Dissertation

UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX

DEPARTMENT OF LITERATURE, FILM, AND THEATRE STUDIES

“A CREATURE THAT CAN DO ANYTHING”: HUMAN NATURE, VIOLENCE AND

SURVIVAL IN CORMAC MCCARTHY’S ‘CHILD OF GOD’, ‘BLOOD MERIDIAN’ AND

‘THE ROAD’

By

Charlotte Page

Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of degree of MA in English

Language and Literature.

In accordance with Regulation 6.6 I certify that I have acknowledged any assistance or use of

the work of others in my dissertation for the MA in English Language and Literature.

(Signed) .........................................

Academic Year ...2013-14..........................

“A CREATURE THAT CAN DO ANYTHING”: HUMAN

NATURE, VIOLENCE AND SURVIVAL IN CORMAC

MCCARTHY’S CHILD OF GOD, BLOOD MERIDIAN AND

THE ROAD

ABSTRACT

“A CREATURE THAT CAN DO ANYTHING”: HUMAN NATURE, VIOLENCE

AND SURVIVAL IN CORMAC MCCARTHY’S CHILD OF GOD, BLOOD

MERIDIAN AND THE ROAD

Human nature, violence and survival are all dominant themes explored within the works of

Cormac McCarthy. This dissertation specifically focuses on three of McCarthy’s novels in

relation to these themes: Child of God (1973), Blood Meridian, or The Evening Redness in

the West (1985) and The Road (2006). McCarthy’s worldview will be explored through these

novels which span both his writing career and his Southern Gothic, Western and post-

apocalyptic genres. Each of the novels share similarly bleak views of the human race, where

the fight for survival results in extreme violence and reveals the darkest aspects of human

nature. Although McCarthy makes evident the profound darkness of humankind in all three

of these texts, and indeed in his entire corpus, it will be argued that humanity, although

largely depraved, is not yet irredeemable. McCarthy’s worlds are undoubtedly damaged, but I

propose that hope for the human race can still be found in a few characters who demonstrate

that human goodness can exist amongst brutality. Whereas early scholarship tends to

comprise of nihilistic views, I aim to disprove the notion that McCarthy’s novels are hopeless

and morally devoid. Hope, however small or fragile, can be found in Child of God, Blood

Meridian and especially The Road.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION: Human Nature, Violence and Survival in Cormac McCarthy’s 1

Child of God, Blood Meridian and The Road

CHAPTER 1: “A Place for Meanness”: Child of God 5

CHAPTER 2: “Men of War”: Blood Meridian 16

CHAPTER 3: “Carrying the Fire”: The Road 27

CONCLUSION: Finding Hope for Humankind in Cormac McCarthy’s Novel’s 38

BIBLIOGRAPHY 45

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Throughout the writing of this MA dissertation I have received help and support from

many people. Above all, I am profoundly indebted to my supervisor Dr Owen Robinson, who

has given me much assistance, providing many thoughtful suggestions and important advice.

I am extremely appreciative of both his knowledge and generosity with his time. Without his

supervision and constant guidance this dissertation would not have been possible. I would

also like to thank my family, friends and colleagues who have vitally given me their full

support during this period of study. Finally, I gratefully acknowledge the help I have received

from the staff of both the Department of Language and Linguistics and the Department of

Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies for providing essential assistance during my time of

study.

1

INTRODUCTION

HUMAN NATURE, VIOLENCE AND SURVIVAL IN CORMAC MCCARTHY’S

CHILD OF GOD, BLOOD MERIDIAN AND THE ROAD

When God made man the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a

machine. And a machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years,

no need to tend it.

– CORMAC MCCARTHY, Blood Meridian

In Cormac McCarthy’s second novel Outer Dark (1968), the tinker criticises the world

and reveals his resentment of humankind to Rinthy. “I’ve seen the meanness of humans,”1 the

tinker says to her and when Rinthy becomes frustrated and warns him “you won’t never have

no rest ... not never,” he replies with “nor any human soul” (194). The enduring “meanness”

of humankind is commonly found throughout McCarthy’s corpus and his fiction is inundated

by the most evil of beings. In McCarthy’s depraved literary worlds where war, murder,

necrophilia and cannibalism are commonplace, the tinker’s hopeless view of the human race

not only appears to be plausible, but also disturbingly true.

Although McCarthy’s fictional universes depict extreme violence and bloodshed and make

it considerably easy for readers to share the tinker’s pessimistic views regarding humankind, I

believe that hope in the human race, however small, can still be found in all of McCarthy’s

novels. Whereas a large amount of previous scholarly work, especially early interpretations,

have focused on the abundance of inhumanity in McCarthy’s novels, this study will juxtapose

the copious brutal human behaviour present in McCarthy’s fiction with the sparse, yet

enormously significant presence of humanity. Indeed, humanity in the form of compassion

and kindness is easily overlooked in McCarthy’s texts, mainly because most readers, at least

on a first reading, are overwhelmed by the extreme darkness with which McCarthy permeates

the human race. However, McCarthy’s worlds are not bereft of human goodness and

1 Cormac McCarthy, Outer Dark (New York: Vintage International, 1993), 192. Subsequent page references in

text.

