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Analysis Of George Orwell 's ' The Road '

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INTRODUCTION

“Lord of the Flies” by William Golding, “1984” by George Orwell, “The Time Machine” by H.G. Wells and “A Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley are all novels of the dystopian genre, that explore a post-apocalyptic world. The genre of the post-apocalypse is becoming ever more popular in the post World War Two English speaking world. The authors of these novels I feel, have a very distinct voice and style they create themselves to explore this world. A recent novel that really struck me as a novel in which the writer creates a unique tone in which to write his book in is Cormac McCarthy’s, “The Road”. In “The Road”, McCarthy has a distinct and plangent tone. The English used by McCarthy differs from the English used in novels of …show more content…

So, in my essay, through the analysis of the language in specific depiction of settings, themes, ideas and the author’s voice, how the writer creates a language to fully depict the setting of his post-apocalyptic novel.

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In the novel “The Road”, Cormac McCarthy presents and creates a language to comprehensibly describe and create an image of hell. “Literature differs from life in that life is amorphously full of detail, and rarely directs us towards it, whereas literature teaches us to notice…” I feel this quote is particularly relevant to McCarthy, as his description in novels, although seemingly in analysis rather barren, his use of descriptive language creates and extremely vivid image. McCarthy uses simple adjectives, repetition and narrates the novel in a godlike omnipresent voice, as well as employing biblical style language and sentence structure. His language in the novel is “as minimalist as ever” , as indeed it is in his style to write simplistically. One can compare, any line from any of his novels, and see this. This can be seen in his other novels, for example “No Country for Old Men”, which was written too in this style of language and is described as “nothing if not pre-apocalyptic”. If one reads this novel, or any of his novels, this style is obvious, but it is arguably particularly effective in “The Road” to create a language of the post-apocalypse.

McCarthy

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