Quotation Mark In Cormac Mccarthy's The Road

During the reading of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, I was “stirred” by his absence of quotation marks. I thought to myself and I’m sure it crossed a few others minds, “what did McCarthy do to be able to write a full novel without any quotation marks?” Essay writing or just any writing at all would be a lot easier if we, like McCarthy were aloud to desert quotation marks. We would no longer have to worry about if we put a comma before or after the quotation mark or how to properly format it but instead we could just write freely without a care on our minds. I both admire and despise McCarthy for whatever it is he did to be successful with writing this way.

I despise McCarthy for writing this way because it’s confusing and I don’t understand …show more content…
Although McCarthy only leaves out quotation marks in his writing and that seems like a small thing it can still mess up the whole dynamic of the novel. Even though you can still read the novel, it would be an easier read with them. This could be compared to me leaving my spikes at home for a race. Even though I could run without spikes it wouldn’t be as efficient and fast. If Mr. Forrest did not point out McCarthy’s stylistic writing, I probably wouldn’t have noticed which, would have lead me to be even more lost during the study of The Road. How is it that someone can write an entire novel with no quotation marks and have their book be a best seller? I can assume from the creativity displayed in McCarthy’s book and just the fact that he wrote a book that he is a smart guy. He must of used his intelligence to establish his sonority over book editors so they wouldn’t put quotation marks. I mean there is no way that someone editing his novel wouldn’t put quotation marks in, it’s part of their job! That is the part that confuses me the most. Some might argue that McCarthy is a Pulitzer Prize Winner so he can do whatever he wants but