2

examples such as the father’s devotion to his son in The Road (2006) suggest that good

qualities may be inherent in human nature, as well as bad. Consequently, I intend to disprove

nihilistic views which propose that McCarthy’s works are morally devoid and populated only

by ruthless characters.

The chapters that follow examine how McCarthy explores the interrelated themes of

human nature, violence and survival, themes which unite all of his novels. Each chapter looks

especially closely at one of McCarthy’s texts. Broken down into three chapters, then, this

study provides specific insight into three of McCarthy’s works: Child of God (1973), Blood

Meridian, or The Evening Redness in the West (1985) and The Road. Consequently the

development of McCarthy’s worldview will be explored chronologically through these three

novels which span both his writing career and his Southern Gothic, Western and post-

apocalyptic genres. It is hoped that in examining novels which extend over McCarthy’s

writing career and cover each of his genres, interesting comparisons will be made. The

chapters particularly focus on the depravity of McCarthy’s fiction and question whether any

trace of humanity can be salvaged from worlds in which the fight for survival reveals that

violence is seemingly a dominant characteristic shared by most humans, exposing the worst

aspects of human nature.

The first chapter looks at one of McCarthy’s earliest publications: Child of God. This

chapter examines the idea that violence may be intrinsic to human nature and starts the

exploration into this worldview which becomes increasingly apparent within McCarthy’s

corpus. Indeed, as this chapter will highlight, humankind’s capacity for violence is made

evident within the text, predominantly, although not exclusively, through the protagonist

Lester Ballard. Through the deranged character of Ballard, who is both a murderer and a

necrophile, the novel explores some of the darkest aspects of human nature. Thus, repeated

exposure to overwhelming violence and dark human behaviour certainly makes hope for the

human race hard to find. However, this chapter argues that hope can be found in the form of

human morality. Ballard, I believe, is one of McCarthy’s most interesting characters, mainly

due to his complexity. He is at once monster and human, evil yet capable of distinguishing

right from wrong. In this chapter it will be argued that Ballard, while damaged, is not wholly

devoid of either humanness or morality. Where virtuous behaviour is not entirely absent,

humankind cannot be considered completely depraved. Thus, I propose that this world is not

utterly hopeless.

3

The second chapter focuses on the first of McCarthy’s western novels, Blood Meridian. It

is almost impossible to write on Blood Meridian without mentioning the overwhelming

violence that pervades its pages and many scholars have made attempts to understand and

explain the omnipresence of violence within the text. This chapter does indeed draw upon

previous scholarly work and discusses the troubling nature of both violence and survival

within the novel. However, it also focuses on the lack of humanity in the text and this, I

suggest, is equally, if not more disturbing than the prevalence of violence. Consequently, this

chapter on Blood Meridian is the most challenging in terms of finding hope for humankind,

not solely due to the extremity of violence within the novel, but also because human

compassion is almost non-existent. Although Blood Meridian is noticeably deficient in the

most basic displays of humanity, which are more easily recognisable in McCarthy’s

Tennessee novels, like Child of God, I will argue that hope can still be found in the

potentially redemptive figure of the kid. Thus, the kid shares some of the same qualities as

Ballard in Child of God, as the kid also demonstrates, although considerably more faintly, the

human capacity to be moral.

The final chapter will examine McCarthy’s latest novel, The Road. This novel presents a

striking departure from McCarthy’s earlier work due to its portrayal of humanity and this

divergence is made especially evident when juxtaposed with Blood Meridian. Thus, chapter 3

highlights the remarkably different worldviews of Blood Meridian and The Road. Although

The Road, like all of McCarthy’s novels, is a world of violence, the evil of humankind is

counteracted by frequent displays of human goodness which are primarily revealed in the

relationship between the two main characters: the father and his boy. In this novel, then,

survival is not uppermost to the protagonists; it is the survival of human goodness which they

consider to be most important. The father and son do not give up on humankind and they

encourage us to believe that human compassion can survive, even in the most unpromising

world. Thus, in opposition to Blood Meridian, this chapter will provide the most evidence to

suggest that there is hope for the human race exhibited in McCarthy’s work.

Within this dissertation two important key terms are used repeatedly throughout. Here,

with the hope of facilitating reading, I will briefly identify these two terms and define their

meanings within the context of this dissertation. The first of these terms is morality.

