Many of the scholarly articles written on The Road have attempted to address the issue of hope. Vereen Bell comments in his benchmark study, The Achievement of Cormac McCarthy (1988), that ―[e]ven by McCarthy‘s ordinary standards, an In fact, it's probably useful to think of the road as both an actual, physical setting and and a … I am not sure if he uses this style for all his books but he did use it in No Country for Old Men as well. The Road opens after some unknown apocalyptic event has struck. The Road By Cormac McCarthy This book is dedicated to JOHN FRANCIS MCCARTHY 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. And I agree with Tyler's idea about Cormac using this style to sort of give the reader a feeling of the setting. Shelley L. Rambo has claimed that, "McCarthy catches the reader in a schizophrenic, and distincdy American, post-apocalyptic crisis of meaning: between the craving for a happy ending (for resolution, for redemption) and the recognition of Nick Romeo writes about the novelist Cormac McCarthy and his nonfiction essay exploring the origins of language and how it relates to the unconscious mind. The characters spend so much time on the road – and McCarthy describes the road so well – that it hovers over the novel as a major image. I like Cormac's style of writing in the book alot. The first few pages of the novel situate us in the landscape: ash, isolation, and a long road to travel. —Cormac McCarthy, The Road, p. 75 From the earliest pages of The Road it is clear that we are reading the most bleakly nihilistic novel ever to grace Oprah’s Book Club. You could say the novel alternates between two settings: the road and excursions away from the road into houses or other possible food mother lodes. Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world. This does not save much room for sunshine and happiness. McCarthy illustrates the idea of hope throughout The Road by using the relationship between the … However, Cormac McCarthy does somehow manage to highlight a rather pleasant theme throughout his novel: hope. Cormac McCarthy‘s third novel, Child of God (1973), has long challenged critical studies to explain its overall concept and purpose. The road is a desolate, transient thing, full of danger (the "bloodcults"). This article argues that Cormac McCarthy’s latest novel, The Road (2006), marks a clear departure from the interests and aesthetics he showed in his earlier works of fiction. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before. The Road Summary.