Avoiding emotional language and keeping it simple makes the narrative all the more emotionally engaging.

McCarthy lacks using emotional language throughout the novel to create a bitter and bleak atmosphere.  It also shows the characters distancing themselves from each other and the world around them and so protecting themselves from emotional hurt.  The lack of emotional language also creates this feeling in the reader, but as outsiders to the world created in the novel we feel the emotions that the characters cannot as we know they are purposely hiding them from each other.  One example of this is when the wife leaves.  Her tone seems bitter and nasty and she never once sounds remorseful or says goodbye.  At one point she states that her ‘heart was ripped out the night he was born’ referring to her son.  She also refuses to say goodbye to her son.  This leaves the reader upset as, if nothing else we feel sorry for the son.  The wife’s tone could be perceived as spiteful  but McCarthy shows that this tone was purposeful in that he described the ‘coldness’ of her exit as ‘her final gift’ which shows that she was being heartless to spare her husband’s feelings which makes it more emotional for the reader as it shows she could not show her true emotions in the final conversation she will ever have with her husband. 

One example of this is when the man and boy reach the shore and find that the sea is not blue.  Even though the man can see the ‘disappointment’ in the boy’s face all he does to comfort the boy id say ‘I’m sorry it’s not blue’ to which the boy simply replies ‘That’s okay’  In many conversations in the novel the boy simply replies with the word ‘okay’ which is ambiguous and shows little of the boy’s emotions.  These brief exchanges, such as the one by the shore make the narrative emotionally engaging even though the language is sparse because we wonder what the characters are really thinking and what they are holding back.

Lack of hyperbolic language highlights the extremity of the situation

McCarthy’s lack of hyperbolic language shows that the characters do not have time to over think or linger on any of the horrific situations they find themselves in.  In turn, we as readers are not allowed to think for a long time about individual events.  One example of this is when the man and boy find the baby on the spit.  The baby is simply described as ‘a charred human infant headless and gutted and blackened. Although this is a clearly disturbing image the language used is simple and blunt.  The tone created therefore is one of calm and fact, showing that scenes like this are the normal for the man and boy which shows how extreme their situation is.  The description is short and shows little emotion showing that because of their extreme situation there is no time to feel sorry for anyone of thing else as it won’t help them or the man and boy.

The lack of hyperbolic language also makes the world created in the novel seem monotone, which reflects the situation of the characters; repetitive and tedious.  One example of this is when the man shoots the road rat.  He ‘dropped to the ground and he swung with him and levelled the pistol and fired’.  The road rat then ‘lay with blood bubbling from the hole in his forehead’ and the boy later was ‘covered with gore and mute as a stone.’  The whole of this incident takes up one paragraph and is really informing the reader what happened instead of describing it to them.  There is no emotion presented in this extract and McCarthy doesn’t go into lots of detail even though this is one of the main action sequences in the novel.  The most vivid description in this extract is ‘blood bubbling from the hole in his forehead’.  This highlights the extremity of the situation that the man and boy are in because not only are we as readers not allowed to dwell on this event, like the characters also do not, but the way McCarthy presents it in a factual way; ‘fired from a two-handed position balanced on both knees at a distance of six feet’ shows that this situation is no longer horrific or disturbing for the character of the man, just essential to keep him and his son alive.