After reading to page 25, share your thoughts on the following prompts.
1.) Explain how you feel about Cormac McCarthy's diction and writing style then provide 2-3 quotes to support your response.
"You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget." (page 12)
2.) Does your life relate to the quote above? Provide examples if they are applicable.
1.) Explain how you feel about Cormac McCarthy's diction and writing style then provide 2-3 quotes to support your response.
"You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget." (page 12)
2.) Does your life relate to the quote above? Provide examples if they are applicable.
14 comments:
1. Cormac McCarthy is an interesting author. His writing style is completely different then any other author’s I have read. Even though I am only at page 25 I feel overwhelmed by the book. I feel like I read paragraphs of sentences and then there is one sentence I come upon and it actually makes sense. For example, McCarthy starts a paragraph with a simple sentence, “He lay listening to the water drip in the woods.” Then the paragraph continues in the next sentence with, “Bedrock, this?” The first sentence is understandable and makes total and complete sense. The reader understands that the character is laying and listening to the water dripping in the woods. Then a random sentence, “Bedrock, this,” makes no sense to me at all. I don’t even understand what it means or why the author placed it there. Continuing on reading the paragraph you find no context clues to help you understand it is just more complex sentences. The paragraph transfers from one paragraph to another are random. One paragraph ends with, “The barren ridgeline trees raw and black in the rain.” Then the next paragraph starts with, “And the dreams are so rich in color.” The beginning of the paragraph is random and has nothing to do with the ending of the last one. Overall, McCarthy is a random and strange writer. As a writer I find him boring; I like books that I can understand and not books that I can only understand a sentence or what is happening on every other page.
Alyssa Ruta
I found Cormac McCarthy’s writing style very difficult to follow in the beginning. He writes sentences without intricate punctuality, mostly comas and periods, and lacks quotation marks for dialogues. Therefore, at times I found it difficult to understand what was going on but as the book went on it became easier to decipher the dialogue from the descriptions. McCarthy is also an avid user of adjectives leaving no scene lackluster. An example would be, “With the first gray light he rose and left the boy sleeping and walked out to the road and squatted and studied the country to the south. Barren, silent, godless.” Along with Khaled Hosseini, McCarthy uses concise sentences with strong vocabulary to make a point or leave the reader with a powerful mental image. For instance instead of writing “There were a lot of dead bodies everywhere” he wrote “The mummied dead everywhere.” It not only sounds better when reading but it also gives the reader a better mental picture. I think the quote "You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget” can be applied to my life. I barely remember the time spent with my grandfather before he got sick but I can remember him in the hospital with great detail. I wish I could recall more events from an earlier time but its hard when a distressing situation comes along. That event ends up overshadowing previous memories.
Jordan Penney
1. McCarthy's writing style is confusing. It is too fragmented to follow and it is unclear who is speaking without quotation marks and punctuation "There could be something here, the boy said. There could be some corn or something. Let's go, the man said."(17) In another example, either the boy or man could have started this conversation the author does not tell you. Can I ask you something? Yes, Of course you can.
What would you do if I died?
If you died I would want to die too. So you could be with me? Yes. So I could be with you. Okay."(11)Either one of them could have said it so maybe it doesn't matter who started the conversation but as a reader you find yourself rereading it to see if you missed something.
2. The man says this to the boy as they are passing a corpse. He knows that although the boy will want to forget this image, he will be able to remember it for years to come. This is true for so many things that you see throughout your life. Your mind is like a vault. I have some memories and images that I wish I could erase, but I can't. Unfortunately, some things that stick out in your mind just happen to be your worst memories. Things that disturb you like violence,drugs, or death tend to be things that you cannot forget. The things that evoke the most emotion from you are the things that just cannot be erased from your memory.
