Two Roads

 

The prolific Native American author Joseph Bruchac starts his novel Two Roads with one of the most seductive of all American scenarios: the road trip. Roads remind us of freedom and travel. The words he uses here make this road all the more inviting. 

Let's start with "us": two letters that mean the narrator is traveling with at least one other person. Travel in company tests and refines relationships. Having someone with you – who can argue, laugh, watch your back, suggest detours, and more – makes a trip a richer experience. 

Next, there's "red." Red is the most attention-grabbing of colors. Red roads are far less common than black roads. "Red" is another short word that sets this road apart. The sound of "red road" is lovely as well. The words have both their first and last consonants in common, a pleasant close match of sounds. And both words are strong, accented syllables, making the two of them a pair of strong drumbeats. 

"Stretches out before us" calls us forward onto the road. There's room to move ahead. Since animals stretch, that verb makes it almost as though the road is placing itself for our attention. 

The red road stretching out before us is also easy to visualize. All these words are well-tied to the physical world. We can see red, roads, and stretches, and place them before us in our mind's eye. 

With "a long ribbon of light," the sentence turns a little more abstract. It repeats the idea of "long" that was in "stretches out" and the flat, parallel edges of a road are like the shape of a "ribbon." But "light" is not quite a match for "red." Light is more often white than red. So "light" doesn't simply repeat what the first of the sentence described in other words. It adds to or changes the picture. 

Light is also attractive. So the final word of the sentence adds another pull to move ahead on that road. 

I like the structure of this sentence. The rhythm is varied enough to reward reading aloud. The many Rs bring the sound together. And while many authors avoid repetition, the way the words after the comma echo the meaning of the words before the comma, and then add a twist, is reassuring without becoming stale. 

By the end of the book, I knew much more about who "us" was and what the roads they traveled would be, and I was happy to have taken that trip with them.