Comparing The Road And Cormac Mccarthy's The Road

The stylistic choices an author makes when writing has a huge impact on the mood and atmosphere of the piece created. Take, for example, Cormac Mcarthy’s The Road, and Gregory Robert’s Shantaram. The two incredible novels are in many ways similar, however also very different due to a different writing styles.

Many themes and elements used in both stories overlap. Both works are clearly journey stories, which is apparent right from the beginning. The reader learns this through Shantaram’s main character, Lindsay, leaving the Mumbai airport and making his way to the city, and The Road’s main character waking his son to continue their journey south. In both there is an urgency and necessity in the journey. For Lindsay, an escaped convict,

Strong imagery is created in both, due not just to description but also strong word choices. It is clear great care was taken into conveying mood and atmosphere with Mccarthy’s choices like “cauterized” (page 4) and “feverland” (page 8) and Roberts use of “karmic” (page 35) or “lucious-honeyed” (page 43). Finally, dialogue is an important piece of each story, helping introduce characters and build their characterization, as well as bring up new themes and add to the mood. The reader really feels the generosity, and warm-heartedness of Shataram’s Prabaker through the dialogue used, such as his response to Lindsay gifting him his whiskey by stating, “if I knew this was my whisky and not yours, I would not have been so generous with my good self in the drinking it up.” (page 27) Similarly, the the fierce connection

The mood, tone and atmosphere of these stories could not be more different. As can be seen above, although word choice is critical for both, Shantaram has a rich, exotic, and colourful feel, very different than the grey despair felt in The Road. The Road is a plate of “cold rice and cold beans” (page 8) to Shantaram’s “suffusion of aromatic sweetnesses” (page 43). Both powerful, yet undeniably different. An important note is that while both pieces include strong descriptions, the detail and extensiveness of Robert’s descriptions, taking entire pages to describe a section of marketplace, adds greatly to the tone and mood. Mccarthy’s sparseness of description, choosing instead to only note important details, and let the story describe itself, paints a much colder, and frankly sadder picture. A huge factor in the difference between the works is due to the narration, with Shantaram being written in the first person, and The Road in the 3rd. The result is Robert’s novel being much more introspective, with great amounts of time dedicated to the philosophical reflection of events in the story, and The Road being much more straightforward, with the interpretation of actions in the story being left to the reader. Dialogue use is prevalent throughout both, however vary greatly in implementation. Cormac Mccarthy chooses to have blocks of almost prose