One of the reasons I chose to read The Road was because I already read No Country for Old Men which is by the same author, Cormac McCarthy. I enjoyed No Country for Old Men because of the unique prose and writing style. This bland, straight forward writing style was also apparent in The Road. What is interesting to note is how McCarthy treats the characters of the two different novels and how they are similar and different. As we discussed when reading No Country for Old Men, McCarthy treats characters in a unique way. Throughout the novel, we follow the story Llewelyn Moss, who, as we all know, acquires over two million dollars from a drug deal gone wrong. Throughout the novel we follow him with the money until he is suddenly killed and the story just continued. Meaning that we didn’t dwell on his death too long. It was interesting because up until then he was a major character and, I personally thought, the main character. The treatment of the characters is similar and different in The Road. For one, the story right from the start focuses on two characters and really focuses the man and his thoughts. Throughout the novel we follow them both through the thoughts of the man and we get really in depth experiences with the character as they rarely ever see other people. A difference in the treatment of characters in how the characters are treated in their deaths. In No Country for Old Men, Moss’ death is overlooked and not focused. His death isn’t even a scene; we just see the aftermath. While in The Road, the death of one of the main characters is a huge focus as we get a lot of detail of what happens. For example, he asked the boy not to perch a tent so that he can see the sky. I think this is done because The Road in a much simpler story with less characters than No Country for Old Men.
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Great American Novels 
2 replies on “The Road and No Country for Old Men: A comparison”
I remember thinking about this commonality between The Road and No Country for Old Men’s treatment of death after I had read No Country for Old Men, since I read The Road first. While you are right in saying the death of the father is dwelt upon for a long time in The Road, I think that overall death in the novel is brushed aside just as frequently as it is in No Country for Old Men overall. Events in the novel which heavily involve death, such as the father killing the man who threatened his son and the discovery of the charred baby, are never brought up again in the novel after they are briefly depicted in the story. So I’d argue that in both novels, death is brushed aside quickly in the narrative except for the deaths of the protagonists. I don’t think you can compare the roles of Llewelyn Moss and the father very well either, as the narrative frequently shift’s from Moss’s perspective (meaning he is not necessarily the protagonist) while the narrative in The Road is always from the perspective of the father and son.
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I think comparing the two novels there are definitely similarities and differences, and also I believe there are very two different messages being sent to the readers in both novels. I think The Road is a more emotional novel, with the bond between the father and son, and I believe the main message is to find what your purpose is in life. In No Country for Old Men, I believe it is definitely less emotional and quicker to the point on the storytelling, as The Road is dragged out more.
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