The Hibernating House

Here are today’s Wonderful Words:

The warming house creaked and groaned. Like a thing being called out of a long hibernation.

The Road, Cormac McCarthy, page 209

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 found an empty house, made a fire in the fireplace, and stayed for several days.

What makes it wonderful?

One of my friends from high school lived in an old farmhouse. The house sat atop a hill overlooking a lake, and my memories make it feel like it was perpetually winter.

On the coldest winter days, we’d venture into the woods to drop trees for firewood. Planning ahead never seemed to be their modus operandi.

We’d wade through the waist deep snow, chainsaws in hand, looking for the right hardwood to heat the house. Like the grizzled old loggers from the Discovery channel, we’d drop a tree, cut it into chunks, and hoist them into the bed of the old Dodge pickup that should’ve been retired years before. But we weren’t done yet.

Back down the hill to the house we’d trudge where we’d chop the chunks like Paul Bunyan.

Finally, we could pack the old wood furnace to the brim and stoke the flames—sizzling and spitting with the fresh green wood.

By this point, our souls were as numb as our hands, but the job was done. We would drag our beaten bodies back into the old farm house, re-heat some oil-can coffee, and wait—still swaddled in our Carhartts like newborns in hospital blankets.

Then, as the winter wind whipped across the shutters and the weathered window panes shook, the house slowly came to life.

The warming house creaked and groaned. Like a thing being called out of a long hibernation.

Rejoice! A habitable home for our high school parties!

Let's get technical

McCarthy uses two techniques in these sentences. First, a simile, or a comparison of two things using the words like or as. A simile generally compares two unrelated things—a warming house to a creature being called out of hibernation—to show a common quality between them.

The second is personification, or talking about non-human things as if they were human. In this case, McCarthy describes the house as if it were a human rousing from a long slumber. The personification helps us feel what it was like to be in the house by comparing it to the noises we make every morning when we climb out of bed. The older I get, the more creaking and groaning I hear, just like the cold house warming from the flames in the fireplace.

Again and again, we find comparisons are the components of wonderful writing. If you can compare the subjects of your sentences to familiar experiences, your readers will be delighted. They’ll drink every drop of your writing like 21 year olds at their first open bar.

Happy writing,

Joe