Show and Don't Tell

The Road isn't a Shakespeare novel. It is also definitely not Clockwork Orange. What I'm trying to say is that the words are not that difficult, which is probably why it got so famous and widely known in a short time. However, I really have to say, the descriptions are great. It makes me feel like I'm actually in the middle of all that gray.

When I say that the words are not difficult, I'm not saying that there are no new words. In fact, there are many new words that are quite descriptive. Yet, somehow, most of these words appear familiar, and they make sense within context. Here are some of the words:

knapsack - basically a bag. a fancy way of saying backpack.

ligaments - connective tissue... (Eww, gorey!)

litany - prayer with responses that are the same for a number in succession

basalt - the dark, dense igneous rock of a lava flow or minor intrusion

escarpment - a long, precipitous, clifflike ridge of land, rock, etc.

slogged - to walk or plod heavily

cannonading - to attack continuously with or as if with cannon

rachitic - inflammation of the spine

(On a side note, we can sort of infer that the 'father' character used to be a doctor before the apocalypse. He seems to be very well-knowledged and knows specific medical information... stuff like frontal lobes and apparantly rachitics.)

Then, there were words that didn't exist such as:

roofingtin - the tin that a roof is made out of, I presume?

fireblackened - self-explanatory...

sweatblackened - also slightly self-explanatory?

Anyways, the word choices used by Cormac McCarthy is simple yet deep. He always finds a way to describe a scene, whether it be the ashes falling like snow, an abandoned old shack, a dark opaque waterfall, or a guy with a bullet hole in his frontal lobe. He manages to do what most people (myself included) cannot do when writing a piece of writing: Showing and not telling. Basically, when writing literary work, we want to 'show' in a way that the book can appeal to the reader in all five senses.

Just saying. Haha. This book could serve as a great example for descriptive descriptions (no, that is not redundant), a good model for literary writing. I would personally want more colors, if you know what I mean. This book is too gray. Life could always do with some extra colors.