The Literal World of Cormac McCarthy's The Road

The world constructed by Cormac McCarthy for his novel The Road is not to different from your typical post apocalyptic world from movies or science fiction. What is consistent throughout the entire novel is the general greyness of the entire world. He constantly uses words like "hazed" "smokey" "shadowy" to describe the landscape that the boy and the man travel through. Additionally the word ash is used more frequently than any other adjective throughout the novel, again implying a general greyscale feel the the whole world. The way that McCarthy creates the world is through a lot of adjectives. When there are descriptive passages in the novel, he tends to use a mix of run on and fragmented sentences, almost to make you think in terms of shots. He uses quick piercing sentences to show tension as the man and the boy approach a house: "They approached slowly up the drive. No tracks in the random patches of melting snow. A tall hedge of dead pivot. An ancient birdsnest lodged in the dark wicker of it." While in the more enjoyable and less tense scenes like the waterfall, the sentences are much longer: "It was a waterfall dropping off a high shelf of rock and falling eighty feet through a grey shroud of mist into the pool below." By doing this the reader gets a longer time to imagine the waterfall in the most vivid way possible, which relaxes the tone and gives the picture a more mellow feel. Overall his use of different sentences gives the reader different options for interpreting the scenery in their own minds. However, because of the consistency in the adjectives used by McCarthy, the world that the reader envisions is as grey as every other readers.