-Keith Kelleher
1.) I happen to really enjoy Cormac McCarthy's diction and writing style and find it extremely effective in his novel, The Road. I like how its choppy and fragmented because it stands a prefect reflection to the type of situation the man and his son are in throughout the course of the novel. Had the writing style been more complete and assembled, I think it would have taken away from the uprooted, chaotic setting depicted in the novel. Some examples of McCarthy’s writing style would be as follows: “Barren, silent, godless.” (Pg.4) Such is an example of McCarthy’s fragmented sentences, for in the so-called “sentence” all that exists are three adjectives describing the county around them. Next would be the lines that follow. “He thought the month was October but he wasn’t sure. He hadn’t kept a calendar for years. They were moving south. There’d be no surviving another winter here.” (Pg.4) In these lines I like the way McCarthy uses his writing style to almost reflect the type and/or process of thought as it actually happens in your head. Seeing how when one is alone in the wilderness, or anywhere for that matter, more often than not when thinking to yourself you don’t worry about proper grammar or things of that sort. Finally, one last example of McCarthy’s writing style as seen in The Road would be on page 10 and 11. Here a conversation can be seen taking place between the father and his son, however throughout the entire thing McCarthy doesn’t use one quotation mark…anywhere. It reads something like this: Can I ask you something? Yes. Of course. Are we going to die? Sometime. Not now. And we’re still going south? Yes. So we’ll be warm? Yes. Okay. Okay what? Nothing. Just okay. Go to sleep. Okay. Not only do I love the way it reads, but I also find it easy to follow without the quotations and with the fragments…in fact, I much appreciate them.
2.) Yes, I’d have to say that my life has related to the quote “You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget” before. In the novel, the father says this to his son as they pass a dried corpse. However, in my case, I’d have to say that I’ve had this quote come into play many a time on tests and quizzes and things of that sort seeing how when it comes to test day I might have forgot the information that I wanted to remember, but remembered the picture of a ticking clock that I drew on the side of my notebook that I wish I had forgotten about. Also, I tend to remember my nightmares as if I had just watched them play out before me on a video, though I wish I could not, and forget some of the best dreams I knew I had just had upon waking up from sleep, though I wish I could recall them.
2. Yes, the quote does relate to my life in many ways; simplistic and complicated. Sometimes I feel like I have a memory of an elderly person. For example, I might have to pick something up from the store and if I don’t write it down then it is most likely that I will forget it. The first line of the quote, “You forget what you want to remember…” directly pertains to my problem of forgetting; the things I really need I always forget. Other things in life such as a close death or something really bad that happened can lead your mind to remember those things more. Those are the worst things to remember and sometimes those are the things you want to forget the most. These complicated aspects pertain to the second part of the quote, “…and you remember what you want to forget."
Alyssa Ruta
Cormac McCarthy has his own unique way of writing. He uses diction that is usually inappropriate to use. By this, I mean that McCarthy uses words that either don't truly fit or are words that are just made up. I also find it interesting how he doesn't use correct grammar when writing words like can't as "cant". In the story, one of my favorite quotes is, "It took two days to cross that ashen scabland." Scabland is a word that I personally have never heard of. Yet, McCarthy uses the words in a way that allow us to understand what he is trying to say. Another quote from the book I find interesting is, "What would you do if I died? If you died I would die too." It's somewhat dry and McCarthy does not use quotation marks. It shows how the father and son are solely on the planet still for one another. Without each other, there is nothing else worth living for. It is a very interesting message.
The quote on the blog is very relatable I feel to everyone's life. If we have ever done anything in our lives we want to forget, we always remember them. It’s funny how the things that we do so wrongly stay with us longer than those things that we strive to achieve. Is haunting memories of wrongdoings stronger than goodwill itself? It is a very interesting quote.
-John Cummings
1. Cormac McCarthy has a very interesting and unique writing style. At first, I thought it was difficult to follow as he doesn't always use proper grammar or punctuation. For example, it says "What do you see? the man said. Nothing. He lowered the glasses. It's raining. Yes, the man said. I know."(7) This shows how McCarthy does not use quotation marks for dialogue. I also think that his writing is very descriptive and uses a lot of imagery. For example, it states "The mummied dead everywhere. The flesh cloven along the bones, the ligaments dried to tug and taut as wires."(20) This passage is very descriptive and gives the reader insight to how graphic and depressing it is.
