- finding the cellar of naked and mutilated people (pp. 112-121)
This episode gives the impresion of horror and misery as it plays upon the reallity of human farming for food in the novel. The writer evoked this responce by playing on older horror story lines to give a semi-original idea of what could be in a cellar under an old dserted house, the writer also slows the rhythme of the story, then speeds it up to build suspence to a false mment of horror "an old mattress darkly stained" so that the true moment of horror is realized "Huddeled against the back wall were naked people, male and female, all trying to hide, sheilding their faces with their hands." which shocks the reader as nothing like this was expected. What happens next is clear, they would run away and continue their journey, more weary of strangers than before, but also now that the father has come to the revolation that he could never kill his son, we now that the boy will survive atleast even if the father does not. At the begining of the epiode time seems to slow as the father searches through the house and then goe to the back garden, time then speeds up as the half eaten people are found and the father and son run off, as time was slowing down however tension was building that something might happen. The fathers true character is realized in this episode as he realises that he could never kill his son as he questions himself "Is there such a being within you of which you know nothing?" also reffering to his son as "beloved" he tells the reader that he would never killhis son and that as much as he might want to, to save him from pain, he cant bring himself to kill the boy. McCarthy uses the same style of writting as he does in other areas of the novle but he gives the veiw from the mind of the father aswell as the other veiws that he normally gives. This is a key episode as it shows the kinds of people who are after him, and the difference between them and the bad guys.
This episode gives the impresion of horror and misery as it plays upon the reallity of human farming for food in the novel. The writer evoked this responce by playing on older horror story lines to give a semi-original idea of what could be in a cellar under an old dserted house, the writer also slows the rhythme of the story, then speeds it up to build suspence to a false mment of horror "an old mattress darkly stained" so that the true moment of horror is realized "Huddeled against the back wall were naked people, male and female, all trying to hide, sheilding their faces with their hands." which shocks the reader as nothing like this was expected. What happens next is clear, they would run away and continue their journey, more weary of strangers than before, but also now that the father has come to the revolation that he could never kill his son, we now that the boy will survive atleast even if the father does not. At the begining of the epiode time seems to slow as the father searches through the house and then goe to the back garden, time then speeds up as the half eaten people are found and the father and son run off, as time was slowing down however tension was building that something might happen. The fathers true character is realized in this episode as he realises that he could never kill his son as he questions himself "Is there such a being within you of which you know nothing?" also reffering to his son as "beloved" he tells the reader that he would never killhis son and that as much as he might want to, to save him from pain, he cant bring himself to kill the boy. McCarthy uses the same style of writting as he does in other areas of the novle but he gives the veiw from the mind of the father aswell as the other veiws that he normally gives. This is a key episode as it shows the kinds of people who are after him, and the difference between them and the bad guys.
A nice response Liam but you need to consider more deeply the revelation about the nature of humanity. It would also be advantageous to link this episode to those trashy American B movies we saw in class, this sequence is classic horror film and yet another step along the road descent into death.
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