McCarthy addresses the theme of human morality in all of his novels, often challenging the

reader’s own definition of morality. Thus, morality is a problematic term as what we consider

as moral is largely defined through individual interpretation. Consequently, in the framework

4

of this dissertation, morality is referred to in its most basic sense. The term morality is

primarily used when characters show, even the slightest capability, of behaving in ways that

are considered as right and good by the majority of people. The second term I wish to define

is humanity. It is important to acknowledge here that the terms morality and humanity are not

used interchangeably throughout the dissertation, but have different meanings. The term

humanity is used when right and good conduct is considerably more distinctive,

predominantly when obvious acts of human kindness and compassion are observed.

There is a deep pessimism regarding humankind that runs throughout McCarthy’s work

and this is impossible to overlook. McCarthy makes the darkness of humankind obvious and

many characters in his novels share the same depressing view concerning the human race that

the tinker has in Outer Dark. “I’ve sat on the bench in this county since it was a county and in

that time I’ve heard a lot of things that give me grave doubts about the human race”2 (289)

declares the judge to John Grady Cole at the end of All the Pretty Horses (1992). Thus,

McCarthy not only makes the darkness of humankind apparent through the horrific violence

within his novels, but he makes it even more profound by having his characters reflect on and

emphasise the mean nature of humans. “I never knew such a place for meanness”3 says the

woman in Child of God, as does the old man in Suttree (1979, 180). In McCarthy’s novels

then, it is noticeably easy to “find meanness in the least of creatures”4, however human

goodness, although considerably less obvious, can also be found and this, I propose, is all too

often ignored.

2 Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses (London: Picador, 1993), 289. Subsequent page references in text.

3 Cormac McCarthy, Child of God (London: Picador, 1989), 164. Subsequent page references in text.

4 Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West (London: Picador, 2010): 20.

Subsequent page references in text.

5

1

“A PLACE FOR MEANNESS”

CHILD OF GOD

Child of God is McCarthy’s third novel and like its South Appalachian predecessors, The

Orchard Keeper (1965) and Outer Dark, it extends McCarthy’s exploration into the human

capacity for violence. Child of God contains themes which are apparent in McCarthy’s earlier

texts and these themes of human nature, violence and survival – are developed throughout the

entirety of his work. Although Child of God is not renowned as McCarthy’s most violent

novel, since Blood Meridian without a doubt holds this title, its protagonist Lester Ballard is

often considered as McCarthy’s most corrupt central character. Child of God depicts the

violent life of Ballard and follows him as he repeatedly commits murder and necrophilia.

Ballard is undeniably disturbing and it is difficult to imagine such a depraved character, but

more disturbing than Ballard himself is that he is used by McCarthy to explore the darkest

aspects of human nature. Philosophical questions regarding human nature are at the heart of

this novel, including the dilemma of whether hope for humankind can be found through

Ballard and his violent world.

At the beginning of Child of God, the narrator introduces Lester Ballard and suggests that

he is “a child of God much like yourself perhaps” (4). This proposal starts the tension that

continues throughout the novel, a tension within the reader to decide whether they themselves

are comparable to the murderer and necrophile. As Lydia Cooper writes, the narrator appears

to insist that “Ballard is a reflection of ordinary humans”5, like everybody else, he is after all

a “child of god” (4). Consequently, from the beginning of the novel, Ballard is not just an

individual and unique example of human corruption. Through the character of Lester Ballard,

McCarthy suggests that violence is a substantial part of human nature.

Although Ballard commits horrendous acts of violence, McCarthy keeps his humanness

intact throughout the novel. Ballard is a serial killer who sexually violates the bodies of his

dead victims and then collects them “in the bowels of the mountain” (135), yet the reader can

5 Lydia Cooper, “McCarthy, Tennessee, and the Southern Gothic,” in The Cambridge Companion to Cormac

McCarthy, ed. Steven Frye (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 47. Subsequent page references in

text.

6

still identify human qualities in such a monster. One way in which Ballard’s humanness is

emphasised is through his instinct to survive, an instinct inherent to humans. As Erik Hage

notes, Ballard has “a hardscrabble life of hunger, pain, and exposure to the elements”6, but

despite this he continues his instinctual fight to survive. As well as an appetite for violence,

Ballard also appears to have an appetite for survival. He lives through the duration of winter

alone in the woods, he survives his battle against Greer where he loses his arm and he

manages to scrabble his way out of a cave after “he had not eaten for five days” (190). Like

many of McCarthy’s protagonists, Ballard possesses a remarkable ability to survive even the

most hopeless situations. Here a comparison can be made to the kid in Blood Meridian who

miraculously survives various attacks and injuries, including being “shot ... just below the

heart” (4). Indeed, the kid outlives nearly all of his fellow travellers and his survival is only

jeopardised by the seemingly immortal Judge Holden. It is also important to acknowledge

here the survivalist nature of the father and son in The Road. In a post-apocalyptic world

where they seem doomed to fail, the father and son outlive the majority of humankind and

there is even hope that the son may live to tell the tale. Just as McCarthy suggests that

violence is an intrinsic part of human fallibility, he perhaps also proposes that the instinct to

survive is equally central to human nature.

