expository writing - source #1 claims merits and flaws

7/22/2019 Expository Writing - Source #1 Claims Merits and Flaws

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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


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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 darknessexperienced 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 McCarthysdiction and sentence structure served

important roles in establishing elements of setting and mood.

expository writing - source #1 claims merits and flaws

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