Abstract

The purpose of this work is to examine minimalism in Cormac McCarthy's storytelling concerning style and language, and how McCarthy's arrangement of words conveys philosophical principles. The work begins with the assumption that McCarthy's minimalism is more than an expression of efficiency with words, but a conscious rhetorical device that shifts the semantic load from the writer to the reader, contributing to the creation of a grim and existentially vacuous fictional universe. With a descriptive-analytical approach, the study is founded on close readings of select passages from his works. Stylistic elements associated with various linguistic strata, such as the lexical, morphological, and pragmatically, as well as the paratactic, also, syntactic ellipsis, underutilized affective indicators, the absence of quotation for speech, and the reinforced semantic fields of violence. The study posits that McCarthy's minimalist style is a cohesive structural system that orchestrates an aesthetic response from the disjunction between violent subject matter and linguistic neutrality. These results also show that stylistic structure is not a separate formal element from meaning. Instead, it is the language version of the worldview that guides the text, giving it a deep philosophical quality that goes beyond the limits of traditional narrative.