Although Ballard’s instinct to survive expresses his humanness, this culminates at the end

of the novel with his eventual death. Ballard’s death reminds us that he is human, all living

creatures have to die and Ballard is no exception. Ballard’s demise is not particularly

dramatic, he is simply “found dead in the floor of his cage” (194), presumably from

pneumonia. When his body is taken to a medical school to be examined he “take[s] his place

with other deceased persons” (194) and becomes one of many newly departed. After the

examination of Ballard’s body where

He was laid out on a slab and flayed, eviscerated, dissected. His head was sawed open and

the brains removed. His muscles were stripped from his bones. His heart was taken out.

His entrails were hauled forth and delineated ... [he] was scraped from the table into a

plastic bag and taken with others of his kind to a cemetery outside the city and there

interred (194)

Brian Evenson argues that “nobody [comes] any closer to an answer for why Ballard was the

way he was”7. McCarthy gives no answer to explain Ballard’s violence, primarily because

6 Erik Hage, Cormac McCarthy: A Literary Companion (North Carolina: McFarland, 2010), 55.

7 Brian Evenson, “McCarthy and the Uses of Philosophy in the Tennessee Novels,” in The Cambridge

Companion to Cormac McCarthy, ed. Steven Frye (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 60-1.

Subsequent page references in text.

7

there is no answer. Although Ballard lives the end of his life in a state hospital “he [is] never

indicted for any crime” (193) and he is not classified as a psychopath or a “crazy man” (193)

as the reader may expect. McCarthy wants us to see that Ballard is essentially an ordinary

human and he remains that way to his inevitable end.

Against all the odds, McCarthy forces us to recognise Ballard as a human being and as

Michael Madsen notes, this is “crucial in our perception and ... understanding of [him]”8. If

Ballard was portrayed as completely inhuman, he would merely be disregarded as ‘other’,

however his humanness prevents him from being out of the ordinary and instead causes the

reader to identify a connection with him. This connection emerges out of the realisation that

Ballard is not in fact different, but similar to ourselves. He is not a deviation from

humankind, but an example of what happens when violence inherent in the human race

manifests itself. When the deputy of Sevier County asks “you think people was meaner then

than they are now?”, the old man replies “I think people are the same from the day God first

made one” (168). Nowhere in the novel is it made more apparent than in this exchange that

the potential for violence is a shared human characteristic and therefore something which the

reader and Ballard have in common.

By preserving Ballard’s human attributes, McCarthy creates a possibility for the reader to

empathise with him. Ballard is at once one of McCarthy’s most shocking characters and one

of his most empathetic characters. Brian Evenson accurately captures Ballard’s character

when he describes him as “damaged” (62) which evokes a sense of pity and suggests that he

has been spoilt in some way. Ballard is damaged and it can be argued that the violence he

enacts is not due to his own fault. From childhood the people around Ballard have failed him

including his mother, his father and even the community, consequently it is difficult not to

feel sympathy toward such a lone outsider who struggles to survive in a world that does not

accept him. Various people of Sevier County recall memories of Ballard and through them

we discover that his “mother had run off” and “his daddy killed hisself” after which “he never

was right” (21). Wallis Sanborn agrees with the speculation of the townspeople and suggests

that since witnessing his father’s suicide and the “ultimate act of self-violence”9 Ballard’s

existence becomes one of “endless ... violence” (65-6). Although there may be a correlation

8 Michael Madsen, “The Uncanny Necrophile in Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God; or, How I Learned to

Understand Lester Ballard and Start Worrying,” The Cormac McCarthy Journal v. 9, no. 1 (2011): 24. 9 Wallis Sanborn, Animals in the Fiction of Cormac McCarthy (North Carolina: McFarland, 2006), 66.

Subsequent page references in text.

8

here between Ballard’s violence and his father’s suicide, his violence only escalates in

adulthood once he becomes removed from society.

Ballard’s violence is fundamentally linked to his terrain. As Ballard finds himself further

removed from society and more immersed in nature, his violence intensifies. When we are

first introduced to Ballard he owns “a piece of real estate” (6) in the valley, however he

quickly descends to a “barren cabin” (23) and after this burns down, he becomes a cave

dweller. As Ballard’s places of abode become progressively primitive, he too declines into a

primitive condition. The caves in which Ballard dwells are appropriately symbolic of his

degeneration into a dark and primitive state. Ballard turns into a troglodyte, a human being

who occupies a cave. As Ballard’s dwellings go from being included within society, to on the

edge of society, to far removed from society, social rules become increasingly irrelevant to

him and his violent human nature supersedes his morality. Ballard is deprived of social

inclusion and as a result his natural will surpasses any of the ethics which society once

instilled in him. Ballard’s morality gradually disappears once he becomes a societal outsider

and when he finds a young couple in a car “deader’n hell” (87) at the Frog Mountain

turnaround, he acts just as wild as the landscape he roams.

