Significance of Narrative Voice & Perspective in Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road'

The Narrative voice used in ‘The Road’ is mostly from an omniscient perspective, focalised on the character of the man in the style of indirect discourse. It does, however, differentiate occasionally by switching to first person, we primarily see this occur on page 26 when the man says “where we used to have Christmas when I was a boy” – this shows a level of emotional attachment which is usually absent when the narrative voice is wholly omniscient.

Although it is possible to detect when the narrative has changed from completely omniscient, to indirect discourse – it seems that McCarthy never uses ‘direct discourse’ in the writing of ‘The Road’. This could be because direct discourse would require speech marks and a wider range of punctuation overall, McCarthy has decided to write without these normal traits of literature so as to emphasize the sparse nature of the landscape that the characters are in and implement a feeling of loss on to the reader.

It is significant that the narrative perspective is omniscient because it acts as more of a camera this way, only telling us what we can see through the focalised character. This means that there is a lack of emotional input from the narrator which I think, again emphasizes the feeling of loneliness that the two characters must feel.

As well as the use of indirect discourse, McCarthy also employs a free indirect style in the road which is mainly used in the form of analepsis. For example on page 26, the man says “we would sit at the fire” – creating a sense of memory and back story which is essential for making the character seem more realistic and believable.

It could be argued that McCarthy does not use a consistent style of narrative or perspective so as to accentuate the amount of undeniable confusion that a post apocalyptic world such as the one written in The Road would cause, this would then coincide with the way in which McCarthy uses punctuation to create barrenness, hence why the narrative voice and perspective are so significant.