2. I can certainly relate to the quote "You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget." A lot of times I find myself forgetting things that I need or forgetting certain tasks that I am supposed to do. On the other hand, I definitely remember the things that I wish I could forget, such as something tragic or embarrassing.
Brianna Cote
Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road is the most unique book I have read. I find the book rather hard to get through, because his diction is so different from what I am used to reading. His sentence structure is very choppy, and many of them are just fragments. For example, "Everything paling away into the murk.... Any trace of standing smoke." I find myself having to read and reread segments, in order to fully understand what's going on. An aspect that I enjoy about McCarthy's writing however, is his use of an extensive vocabulary. He uses words that I wouldn't normally know, but by him incorporating them into the sentences, I'm able to figure them out. For instance, he uses words like pipe clayed, creedless, and lackluster. By using vocabulary such as this, he's able to describe things in such a unique way, that you can vividly picture things in your mind. "Her nipples pipe clayed, and her rib bones painted white. She wore a dress of gauze and her dark hair was carried up in combs of ivory, combs of shell." when reading, and coming across the quote "You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget,” I immediately thought that I could relate to it. On a daily basis I forget things like where I put my keys, what I went up stairs for, and what my homework was for the night. Unfortunately, when I want to forget something, like my grandfather having a heart attack, that memory never goes away, it actually stays stronger than any other.
-Katie Adler
"You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget." This quote stuck out to me as i was reading, and it was one thing in the book i felt that i could relate too. McCarthys writing style is very different, its kind of messy and chaotic and i like that. Sometimes its refreshing to read something that is not so strict and proper. However i don't really like the dialoge between the boy and his father. I feel like they don't say enough and when they do it seems kind of pointless and dull. For example when the boys says "Are we going to die?" "Sometime not now" I feel like real people don't talk like that. Its very choppy and i feel like their should be more dialoge between the two.
-Melissa Graham
1.) I thought a new style of writing would be refreshing; but I do not enjoy McCarthy’s diction or style. Although intentional, his writing is lacking punctuation and quotations. I am not always sure if the main character or his son is speaking. Their words are not even in quotations. An example of narration leading right in to a quote is, “He pulled the boy closer. Just remember that the things you put in your head are there forever, he said.” Also, he has descriptive fragments that are meant to emphasize his point. However, they sometimes can be confusing. An example is, “Raw cold daylight fell through the roof. Gray as his heart.”
2.) This quote does relate to my life. I think it is pretty common that you forget most simple everyday moments. However, it is hard to forget traumatic events that happen. In my life, I will never forget my car accident, just because it shook me so much.
2.
"You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget." (page 12)
The quote above does apply to my life. I always think about the bad things and how I can improve upon them. The good things are usually forgotten by myself and others too.
Cormac McCarthy is better than that. But in a good way. I like how he seldom uses punctuation, doesn't construct sentences properly at all, and doesn't even use the right grammar at all. It gives it a more realistic feel to it while you read. I also enjoy how he doesn't exactly explain how the characters say their quotes. Most authors will throw in a "he said with hesitance" or "with fear". Cormac let's you have an imagination and decide how you think the character is saying it.
And for the second question...
The quote doesn't really apply to my life at all. I always remember the best things and the worst things that have happen to me in my life. Because these are the things that effect the turnout of your life the most. I remember the best thing that ever happened to me what snowboarding with three of my best friends in New York a few winters ago. But I also remember Freshman and Sophomore year when my mother had breast cancer. So I remember things either way.
1. Cormac McCarthy is a interesting writer and uses very unique diction. I think this word choice has both positives and negatives. I think it definitely adds to the book and creates better imagery for the reader. For example, "In an old batboard smokehouse they found a ham gambreled up in a high corner. It looked like something fetched from a tomb, so dried and drawn." (pg 17) However, a lot of his diction is unneccessary and sometimes difficult to interpret. The reader has to use context clues to really understand the word.
-Brielle Bowman
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