It is important to acknowledge that Ballard does not become isolated from society due to

his own choice. The people of Sevier County brutally exclude Ballard from the community

and as a result it is arguable that violence is, at the very least, a part of their nature. Although

Ballard’s violence prevails, he is certainly not the only violent character within the novel.

Critic Gerhard Hoffmann argues that “the people of Sevier County ... are polite and

friendly”10

and that “the social surface of the county’s life is unshaken by anxiety, distress or

evil” (229), however this reading is perhaps erroneous. A close examination of the novel

provides evidence to suggest that violence and evil permeate the entirety of Sevier County.

Violence is grounded in Sevier County from the beginning of the novel, where the

townspeople ruthlessly auction off Ballard’s property. Ballard protests against the auctioning

of his home and is met by violence, receiving an “awful pumpknot on his head” (9). “Lester

Ballard never [was] right after that” (9), one of the narrators observes. Through violence, the

people of Sevier County eliminate Ballard from society and arguably initiate his descent into

the wilderness. The sale of Ballard’s property evicts him not only from his home, but from

10

Gerhard Hoffman, “Strangeness, Gaps, and the Mystery of Life: Cormac McCarthy’s Southern Novels,”

American Studies v. 42, no. 2 (1997): 229. Subsequent page references in text.

9

civilisation. Arguably the community instigate Ballard’s fate, a community whose sheriff is

fittingly named Fate Turner.

The folk of Sevier County use the extremity of Lester’s violence to demonstrate that they

themselves are not violent. “You can trace em back to Adam if you want and goddamn if

[Lester] didn’t outstrip them all” (81) one narrator exclaims. James Giles recognises that “the

community feels a degree of genuine pride in having produced the sinner of sinners”11

.

Indeed, almost every narrator reiterates that no one is “a patch on Lester Ballard” (23).

Although the townspeople seem to take pride in Ballard, they are neither willing to accept

responsibility for Ballard’s descent into violence or to liken themselves to him. Instead they

constantly make attempts to distance themselves from Ballard; assuring themselves that he

was “never ... right” (21) and therefore in some way different. This is seemingly ironic

considering that Ballard reflects the violent society of which he was once a part. Ballard and

the people of Sevier County share in common a weakness for violence and as Gary Ciuba

writes, “Ballard’s violence makes him ... exemplary in the violent world of the novel”12

.

Violent incidences in Sevier County are frequently recorded throughout the text including

fights, robberies, hangings, stonings and shootings. Sevier County certainly is “a place for

meanness” (164). Ballard is not extraordinary in the world of the novel, but is alike to many

of the inhabitants of Sevier County.

The population of Sevier County display violence of varying degrees. Among the

inhabitants who show the most violent potential are the dumpkeeper and the “idiot child”

(115). The dumpkeeper parallels Ballard as both characters violently exploit bodies and

collect dead things. Whereas Ballard commits necrophilia, the dumpkeeper commits both

rape and incest. While Ballard collects dead bodies in “a ... damp ... chamber” (196), the

dumpkeeper accumulates “the remains of several cars” (110). Indeed, the dumpkeeper and

Ballard are considerably similar people and this perhaps suggests, as Dianne Luce writes, that

“Lester is emblematic of the society from which he arises”13

and is therefore not unique in

society, but rather symbolic of it. In Sevier County, human depravity appears to be ordinary.

11

James Giles, “Discovering Fourthspace in Appalachia: Cormac McCarthy’s Outer Dark and Child of God,” in

Cormac McCarthy (Bloom’s Modern Critical Views), ed. Harold Bloom (New York: Infobase Publishing,

2009), 123. 12

Gary Ciuba, Desire, Violence & Divinity in Modern Southern Fiction (Louisiana: Louisiana State University

Press, 2007), 193. Subsequent page references in text. 13

Dianne Luce, “The Cave of Oblivion: Platonic Mythology in Child of God,” in Cormac McCarthy: New

Directions, ed. James Lilley (New Mexico: University of New Mexico Press, 2002), 177. Subsequent page

references in text.

10

The novel tells us in grave detail how the dumpkeeper forces himself onto one of his

daughters and like Ballard he appears to have little sense of morality. The idiot child is also

comparable to Ballard, as both have an appetite for violence. Ballard gives the idiot child a

“playpretty” in the form of a “half froze robin” (77) and within minutes the idiot child’s

“mouth [is] stained with blood” (79) as it chews off the legs of the bird. Ballard’s violence is

not a deviation from the norm, but a part of the violence inherent in Sevier County and indeed

inherent in the human race.

