Style and the Road

The fiction article described writing in the third person with a free indirect style. What struck me the most was the part about whether the words belong to the author or the character being described? It stood out especially when they discussed the man crying in the theater. But I wonder how today writers manage to portray characters honestly and still write beautifully. With today’s language degradation any character set in this time would probably think in speak with crude language, if a writer tryst to use better language he or she will not portray the character accurately and those words will belong to him or her not the character. So do authors just have to choose between good words or honest characters? The article presents an author who struggled with this dilemma. the author who wrote about the Muslim teen in America made him sound overly philosophical with him connecting his height and to his views of afterlife, overall it seems forced and not believable.
So had would James wood examine the style of the road? I will look at the style of the excerpt below:
“When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he’d reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. Night’s dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before. Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world. His hand rose and fell softly with each precious breath. He pushed away the plastic tarpaulin and raised himself in the stinking robes and blankets and looked toward the east for any light but there was none.” Its clear which words belong to the man and which belongs to the author. The word “precious” clearly belongs to the man because it suggests a deep emotional connection the child that only the man not the author would feel. Even though he doesn’t specify Cormack McCarthy implies the paternal relationship between the man and the boy through his diction. You can tell “plastic tarpaulin” and “stinking robes” are more the author’s words because they describe the cruelty and discomfort of the world not the man’s relationship with it. So what words belong to the child? In this passage the child is sleeping so he doesn’t have words but why does McCarthy do this? He does this because masking the boy’s thoughts keeps the audiences image of him as naïve and ignorant which is necessary to make his optimism believable. Also it could be the child’s ability to speak his mind that his thoughts don’t need to be portrayed with words that belong to the child, but again that suggests his hope and resilience, despite the cruelty of the world he is not discouraged from speaking.