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Abstract
An analysis of Cormac McCarthys prose style and the language of his characters in the representative Appalachian novels The Orchard Keeper, Child of God, and The Road demonstrate a tense double vision of hope and hopelessness. Consumer culture and bureaucracy are life-sapping in McCarthys work; however, communicative spoken words are restorative. Although in McCarthys most recent novel, he tells the story of a world in ruin, memory and story and beauty survive, despite the bleakness of the landscape. In McCarthys work, the words themselves and the language of his characters suggest the possibility of a world other than the dark one he dramatizes.