The Use of "some"

[Jared]

Was anyone else slightly off-put but Cormac's (over)use of "some" in his metaphors?

One quick example (though there a probably hundreds):

"Like the desolation of some alien sea breaking on the shores of a world unheard of."

Obviously very poetic and moving language. Just wondering if I was alone in feeling that he defaulted to this way of speaking too often. I lost count at fifty and didn't bother underlining. It would but just as moving of a passage to say "like the desolation of an alien sea breaking on the shores..."

Now he could be referencing the uncertainty of a post-apocalyptic world (in as much as his use of "some" highlights imprecision), and rightly so. I think, however, that he overreached himself here, and unnecessarily so, as he was more than capable of depicting the uncertainty of such world using other devices.

Thinking out loud here. Thought the world of the book despite this one criticism.

[Pam]

Yeah, the use of the word gets a little old. But I think that it worked. In this horrible world that the two are walking through nothing is the same as it was, so there is a lot of things that seem to be as they once were, but are no longer recognizable and are therefore foreign. I thought this book was amazing! I really admire Cormac McCarthy, even before he got famous. As gruesome as this was, try Child of God. That one really gets you shaking in your boots.

[Dick]

Possibly over-used but I am always very loath to believe McCarthy ever uses a word carelessly. In the specific example, he could have said "an alien sea" which would have suggested that a relatively specific metaphorical vision had sprung into the narrator's consciousness, whereas the use of "some alien sea" suggests, perhaps, a more general and less precise impression was made on the speaker. Something in the nature of a fleeting impression, a whisp of memory or maybe the fragment of a forgotten dream.

Given the ever-present importance of dreams to McCarthy and his characters, this generalized and non-specific sense of the metaphor seems more in keeping with the rest of the story as perceived and told (largely) through the father's eyes. If he over-used the word, then I think there are grounds for concluding he did so on purpose.

[Amanda]

As Dick says, "some" suggests something more general.

For me it had the effect of heightening suspense, where the unimaginable carried as much horror as what was described exactly.

[Dan]

Using the word, some, in my mind anyway, makes the narrative more natural. It flows as if spoken, not written, which makes the book more of a tale told than a book to be shelved.

[Sarah]

I didn't find it offensive. Everything that isn't immediately happening to the characters is reduced to the hypothetical. There's no more history, and specifics are fading. It made sense to me, and the language never took me away from the story. I just read it, and the whole thing is going to be a raw wound on my mind for a while, if that can be taken in a good way.