Your arm hairs stand tall, your breathing increase rapidly, your pupils dilate, your legs shake, and you freeze. Only one thing can make your body react this way while reading: Gothic mood. Mood can be described as what the audience feels while reading the story, and it can be achieved through the development of imagery, theme, tone, setting and diction. Gothic mood, specifically, evokes intense feelings of death, horror, evil, and gloom. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, contains a passage that is the ultimate example of Gothic mood. Through the use of any of the aforementioned descriptors, McCarthy creates an unique atmosphere of deterioration and hopelessness. In The Road, McCarthy uses words and phrases that relate to death, destruction,