By environment, I mean the setting of the scene. Spoken words are sounds in the setting, like the sound of the wind, a gunshot, or an animal’s cry. It just happens that a human voice box is what’s making those particular sounds. McCarthy’s central theme across all the novels of his that I’ve read is the inhumanity of the Mexican-American frontier, and treating human speech as just a sound among other sounds is a key part of how he expresses that theme in his writing style.
Bang he said they wouldn’t fire she replied it happened anyway they concurred.
If the author wants this sentence to be interpreted one way or the other, they should utilize standard punctuation. Your avant garde approach to literature notwithstanding.
By environment, I mean the setting of the scene. Spoken words are sounds in the setting, like the sound of the wind, a gunshot, or an animal’s cry. It just happens that a human voice box is what’s making those particular sounds. McCarthy’s central theme across all the novels of his that I’ve read is the inhumanity of the Mexican-American frontier, and treating human speech as just a sound among other sounds is a key part of how he expresses that theme in his writing style.
That still leaves the question of how the reader is to distinguish a sound (speech) from a description of sounds.
Can you give an example?
Bang he said they wouldn’t fire she replied it happened anyway they concurred.
If the author wants this sentence to be interpreted one way or the other, they should utilize standard punctuation. Your avant garde approach to literature notwithstanding.