Logan Briand Blog Post (Style)

 Wile reading the first half of The Road by Cormac McCarthy many things stuck out to me regarding style. The biggest thing that I notice is the fact that there are no chapters throughout the entire novel. I find this to be fairly odd as I have never read a book without chapters in it. While it has proven to be a fairly easy novel to read due to the way the book is set up in the sense of short paragraphs. This was a change that I did not think I would adjust well to but I actually prefer this type of a book. Usually, when I read a book with chapters I tend to scout how many pages are in it and most of the time decide to not read that chapter. With small paragraphs, I continue to read and feel more involved in the book and have enjoyed reading thus far which is not common for me as I am not a fan of reading books I can not choose.

Another thing that I find interesting that was a smart style characteristic used by the author is not naming the main characters. Throughout the novel they are mainly referenced as the father and son. I find this to keep me engaged more than hearing a name because I like to match the description the author gives with what I think is happening in the novel. This gives me the ability to form my own opinions on the characters without feeling one is more important than others. In addition to just the writing style itself, I enjoy that the author brings up past events relating to the time before a catastrophic event occurs. This allows me to connect the past and present which is normally my issue when reading this type of novel. 

Through the first half of the story, we notice that it is more often that the father is speaking but yet there is no dominant character. This leads me to believe the story is written in the third person point of view which allows us to see the reactions of all the characters and not just a particular one. While the book is not one that is complex to read and understand, I find that with the third person point of view as well as a writing style that can be all over the place sometimes, it is more interesting than one that just follows a timeline because that is what most novels do. While at times it can be hard to follow,  I have enjoyed reading the book this far. The page breaks make it seem as though I am not reading as much as I am and the view point makes it an interesting novel to read.

If I had one complaint for the novel to this point, I would say that I am not a fan of the way the author writes dialogue as it can be hard to follow who is speaking when there are no quotation marks around that dialogue. This book has mainly kept my interest due to the aspect of the short paragraphs, making it easy for me to go back and reread certain sections to grasp a better idea of the speaker and how it relates to the part of the story I had just been reading. In addition, although it has picked up now, I had initially felt as though the story took a while to actually get started and was particularly dry in the beginning. Other than these minor details that take away from the book, I am excited to continue reading to find out what will happen next.