Bad Beards and Neck Tattoos

Here are today’s Wonderful Words:

He wore a beard that had been cut square across the bottom with shears and he had a tattoo of a bird on his neck done by someone with an illformed notion of their appearance.

The Road, Cormac McCarthy, page 63

Background

The Road is the story of a father and son’s journey across apocalyptic America. They’re traveling through the hollowed out shell of the eastern United States, trying to reach southern warmth by winter. They travel in stealth, wary at every turn of the roving bands of cannibals threatening their existence. In this passage, the father and son are hiding from a group of cannibals stopped on a nearby road. One of the men makes his way into the woods to poop and runs into the father and son. This is one of the sentences describing the grizzled cannibal.

What makes it wonderful?

This single sentence pulled three different pictures into my mind.

The first was of Mose Schrute, Dwight’s cousin. If you’ve ever seen The Office, you know Mose has a ridiculous beard. It might not be cut square across the bottom with shears, but the grooming choice is questionable, just like the character McCarthy is describing.

The second was of a guy named Brad. During my summers in college, I worked on a landscaping crew. All of the employees—except for one—were college kids or retired guys. That one employee was Brad. As you might imagine, Brad’s neck was adorned with artwork reminiscent of the graffiti you find on highway overpasses. In one of our many interesting conversations that summer, Brad gave me a sage piece of wisdom: never get a neck tattoo. 

The third was of the characters from the movie Mad Max. This was less from the sentence than the whole vibe I got from the book, but it was still a vivid picture while I read these words.

If you take Mose Schrute, give him Brad’s neck tattoo, and cast him as a character in Mad Max, that’s how I imagined the appearance of this villain from The Road. 

And of course, I can’t ignore the way McCarthy described the tattoo.

It wasn’t a bad bird tattoo. That’s boring.

It was a tattoo of a bird done by someone with an illformed notion of their appearance. That’s engaging, even funny. And it’s a great example of “show, don’t tell.”

Let's get technical

McCarthy is treating us to a masterclass in imagery with this wonderful sentence.

He’s offering a vivid description to stimulate our senses and evoke a picture or a feeling. In this case, he evoked a few pictures for me, which I combined in my head to create an image of his character. 

McCarthy’s words stimulate everyone’s senses in a slightly different way. We won’t all think of Mose Schrute. I doubt a single other person on the planet would think of Brad. But the words are vivid enough to evoke unique pictures and feelings for every reader, and that’s what matters.

Next time you need to describe a person, convey their characteristics with one goal in mind. Aim to aid your readers in creating a collage from their memories. That mashup of memories will form a more distinct character than you can describe with adjectives alone.

Happy writing, 

Joe

P.S. If you're working on your character descriptions, make sure you read this one from JR Moehringer.