The cellar...

This sudden, violent change of events exceedingly disturbed me. The gory, fierce imagry used to show the tortured is blunt and fearless, forcing me to recognise the despair this grim world has brought.
'On the mattress lay a man with his legs gone to the hip and the stumps of them blackened and burnt. The smell was hideous.'
I felt in awe as i was transfixed until the moment they escaped, the tension bounding me to the novel, as if i was there myself. McCarthy, until now, has drawn out most actions the characters have done to make their journey seem pointless and never-ending, yet in this event he uses sharp vocabulary, short sentences and deliberate crude imagery to intensify the fear within the novel. At this stage, i myself felt attatched the the father as this mutual feeling of terror collided. 
During their descent down the cellar stairs, their fear is obviously present as their senses seem awakened, drawing out each individual, horrid detail of the cellar itself.
'Coldness and damp. An ungodly stentch....Clay floor. An old matress darkly stained.'
This is used to amplify the tension within the novel. Notably, this notorious event signifies the desperation and lengths that enevitably most survivors would go to in this grim world. This also gives us an insight to how the plot may progress; perhaps the characters will become so desperate that they themselves give in to cannabalism, creating tension and a constant fear between the characters.