Atwood and McCarthy, Seeger

On the surface, The Handmaid’s Tale, written by Margaret Atwood, and The Road, written by Cormac McCarthy, share many commonalities. Both stories take place in a chaotic setting following the collapse of modern society. They both utilize the reader's prior knowledge of modern America in order to create a vastly different society that rejects the current norms and morals of today. And yet, the writing styles of the two novels are very different. There are markable distinctions in the two authors’ approaches to how their characters exist in the worlds that they have created. The individual writing styles of Atwood and McCarthy offer two different experiences for readers, as evident by their differing uses of structure, point of view, and syntax, among other literary devices.

The novel The Handmaid’s Tale is organized according to division of thoughts. Similar ideas are linked together, and new ideas are introduced in a new chapter. There is an overall sense of order to the book, and it is relatively easy to follow the plot of the story. In contrast, The Road is often just a collection of jumbled thoughts. There is no real division of ideas or expression, and there are no chapters; the plot flows from one point to another with little notice of a shift in the story line. The lack of formal punctuation contributes to the unorganized feel of the book; there are rarely any commas or apostrophes, and dialogue is almost never in quotation marks. McCarthy likely utilized this technique in order to illustrate the extreme informality and crudeness of the setting that he has created. One similarity between the two novels in terms of structure is their frequent use of flashbacks. Both authors utilize memories of their protagonists in order to introduce painful aspects of their past.. These remembrances offer the reader insight into the backstory of the characters, as well as establish a point of origin for their approaches towards the lives that they are forced to live in their new environment.

Both of the novels differ on the point of view that they are told in. The Handmaid’s Tale is told in the first person, while The Road is told in the third person. These differing viewpoints create two different degrees of emotional and personal involvement with regards to the protagonists in each respective novel. The story of Offred, the protagonist in The Handmaid’s Tale, is able to be told on a more personal and sincere level because of the first person narrative used in the novel. The emotional aspect of the novel is heightened due to the fact that she herself is sharing her beliefs and feelings rather than an uninvolved third party. In contrast, the story of the Man from The Road is told in the third person: because The Road is told from this point of view, the characters are more detached from their emotions. This is likely a technique that the author purposely employed. McCarthy created an inhospitable and miserable environment that left the characters in his novel unable to fully accept their situation, allowing for the readers to project their own personal emotional response on the situations that the characters encounter.
Atwood creates a reading experience that is so full of intense description that at times it reads more as poetry than as a novel. Phrases such as “a willow, weeping catkins; around the edges, the flower borders, in which the daffodils are now fading and the tulips are opening their cups, spilling out color”(Atwood 12) are used consistently throughout the book to describe otherwise ordinary settings and situations. This writing style allows for the readers to become immersed in her world, and to visualize Offred’s daily experiences on a realistic and believable level. McCarthy also writes, at times, in poetic phrasing. He uses expressions such as “...the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow”(McCarthy 286) to add further interest to his story. McCarthy is less vibrant vivid in his descriptions; in contrast to Atwood, McCarthy is more blunt in his worldbuilding, and relies less on vibrant and colorful descriptions to move the story forward.

Both The Road and The Handmaid’s Tale place emphasis on similar themes. One of the main themes of both novels is the importance of children. Atwood and McCarthy both create worlds in which children are revered, either the Man’s devotion towards the Boy or the societal value that Gilead places on fertility and reproduction. Additionally, the question of identity is central to both novels. Throughout The Handmaid’s Tale, Offred struggles with reconciling her past identity, defined by the life that she had created with her husband and child, with the identity that Gileadean society attempts to place on her, where she is expected to be subservient, submissive, and fertile. McCarthy also deals with the theme of identity in The Road. Throughout the novel, the Man and the Boy continually try to convince themselves that they are good, that they are carrying the flame and would never resort to the savage acts that they see being committed on a daily basis by others around them.  

Despite the fact that The Road and The Handmaid’s Tale share some consistencies between them, both novelists utilize different writing styles in order to develop their characters and drive their stories forward. Both novels are exceptionally unique in the way that the story itself is written and in the manner that the characters respond to the challenging situations presented to them.