McCarthy's Limited Palette

Statement	Example
The limited linguistic palette and repetitive techniques echo the monotony of the post-apocalyptic world that is described.	‘Long gray dawns, the long gray dusks’ shows a sense of monotony and the lack of change across the day. McCarthy also lists methodical processes and repeats ‘and’ to show the almost ritualistic process that is continually repeated.
The pared down language of the narrative reflects the pared down life the characters have to live – essentials only.	This is show through the listing of essential items ‘Tomatoes, peaches, beans, apricots. Canned ham. Corned beef.’ Food is marked out throughout the book as essential and they are often lacking in. The language is also like this as it can sometimes be very technical, ‘glaucoma’ and other times be very simplistic.
The limited palette makes the story more universal, a fable for all time, rather than pinning it down with lots of elaborate details describing specific places	McCarthy never gives the novel a specific time period and only mentions certain events before the apocalypse allowing it to have the fable quality. If it wasn’t for the mention of the ‘state roads’ on the map and the references to American culture it would be hard to place the story in any recognisable country. This is because it is irrelevant how they got there the focus is primarily on where the man and the boy go next.
There’s something rather dulling about the style that makes it hard to read and difficult to distinguish one part of the book from the next. All the events seem to merge together	McCarthy hasn’t used chapters to separate the different events in the book and the repetition of the movements make it hard to mark out certain actions. This also shows the continuous journey along the road and how everything merges together.

2. McCarthy also uses very poetic language, such as 'pilgrams in a fable', 'gunmetal light', 'each the other's world entire, 'ashes of a late world... if only my heart were stone'. These illustrate key motif's surrounding the characters and the world and are fairly cryptic.