Voice and Point of View

The Road is written in the third person, in the voice of an omniscient narrator, with the characters referred to as ‘he’ or ‘the boy’. However, within this, McCarthy manipulates and plays with the narrative voice and the point of view from which the story is seen. Here are some of the things you might find interesting to explore in relation to the narrative voice of The Road:

• –  3rd person voice, omniscient point of view
• –  3rd person voice, from the point of view of the man
• –  3rd person voice, from the point of view of the boy
• –  unattributed dialogue (i.e. without ‘he said’)
• –  decontextualised dialogue (without commentary from the narrator)
• –  unattributed thoughts (i.e. without ‘he thought’)
• –  not signalling where the narrative ends and dialogue or the thoughts of a character in the first person begin
• –  dream sequences related without a clear sense of whether it is in the third or first person
• –  3rd person free indirect style where the reader not only feels he/she is seeing events from a character’s perspective but that it is in the character’s own words, not those of the narrative voice.
  To explore the narrative voice of The Road you will need photocopies of the extracts suggested on page 28.

After Reading – Voice and Point of View
Extract 1: page 32
On this road there are no godspoke men. ... By day the banished sun circles the earth like a grieving mother with a lamp.
Extract 2: page 87
They never heard the dog again. ... The dog that he remembers followed us for two days.
Extract 3: page 122
He’d no idea what direction they might have taken and his fear was that they might circle and return to the house. ... He held the child and after a while the child stopped shaking and after a while he slept.
Extract 4: page 298
If I’m not here you can still talk to me. You can talk to me and I’ll talk to you. You’ll see. ... He went down the road as far as he dared and then he came back.
Extract 5: page 306
Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. ... In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.

1. In pairs, look closely at these extracts and talk about what you notice about the voice and point of view, exploring which of the possible techniques listed on page 27 are being used, and to what effect.
2. Next look at each extract in the context it appears in the novel. Is the voice characteristic of this section of the novel, or is it noticeably different? What is the effect of the choices McCarthy has made at that particular moment in the novel?
3. Skim read through the novel, selecting three short extracts of your own where the voice or point of view strikes you as being particularly interesting, illuminating or challenging.
4. Share your extracts as a class.