McCarthy directly characterizes the father, the Man, as loving and dedicated to his son, the Boy, the Man going so far as to kill any and all who attempt to harm him. Indeed he cannot imagine an existence without his son, his only salvation for what mankind has done. The Boy is characterized directly by his questions/responses in conversations with his father; he is innocent, ignorant, and somewhat desensitized to the harsh realities he is relentlessly subjected to over his journey. The Boy is truly a child one that must be protected by the inhospitable tendrils of turpitude birthed by his world, the world of The Road. With authentic dialogue backed by genuine, character substantiated motivations, Cormac McCarthy’s use of direct and indirect characterization characterizes his works like that of The Road as paradigms of the craft. In order to convey quick but provocative concepts and thought he uses direct (like in the conversations; DIRECT CHARACTERIZATION EXAMPLES 1 & 2), yet thru indirect actions (like the description of the deceased baby cradling (INDIRECT CHARACTERIZATION EXAMPLE 1) or roadrat killing (INDIRECT CHARACTERIZATION EXAMPLE 2)) McCarthy engenders depth that only a real person, not a character could ever possess.  McCarthy has succeeded in what most authors never will, creating people NOT characters.

2. Example:

“They walked into the little clearing, the boy clutching his hand. They'd taken everything with them except whatever black thing was skewered over the coals. He was standing there checking the perimeter when the boy turned and buried his face against him. He looked quickly to see what had happened. What is it? he said. What is it? The boy shook his head. Oh Papa, he said. He turned and looked again. What the boy had seen was a charred human infant headless and gutted and blackening on the spit. He bent and picked the boy up and started for the road with him, holding him close. I'm sorry, he whispered. I'm sorry.” (pg. 276)

Yes, as identifiable from the passage above, there is a subtle shift of emphasis from descriptions of scenery/scenario to characterization pieces. If you observe the transition from dialogue-less exposition to the Man’s “what is it?” you can begin to see McCarthy’s prose place focus on the Man’s actions and the Boy’s reactions rather then further building the scene with structured environmental descriptions. His diction is delivered with deliberately simple word-choice/syntax to serve the description of the Man’s actions and characterize him in the process as he picks up the infants charred corpse and begins whispering “sorry”. In short McCarthy uses action over words when characterizing his characters like the Man here. The Man indirectly characterizes himself by whispering “sorry” not to the dead infant but in actuality to his living son, the Boy, as the Boy is his own baby, able to be burned, harmed by the world’s fires. He is whispering “sorry” to the Boy; sorry for helping give birth to a son, condemn his flesh and blood to such a cruel reality, the world in which they live. Sorry for condemning him to a nearly hopeless bout of constant survival till death, sorry not for himself, but the Boy when he knows he will eventually have to leave him, taken away from the world by his God’s never timely will, sorry for leaving his son alone. Cormac McCarthy is a master, subtly transitioning unnoticeably from description and exposition to characterization, doing both in a same sentence process, a master indeed.

3. The Road is more or less a moral crossway, neither black nor white, but gray, fathomless in its shades, that provides man the path to become angels or the route to become devils. Such is true to the character of the Man (who is a symbol for mankind in general, brilliant). He is at times a loving, religiously pious (as much as he can be in the apocalypse), father tenderly tending to his child, yet, when the situation requires, he can be a cold-blooded killer or calculatedly cruel human being to those not his kin (i.e. not giving food to another lost boy because they need to preserve resources or not helping an inured elderly man dying on the road for a few examples). Subsequently the Man is not a “dynamic character”, nor is he “static”, he is a person. Cormac McCarthy has crafted one of the most realistic renditions of a human(s) I have read in literature, the Man as morally ambiguous and grey in character/action as any living human being. Even the Boy is as innocent/ignorant/inquisitive as any “real” child. The Man and the Boy of Cormac McCarthy’s creation are not characters “dynamic” or “static” but mirrors of mankind, real, genuine, true people, indiscernible from us whether they walked in the texts and lines of a page or the sidewalk of our streets. I think we humans give ourselves a little too much credit in our “dynamic” diversity of character, just sayin.

4. I essentially answered the first part of this question in the above (CHARACTERIZATION question #3) so lets move the the quotation analysis.

Example:

“They walked into the little clearing, the boy clutching his hand. They'd taken everything with them except whatever black thing was skewered over the coals. He was standing there checking the perimeter when the boy turned and buried his face against him. He looked quickly to see what had happened. What is it? he said. What is it? The boy shook his head. Oh Papa, he said. He turned and looked again. What the boy had seen was a charred human infant headless and gutted and blackening on the spit. He bent and picked the boy up and started for the road with him, holding him close. I'm sorry, he whispered. I'm sorry.” (pg. 276)

Not to beat the dead horse to a bloody, bone-meal grinded, pulp, this passage is not only one of my favorite in the entire novel (second only to “the fire is inside you” portion) but truly illustrates the humanity of the Man. (Quoted from my response in CHARACTERIZATION question # 2) The Man indirectly characterizes himself here by whispering “sorry” not to the dead infant but in actuality to his living son, the Boy, as the Boy is his own baby, able to be burned, harmed by the world’s fires. He is whispering “sorry” to the Boy. Sorry for helping give birth to him, condemn his own flesh and blood to such a cruel reality, the world in which they live. Sorry for condemning him to a nearly hopeless future, a constant bout of survival till death. The Man whispers “sorry” not for himself, but the Boy when he knows he will eventually have to leave him, taken away from the world by his God’s never timely will, leaving the Boy alone. The Man is sorry just as any real person would authentically feel, he is a person living not in our world but in his own, yet a person all the same. The Man, even the  innocent/ignorant/inquisitive Boy, are people, a family as true as our own, The Road their world, not far from ours, Cormac McCarthy both their god and father. The Road is indeed a masterpiece in the truest, greatest sense of the word, a note of not despair but hope. For change, for the better, on the road of life we must always have one thing: hope. Its all we can do, hope and believe.