Sevier County is undoubtedly “a place for meanness” (164); however the fact that

Ballard’s violence prevails is inescapable and cannot be ignored. Although there is much

violence in the novel, Ballard is by far the most violent being we encounter. He is

simultaneously “a child of God” (4) like all people and a monster. I have argued that Ballard

never entirely loses his human characteristics, however it is interesting to acknowledge that

McCarthy still imbues him with dehumanising attributes. Early in the novel the narrator

describes him as “a misplaced and loveless simian shape” (20) and this is just one example of

Ballard’s dehumanisation. Elsewhere throughout McCarthy’s corpus, people are often

dehumanised and commonly described as “simian” (288), a word which is also found in

Blood Meridian. There is a correlation here apparent in McCarthy’s oeuvre; man is at the

same time human and animal. By describing Ballard and indeed many of his characters as

“simian” McCarthy suggests that they look and behave less like humans and more like

primates. This is supported in Child of God, where Ballard is not only described as “simian”,

but is also directly compared to apes. When Ballard wakes one morning in agony from “hot

pains ... rifling through his feet”, his sobs are described as “a sound not quite crying [but] like

the mutterings of a band of sympathetic apes” (159). These descriptions of characters as

primates rather than humans are found throughout McCarthy’s corpus and are subtle hints

indicating that his characters have retained their primal instincts and have regressed to a

primordial state. Although humankind appears to have evolved, the human race has never lost

its innate primal instincts and as a result there is always a possibility that human beings can

degenerate to earlier stages of evolution. Like every one of McCarthy’s characters, every

human has animalistic potential.

Ballard’s animalistic potential manifests itself in Child of God and as the novel progresses,

his violence escalates and his animalistic nature also heightens. As Ballard becomes

increasingly violent and animalistic, McCarthy’s dehumanising descriptions of him are

considerably more exaggerated. Ballard becomes progressively more dehumanised and ends

11

up not even being described as a living creature, but as “a gothic doll in illfit clothes” (140).

Gary Ciuba suggests that Ballard becomes so dehumanised that “he is hardly recognisable as

human” (193), however Ballard’s dehumanisation is constantly juxtaposed with his

humanness. This is evident all the way through the novel where, for example, he is

simultaneously described as “a crazed mountain troll” (152) and “a ... onearmed human”

(192). Thus, as often as Ballard is described as a beast, a monster, a “ghoul” (174), or even a

“gothic doll” (140), he is also described as “human” (192), a human who is shown to live,

eat, cry and die like any other “child of God” (4).

Although Ballard is repeatedly described in dehumanising ways and his actions are

admittedly monstrous, John Cant accurately acknowledges that “he remains a human

figure”14

and therefore is not worlds apart from the reader. Consequently the reader

distinguishes that Ballard is evil, but also notices that he is not, as Lydia Cooper notes,

“something entirely ‘other,’ entirely different from themselves” (47). William Schafer

suggests that Ballard is “a human turned beast”15

, however it is perhaps more accurate to

describe Ballard as both human and beast. Ballard does not simply turn into a beast, if this

were the case; the reader would merely disregard Ballard as a monster, as ‘other’. However

McCarthy constantly encourages us to recognise the disconcerting truth that Ballard is

potentially representative of any person. In the character of Ballard, McCarthy has created the

perfect balance. As readers we do not empathise with Ballard to the extent that we can wholly

relate to him; however we also fail to reject him as nothing more than a violent beast.

Ballard’s desire for violence is obvious and he can be compared here to the desperadoes of

Blood Meridian, who share in common a fondness for brutality. However Dianne Luce notes

that there is a significant difference between Ballard and many of McCarthy’s other

characters, including the characters of Blood Meridian, as unlike them, Ballard “is not

primarily motivated by the desire to mutilate and destroy”16

. On his way to one of many visits

to the dumpkeeper, Ballard attempts to shoot a bird and although he has his rifle poised,

“something of an old foreboding [makes] him hold” (25). The bird escapes from Ballard – “it

flew. Small. Tiny. Gone” (25). Although Ballard clearly has an initial desire to destroy the

bird, he refrains himself from committing such an unnecessary act of violence. Here the

14

John Cant, Cormac McCarthy and the Myth of American Exceptionalism (London: Routledge, 2003), 89.

Subsequent page references in text. 15

William Schafer, “Cormac McCarthy: The Hard Wages of Original Sin,” Appalachian Journal, v. 4, no. 2

(Winter 1977), 116. 16

Dianne Luce, Reading the World: Cormac McCarthy’s Tennessee Period (South Carolina: University of

South Carolina Press, 2009), 135. Subsequent page references in text.

12

difference in the violence of Ballard and the characters of Blood Meridian is obvious. Judge

Holden, for example, would have undoubtedly shot the bird without any contemplation.

