The Pervasive Threat of Danger

I'm not going to answer any specific prompt, I hope that's okay, because I had another idea that I wanted to talk about, that I paid attention to during the second portion of reading.

As I delved further into the book, I became aware of McCarthy's use of danger, of fear. The sense of danger is a part of the atmosphere of the whole book, and the world that the father and son travel through. What McCarthy does so well in his writing, is that he never actually shows you the danger, just the evidence of it, and in that way he comes the tension going, that no matter where the father and son go, there is the possibility of violence and death coming from any source. The feeling of constant threat lingers over the characters, and over me as well. Each time the father is checking out an empty house, my own threat level rises and I wonder to my self and say, "Okay, is the house where they run into some bad guys?" McCarthy keeps building the tension of lurking danger, and I know that some where in the book all that stored tension will be released, whether it is through the death of the father, or both of them, or by the completion of their journey.

Another source of the constant danger that fills the atmosphere of the book is cannibalism. I think that there is a dread or horror of cannibalism that is stored in the collective unconscious of the human race. We are abhorred at the thought of eating another person, and we wonder what could drive a person to do that. In the book, cannibalism is the fulfillment of the constant threat of danger. Although we never see the act of cannibalism, McCarthy gives us suggestions and evidence of it, and then he lets our imaginations do the rest of the work and fill in the grisly details. For example when the father and son leave the road and hide because they are being followed, and they watch three men and pregnant woman pass down the road, I had a fleeting, horrific thought that the woman was the food provider. I was even a little disgusted with myself for having the thought, and then my disgust rose a little more when I discovered that I was right. As I read the book, I find myself becoming more suspicious and distrustful, like the father. My feelings as I read are a reaction to the reality and atmosphere that McCarthy has created in his book, and that is what writers want to achieve, to pull you into their world and experience it.

Well, that is about all that I have left to say. Don't let the cannibals get you on Halloween.