McCarthy and Walker - Fogel

No two authors are ever the same. Every author has their own unique way of telling the readers their stories, which can be seen when comparing The Road by Cormac McCarthy and Alice Walker’s The Color Purple. Yet there are similarities between the two authors as well. Both Walker and McCarthy’s styles of writing offer individualistic traits which show their own styles and personalities of their books, while also containing styles that are similar to each other.  

             A big difference between Walker and McCarthy’s books are their writing styles. The Color Purple consists of a unique style that is composed of very short chapters, written as letters to God, which explain the trials and tribulations that Celie, the main character, experiences. The letters are short but contain strong feelings and emotions of what she is going through at that time. Celie’s letters tend to touch upon topics briefly and sparsely rather than being developed and embellished in long paragraphs. The Road, on the other hand, has a style that is dry and quite solemn even in the more uplifting moments in the book. This book also shifts between two different styles. One style is very sophisticated and often used when he’s talking about something the world has lost in the book. The other style is quite monotone, which lacks emotion and detailed description of what is happening. Yet this style has a powerful simplicity that allows the reader to understand how the characters think differently when faced in certain situations. The Road is composed of long and embellished chapters that contain multiple events within each one, unlike The Color Purple.

            Another noteworthy difference is the how the authors portray the characters. There are only two main characters in The Road, which include a man and a boy. Their names are never given, neither their physical descriptions nor hardly any background information. A few times the Man’s wife is mentioned when describing a flashback the Man has, but nothing else about either of their pasts is given. The reader never fully understands why the Man and the Boy are always on the move and struggling to survive, because it is never said. The Color Purple, on the other hand, has multiple characters Walker talks about in the letters. Celie, the main protagonist, brings up in her letters her abusive dad, her sister Nettie, her husband Mr.         , Shug Avery and more characters throughout the book. Each one of the characters is described in detail of how they look and act, which helps as a visual for the reader. This is much different than The Road.

            Even though the Man in The Road is not described, McCarthy and Walker created very similar main characters despite their differences. Though Celie is female and the Man is male and both books are set in different time periods, how both characters act in their difficult situations are quite the same. In both books, the main characters are going through very hard times to the point of just trying to survive. But both Celie and the Man always seem to stand up and protect the people they love, whether it is Nettie or the Boy. The love the Man has for the Boy and likewise Celie’s love for her sister Nettie is nearly unbreakable, and they will do anything for them no matter what the situation. Therefore, both the Man in The Road and Celie in The Color Purple are quite similar when compared.

            Poor grammar is another shared parallel of The Road and The Color Purple. Both books purposefully use bad grammar, but for different reasons. McCarthy's lack of grammar throughout The Road can be linked to the content as in the story the Boy and Man are striped of luxuries in order to survive. The same thing is done with the sentence structure. The sentences are stripped of their luxuries, in this case, grammar. This gives the effect of proportion; as the Boy and Man suffer, the words suffer too. For example, “He pulled the boy closer. Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said. You might want to think about that. You forget some things, dont you? Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget” (12). McCarthy does away with quotation marks and a lot of punctuation; he rarely uses apostrophes. As the Boy and Man face hardships, the reader has to face a minor hardship of trying to figure out who is speaking. In The Color Purple, Walker presents Celie’s thoughts in the vernacular, with poor grammar and spelling. But instead of using bad grammar to show the characters’ luxuries being stripped of them as McCarthy did, Walker purposefully misspells words and uses incorrect grammar in order to emphasize the point that Celie is not an educated woman. In Celie’s letters, some sentences are so grammatically incorrect it seems nearly impossible to depict what Walker is trying to say. For example, “Harpo ast his daddy why he beat me. Mr._______ say, Cause he my wife. Plus, she stubborn.  All women good for—he don’t finish. He just tuck his chin over the paper like he do. Remind me of Pa” (letter 13). Both authors use incorrect grammar in their books, but they purposefully do it for different reasons.

            Cormac McCarthy and Alice Walker have won prestigious awards for their books. They both won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Road and The Color Purple. McCarthy also won the Tähtivaeltaja Award, the Quill Award for General Fiction, as well as the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel The Road. The Color Purple also received the National Book Award for Fiction. After comparing and contrasting the authors, writing styles, character personality traits, purposeful incorrect grammar usage and more, overall McCarthy’s powerful simplicity within his writing proves to be more meaningful and masterful.