Unlike Ballard, the Judge’s desire is to mutilate and destroy and he does exactly this. The

judge examines, sketches and then destroys every unfamiliar object that he comes across and

when asked by fellow gang member Toadvine why he does this, he replies “whatever in

creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent” (209). Whereas the Judge

destroys and kills unnecessarily, Ballard murders “as a means to a practical, sexual end”

(135). Thus Ballard fails to kill the bird because its death would not be practical in anyway, it

is “tiny” (25) and therefore not suitable for eating.

Ballard’s violence is at a very different level to the violence of the characters in Blood

Meridian and this suggests, at the very least, that Ballard retains more humanity than most of

McCarthy’s other characters. The deaths of Ballard’s victims are not as brutal or gruesome as

one might expect after reading Blood Meridian. In Blood Meridian the imagery of murder

and violence is excessive.

Some of the men were moving on foot among the huts with torches and dragging the

victims out, slathered and dripping with blood, hacking at the dying and decapitating those

who knelt for mercy ... a number of Mexican slaves ... ran forth calling out in Spanish and

were brained or shot and one of the Delawares emerged from the smoke with a naked

infant dangling in each hand and squatted at a ring of midden stones and swung them by

the heels each in turn and bashed their heads against the stones so that the brains burst

forth through the fontanel in a bloody spew and humans on fire came shrieking forth like

berserkers and the riders hacked them down with their enormous knives (164-5)

In comparison, the murder and violence in Child of God is, as Dianne Luce writes, “handled

with exquisite delicacy” (171). Ballard’s murders are not described in such horrific detail and

his last victim is simply killed “as he laid the muzzle of the rifle at the base of her skull and

fired” (151). Descriptions of blood and gore which are so prevalent in Blood Meridian,

appear to be omitted in Child of God. This reinforces the idea that Ballard does not mutilate

his victims, like the characters of Blood Meridian. Rather than destroying his victims, Ballard

has a strong desire to protect them and Luce acknowledges that “he tries against all odds and

time to preserve them” (135). Whereas the outlaws in Blood Meridian mutilate the bodies of

their victims to the extent that they are unrecognisable, Ballard makes a lot of effort in

keeping and preserving the dead. In fact the only body to be mutilated is Ballard’s own.

Ballard preserves the dead, however when he dies, the state are quick to “flay ... eviscerate

[and] dissect” (194) him. The treatment of Ballard’s remains is, as Georg Guillemin describes

13

“barbaric”17

, but more important is that Ballard’s corpse endures more violence than those of

his own victims. The violation of Ballard’s body reiterates the idea that Ballard is not the

only violent perpetrator, indeed, the whole state implements violence.

Unlike the state, Ballard is committed to the preservation of his victims and his care for

the bodies he collects is strongly established from the first corpse he encounters. He carried

the dead girl “on his shoulder for a mile” (91), he “laid her on the mattress and covered her”

(91), he put her “in the other room away from the heat for keeping” (94), he “brushed her

hair” (102) and he even attempts to recover her body and risk his own life when his cabin sets

on fire. Although Ballard has a violent nature, he does not intentionally mutilate his victims

and in this sense he is not as brutal or as inhuman as Blood Meridian’s desperadoes. The

compassion Ballard has for his dead victims is a human trait and this gives the reader, yet

again, another small glimpse into the humanity that is hidden away, but nevertheless present

within him.

The concluding pages of the text truly emphasise Ballard’s moral awareness, something

that has perhaps been set aside, but never completely lost. Although Ballard escapes from the

“tormentors” (182) who attempt to discover his crimes and capture him, he eventually makes

the decision to hand himself in anyway. He leaves the caves and darkness behind and returns

to society, recognising that he is “supposed to be [t]here” (192). Ballard’s return to society is

an abrupt episode within the novel, however it is highly significant. Ballard chooses morality

over the inhuman life he has become accustomed too. Rather than continuing his violent life

in the wild, he realises that living in an asylum for the rest of his life is a preferable state of

existence. This redemption demonstrates that even the most depraved character is potentially

redeemable, thus, there is hope for humankind yet.

After Ballard’s redemption, we witness, in graphic detail, his death. One might expect to

feel relief, even happiness, at the death of a serial killer who has taken so many innocent

lives, however Ballard’s death is far from a joyous occasion. There are two reasons why we,

as readers, fail to celebrate the death of Lester Ballard. Firstly, Ballard’s death

chronologically comes straight after his redemption and the ultimate display of his morality.

Ballard dies just two paragraphs after his salvation and therefore at the height of his virtue.

Thus, Ballard dies at a point in the novel where we feel that he may be on the road to

goodness rather than a downward spiral of violence. Ballard’s demise is, as John Cant

17

Georg Guillemin, The Pastoral Vision of Cormac McCarthy (Texas: Texas A&M University Press, 2004), 44.

