How is the writing in some ways more like poetry than narrative prose in “The Road”?

Natsuki Yoshioka

Introduction

Here are some of the few techniques that will be discussed to explain the general statement:

Unique Grammar

Long, complex sentences

Imagery, similes, metaphors

What exactly is the difference?

Narrative emphasizes on plot

Spoken/Written account of connected events; a story

No pattern, just sentences and paragraphs

Poetry emphasizes on mood and feeling of text

Shown by the use of distinctive style and rhythm

Follows a set of pattern in an artistic manner

What exactly is the difference?

Aid #1: The first 2 stanzas of

The Road Not Taken

by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down on as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same

Use of Unique Grammar

Few punctuations: Few commas, no semi-colons

Not many grammatical structures

Example 1, Aid #2 “When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold

of the night he’d reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each other than what had gone before.” (Pg. 3 from “The Road”)

No punctuations: Few commas, no semi-colons and almost no full stops

Not many grammatical structures

Example 1, Aid #2 “When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold

of the night he’d reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each other than what had gone before.” (Pg. 3 from “The Road”)

Use of Unique Grammar

Use of Unique Grammar

Example #2:

Not necessary with incorrect grammar

Many ‘and’s Creates lengthy sentences

Long-drawn-outExhausting to read: Reflecting how the father feels too

Use of Unique Grammar

Purpose 1: Maximizes Setting/Plot/Characterization

With a lack in these components, author creates a bareness, desolate landscape which fits the setting of the story itselfBy employing these, McCarthy makes it easier to communicate the abandoned landscape that is separate from the context

Use of Unique GrammarPurpose 2: To make the writing straightforward to avoid

ambiguities

From Interview, Oprah:

"You shouldn't block the page up with weird little marks. If you write properly, you shouldn't have to punctuate.”

"You really have to be aware that there are no quotation marks to guide people, and write in such a way that it won't be confusing as to who is speaking.”

"You're just here once, life is brief, and to have to spend every day of it doing what somebody else wants you to do is not the way to live it.”

Simplicity

Use of Unique Grammar

Able to express the love between the two main characters: The boy and Father

Concise vocabulary, undecorated style; however, giving an undying tenderness of the two charactersThe tenderness between the father and son is an example of showing rather than telling

Long, Complex Sentences

Biblical intensity of landscape

Links with metaphorical conjunctions

Can connect to the feelings of a characterRefer to first example; Aid #2

Long, Complex Sentences

Aid #4:Passage taken from “The Road”

“The soft black talc blew through the streets like squid ink uncoiling along a sea floor and the cold crept down and the dark came early and the scavengers passing down the steep canyons with their torches trod silky holds in the drifted ashes that closed behind them silently as eyes. Out on the roads the pilgrims sank down and fell over and died and the bleak and shrouded earth went trundling past the sun and returned again as trackless and as unremarked as the path of any nameless sisterworld in the ancient dark beyond.”

Figurative Language

Includes metaphors, similes, and all kinds of imagery

Interprets a waste land

Images of trout

Images are dynamic representations of motifs throughout the book

Example from “The Road”, Aid #5“He rose and stood tottering in that cold autistic dark with his arms outheld for balance while the vestibular calculations in his skull cranked out their reckonings. An old Chronicle. To see out the upright. No fall but preceded by a declination. He took great marching steps into the nothingness, counting them against his return. 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” (P. 15)

Figurative Language

Figurative Language

Example from “The Road”, Aid #5“He rose and stood tottering in that cold autistic dark with his arms outheld for balance while the vestibular calculations in his skull cranked out their reckonings. An old Chronicle. To see out the upright. No fall but preceded by a declination. He took great marching steps into the nothingness, counting them against his return. 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” (P. 15)

Conclusion

How is the writing more Poetry than Narrative Prose?

Unique Grammar

Long, complex sentences

Imagery, similes, metaphors

McCarthy’s writing style is artisticPoetry=Artistic

McCarthy’s writing style=Poetic