Indeterminacy In Cormac McCarthy’s The Road

Cormac McCarthy has been considered as one of the most important living American writers. His new book The Road is set in a post-apocalyptic world, telling a story that a father and his son head for south to search for a chance to survive. In this novel, post-apocalypse, southerness, the relationship between father and son and so on have been deeply discussed by scholars both at home and abroad. However the indeterminacies in this book have not yet been studied in detail. Thus the present paper will explore this novel from the perspective of indeterminacy.Firstly in Chapter One the paper will trace the development of indeterminacy in post-modernism, discussing it from reception aesthetic and deconstructionism respectively. The concepts of "readers decide everything", "blank" and "indeterminacy" advocated by reception aestheticists lay the theoretical foundation for the development of indeterminacy. And Derrida’s deconstructionism starts with language itself, pointing out language is an endless game chain, as a result of which the final or determinate meaning has been denied again and again. Thus indeterminacy has got further development.On the basis of expounding the indeterminate theories, this paper will analyze indeterminacies The Road from perspectives of language, characters, plot and theme.Chapter Two will focus on language. Influenced by post-modernism turn, language no longer reflects reality and it turns into a language game full of indeterminacies. In The Road, the lost of "signified" makes language lose its original meanings. While the constant repetitions of certain phrases also question the truth of language, making language in The Road indeterminate any more.Chapter Three will concentrate on character. Characters in The Road are different from those in traditional novels. They have no names, ages, families, personal backgrounds and identities. The lost of these personal characteristics deprive them of basic distinctions among people, which further lead to the obscurity and indeterminacy of characters. Chapter Four deals whit the plot. The whole novel is in a journey form. But during this journey, reality, dream and memory interweave with each other, making it hard for readers to tell truth from illusion. Besides, the open-ending of the novel strengthens its readability, giving The Road more interpretations.The final chapter is about its multiple themes. The Road covers various themes. This paper pays attention to two themes, the human nature and the journey theme. In The Road, the author shows his opinions human nature, but he does not give a definite answer, leaving a broad space for readers to think about it. Meanwhile, by way of journey form, the author presents his views to journey and growth.In conclusion, through analyzing indeterminacies in The Road from the above four perspectives, readers will have a multi-aspect and multi-layer understanding about the book. The author shows us a world full of indeterminacies in the novel, and in fact the real life is the same. It is indeterminacy that makes everything more colorful.