A Closer Look at the Style

The Style of Cormac McCarthy

Over the last week, I continued my journey reading The Road.  Before I continue, however, allow me to summarize what has happened thus far through the first half of the book (page 144). Obviously, if you read my last post, then you're familiar with the basic premise The Road: two nameless characters, a man and his young son, are struggling to survive in a post apocalyptic Earth.  Together, they travel to the southern part of the United States with only a small cart to carry supplies.  As they are on the move, they have several close encounters with other survivors who are threats.  Most recently, the two encountered a group of naked people with severed limbs who were locked in a basement, just waiting to be eaten alive by cannibals.  The man and the boy narrowly escaped the house before those cannibals returned (this was probably the most intense part of the book thus far).  Additionally, the man and the boy encounter problems with the world itself, like falling trees and intense snowstorms. However, finally, at the end of the last section, the man and the boy found a basement full of canned food where they intend to survive for a while.  Of course, knowing this book and how dark it is, more problems are bound to happen.                                                                                      
Thus, with this book being as dark as it is, we are lead to the first element of Cormac McCarthy's style - the horror.  Sure, it's not exactly "style," but McCarthy is definitely not going to shy away from disturbing ideas in this story, and it shows.  I already mentioned the presence of cannibals in the story, but what makes McCarthy's cannibals stand out from others that I've seen in movies or TV shows is that we don't really see what they do, and that is creepy.  It's an effect that is known as the Jaws effect - that is, what you don't see is actually scarier than what you do see (it gets its name from Steven Spielberg's Jaws, where the mechanical shark they planned on using malfunctioned.  Thus, many of the scenes with it were cut, and the result was an invisible, underwater threat which continues to scare audiences to this day).  I must admit, I don't think I've really encountered the Jaws effect in a book before, but in The Road, McCarthy utilizes it brilliantly.  Throughout the story, the man tells the boy that there are some really dangerous people in the world who he refers to as "the bad guys" (so that the young boy can understand).  For example, at one point, the boy asks his father "were they the bad guys?" referring a wave of people passing by (page 92).  The man then confirms that they were.  Earlier, when they are looking for food but must travel near some people, the boy hesitates, asking "What if it's the bad guys?" (79).

The man's wife also kills herself, showing that the world they live in is worse than death, which is a scary concept by itself.  Additionally, the man's wife speaks of the horrible things that the "bad guys" would do if they were to be caught: "They will rape me.  They'll rape him.  They are going to rape us and kill us and eat us" (56).  Again, there's so much build up for these cannibals, and even after the first half, there has yet to be any long scenes with them.  In fact, the most disturbing scene that we've gotten involving the cannibals so far is when the two main characters, hiding outside a house where cannibals lock up their victims, hear "the hideous shrieks coming from the house" (115).  Notice we don't see anything, but we definitely know what is going on.  McCarthy excellently builds up these nasty apocalypse cannibals, and his use of the Jaws effect makes them even more disturbing.

Another noticeable aspect of McCarthy's writing style is his lack of quotation marks and punctuation.  None of the dialogue uses quotation marks which can make it hard to follow at points.  I honestly don't really understand the lack of quotation marks.  While it doesn't necessarily take much away, it doesn't add anything either.  Sometimes, I've seen authors use this at certain times to indicate a type of scene in a novel.  For example, in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, quotation marks were only used during present scenes, and not during flashbacks.  In The Road, the entire book is written without quotation marks for dialogue, whether or not there is a flashback.

Similar to the case with the quotation marks, McCarthy also leaves out apostrophes in contractions.  At first, I thought apostrophes were only going to be used in the narration, and not the dialogue.  I also assumed that the dialogue would have no apostrophes to keep the style consistent.  But as it turns out, I was wrong.  Let me explain.  A good example is on page fifty-six, during the flashback conversation between the man and his wife.  The man says, "I dont know."  No apostrophe, that's okay.  But then, the wife responds, "It's because it's here.  There's nothing left to talk about."  Okay, so at this point, maybe only the wife's dialogue has apostrophes.  The man then says, "I wouldnt leave you."  Therefore, that hypothesis is supported because there aren't any apostrophes in the man's dialogue.  But then, the wife replies "I dont know..."  So now the wife's dialogue doesn't include apostrophes, even though before it did.  It gets worse actually, because the very next thing she says (in the same line of dialogue by the way) is, "It's meaningless."  That's right, "it's," with an apostrophe.  Are you kidding me?  Therefore, after much careful, deep, and thorough analysis about this style of writing, I've concluded that the use of apostrophes in contractions during scenes of dialogue is just made at complete random.  Like with the lack of quotation marks, I can find nothing that this style adds to enhance the story.  If it were consistent, I could at least say it organizes perhaps narration and dialogue by separating them through a difference of writing style.  But no, it's done at complete random, which adds nothing to the experience of reading the story.    

Additionally, the story is written without chapters, and instead we're given what I call "events."  In comparison to average chapter lengths, these events range from about a quarter of a page, to one and a half pages.  An event can be dialogue between characters, narration of a character's actions, a flashback, etc.  It could be as simple as the man traveling into the forest to obtain wood for the fire, or it could be as intense as a run-in with the "bad guys."  While these events can mark the beginning and end of scenes in certain locations, they are also very visibly noticeable on the page - a couple of lines of space separate the events from each other.  Therefore, each scene feels very separate, like a mini story that contributes to the overarching plot of the book.    

Overall, after reading half of the book, McCarthy's unique style of writing has definitely been on display.  I definitely love his use of the Jaws effect and his use of the mini "events."  However, I definitely question why he left out the quotation marks, and randomly left out apostrophes.  Again, it doesn't necessarily take away from the story, but it definitely seems like a random action to have taken while writing.  However, authors should try to be unique in my opinion, and maybe that's all McCarthy was trying to do.  When I really break it down, McCarthy's style succeeds in making The Road seem unique in its writing, and at the very least, even if a story fails to be interesting to an audience (which The Road succeeds at), I always have to admire a style that attempts to make a story stand out.