1 Lani Chung The Ethics of the Apocalypse Nora Lambrecht Source #1 Claims/Merits/Flaws November 3, 2013 Source #1 Claims/Merits/Flaws In his

review on The Road by Cormac McCarthy, James Wood claims that although McCarthy strays from his usual stylistic writing technique by employing elements of minimalism into his work, he still maintains great attention to detail. Wood explains that McCarthys writing consists of [s]hort phrasal sentences, often just fragments, [that] savagely paint the elements of [The Roads] voided worldMcCarthys devotion to detailmake[s] the reader shiver with fear and recognition (Wood). Wood also claims that the novel does not represent a work of science fiction, nor does it follow the pattern of an allegory. In actuality, [i]t poses a simpler question, more taxing for the imagination and far closer to the primary business of fiction-making: what would [a] world without people look like, feel like? (Wood). Another assertion Wood makes is that McCarthy is an American ham who unnecessarily tends to use antiquated, overly emotional, and outdated language (Wood). McCarthys diction often seems inappropriate in certain contexts, and it fails to effectively and accurately describe scenes. His final claim is that there is something perhaps a little showy, a little glib, about the way that questions of belief are raised and dropped (Wood). McCarthy fails to fully address the lingering theological questions that arise as the novel progresses, which leaves readers without a satisfying answer to the metaphysical questions that apocalypse raises (Wood). Woods claim that The Road is more a work that helps to explore the implications of a possible post-apocalyptic societyas opposed to a fiction work with underlying allegorical meaninggenerally holds true within the larger context of the novel. McCarthys intent does not seem to focus on describing the life that we know but with a twist, the old world that most of us

2 recognize but that is suddenly more horrid to live in, but rather concentrates on answering the supposedly basal questions in relation to life at the end of days. While attempting to branch outwards into the analysis of the overall meaning of the apocalypse might prove to be difficult, the harder questions tend to lie in the meticulous details of life. How, exactly, does one truly survive in the aftermath? McCarthy answers this fundamental but challenging notion with his imaginative insight into how he believes survivors of the apocalypse would behave. One way that he does this is by depicting the mundane practicalities that the man and the boy carry out in order to survive. These include every instance in which they stop to eat, set up camp, and scavenge for provisions. Wood explains that McCarthy has his painstaking minimalism, which works splendidly here. Again and again he alerts us, in this simper mode, to elements of hypothetical existence we had not thought about (Wood). Though it seems incredibly tedious, the small tasks that the man and boy perform are still descriptively portrayed in McCarthys writing, which helps readers to get a better sense of exactly how life would play out in an apocalyptic scenario. Though Wood accurately points out the stylistic route that McCarthy takes in order to present an idea of life in the aftermath, Woods claims regarding the use of language and diction in The Road, are flawed. Wood asserts that McCarthy uses language that is antiquarian, a kind of vatic histrionic groping, in which the prose plumes itself up a flourishes a ostentatiously obsolete lexicon (Wood). What Wood is claiming in this excerpt of his review is that McCarthys writing is both overly emotional and obsolete. This claim can be challenged when you consider McCarthys possible reasoning behind his use of uncommon language and sentence structures. By combining elevated language and fragmented sentences, McCarthy creates a sense of solemnity and a mood that reflects the bleak nature of the novels setting. An example of one

3 such instance is when the man describes the landscape as gullied and eroded and barren [with] middens of anonymous trash (McCarthy 177). McCarthys simple sentences are enhanced with the use of archaic terms, allowing the somber mood to impact readers on a deeper level. The supposedly obsolete lexicon that Wood refers to plays an important role in establishing appropriate moods and relaying important messages. Wood also critiques McCarthys use of the word autistic in his description of the darkness experienced by the man. He claims that it seems simply incorrect and somehow a little adolescent, and shakes ones confidence in the writer (Wood). According to the Oxford English Dictionary, someone who is autistic is defined to be characterized by severely limited responsiveness to other persons, restricted behavior patterns, difficulty with abstract concepts, and usually abnormal speech development (OED). At first glance, the term does not appear to fit well into the context of McCarthys description. However, the unique description of the darkness as autistic helps to iterate an important point about the landscape and setting of the novel: that it made one feel lonely. Just as the common usage of the term autistic refers to children who tend to keep to themselves and avoid interactions with others, even the darkness had isolated the man, leaving him in a confused state of solitude. As analysis of the aforementioned excerpt of The Road shows, Wood was inaccurate in his superficial claim that McCarthys use of language was merely archaic without clear purpose as McCarthys diction and sentence structure served important roles in establishing elements of setting and mood.