What similarities can you find between Cormac McCarthys The Road and John Steinbecks Grapes of Wrath?

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What similarities can you find between Cormac McCarthy's The Road and John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath?

The opening of The Road immediately captures the dark mood of the novel. "Nights dark beyond darkness and days more gray each one than what had gone before." This sentence suggests the desolation of the world. Grapes of Wrath similarly starts off with the author describing in vivid detail the setting of the novel. He emphasises the importance of nature and how it can affect the lives of people and force them to become helpless victims.

Both authors use compound sentences linked by the coordinating conjunction 'and' to create a deliberately flat style and one reflecting the bleak world the characters find themselves in. Moreover both authors create a foreboding atmosphere by using very desolate phrases to describe the surroundings. For example

Another similarity in both novels is the use of pathetic fallacy. There is lots of visual imagery being used in the opening of both novels. Another literary device used is personification. Steinbeck writes "the last rains falls on the "scarred earth". Moreover there are lots of similes being used by both writers. For example McCarthy writes "the banished