14

describes “awful” (89) and his body is treated in such a brutal way after his redemption that

our sympathy towards him is enhanced, after all, it is not pleasant to imagine any human

ending up being “scraped from [a] table into a plastic bag” (194). The second reason why

Ballard’s death is not an enjoyable event is due to the fact that it does not, as Gary Ciuba

writes, “re-establish ... a humane and halcyon order” (199). “The four young students who

bent over him like those haruspices of old perhaps saw monsters worse to come in their

configurations” (194). Rather than Ballard’s death being the removal of violence, it suggests

that violence will continue to feature strongly in the future of the human race. The violence

contained in Ballard is likely to rise in other human individuals. Again, it is emphasised that

Ballard is not the only “child of God” (4). Ballard’s entrails predict a bleak future where there

is “perhaps ... worse to come” (194), a forecast which proves true, as worse does come later

on in McCarthy’s corpus. In McCarthy’s oeuvre, Ballard is not exceptional; he is one of

many violent characters. Ballard is arguably a sample of the violence to come in terms of

both humankind and McCarthy’s work.

The message of Child of God is certainly not a positive one. Through Ballard we see the

potential violence of humankind, a violence which has been ever present and, as Ballard’s

entrails suggest, will continue to be an inevitable part of human nature. Ballard is perhaps

McCarthy’s most depraved character and his grievous acts cannot be justified. He is

undoubtedly a monstrous version of humankind. However, through Ballard, the message of

Child of God is not entirely hopeless. Ballard is a murderer and a necrophile, yet, McCarthy’s

handling of him is seemingly restrained. Unlike the kid in Blood Meridian, McCarthy’s

treatment of Ballard, who is arguably more corrupt than the kid, is considerably more

sympathetic. McCarthy’s sensitive treatment of Ballard therefore makes it possible for us to

identify redemption within him, especially at the end of the novel where he appears to

embrace the small flicker of morality that he has left. If Ballard is representative of the

human race as a whole, then, he not only shows the potential for violence in humankind, but

also the potential for human salvation. Just like Ballard, the human race is not entirely

beyond redemption.

Child of God undoubtedly depicts human depravity and Lester Ballard is certainly

representative of the darkest aspects of human nature. Just as much as he is “a child of God”

(4), he is also a child of violence, akin to the entire human race. In such a shocking world

filled with evidence of humankind’s capacity for violence, hope is admittedly difficult to

find. However hope for the human race can be found within the novel and this is perhaps too

15

easily overlooked. The novel consistently emphasises Ballard’s humanness, revealing that he

has not entirely lost the characteristics of mankind. More important is Ballard’s exceptional

decision to turn back to society, showing that he chooses a moral path over inhumanity and

violence. Even though Ballard is damaged, he is still human and his choice to return to the

hospital shows that he still has some sense of morality, however small. Despite its

overwhelming violence, then, Child of God offers a small, but significant hope for

humankind, a hope which is even more elusive, if not entirely lost, in Blood Meridian.

16

2

“MEN OF WAR”

BLOOD MERIDIAN

It is not to be thought that the life of darkness is sunk in misery and lost as if in sorrowing.

There is no sorrowing. For sorrow is a thing that is swallowed up in death, and death and

dying are the very life of the darkness.

– JACOB BOEHME

The above quote is one of the epigraphs to Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian and sets

the dark tone of the novel. In this text, the first of McCarthy’s post-Appalachian works, the

small light of hope for humankind, it would seem, has almost been extinguished by darkness.

“The life of darkness” consumes this novel and the faint human decency that can be derived

from McCarthy’s Appalachian works appears to be almost entirely lost in Blood Meridian.

Although Blood Meridian shares the common themes of human nature, violence and survival,

which are so prevalent in McCarthy’s work, it deviates from other McCarthy novels due to its

blatant lack of humanity. Human relationships are nonexistent in Blood Meridian and even

the most basic displays of human goodness are difficult to find. Instead, Blood Meridian is a

novel dominated by a man who is quite possibly, as Timothy Parrish claims, “the most

violent character in American literature”18

- the judge. In a novel which is overshadowed by a

character who believes that war is the fundamental condition of human existence, it is not

surprising that morality is surpassed by violence. In Blood Meridian “you can find meanness

in the least of creatures” (20), however attempting to find any trace of goodness is

challenging in a world which is evidently devoid of humanity.

At the beginning of Blood Meridian we are cautioned of the violence that will go on to

dominate the novel. The initial characterisation of the protagonist, who is simply referred to

18

Timothy Parrish, “History and the Problem of Evil in McCarthy’s Western Novels,” in The Cambridge

Companion to Cormac McCarthy, ed. Steven Frye (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 71.

17

as the kid, shows him to be a violent individual. We first learn that from his birth, the kid is,

as Timothy Parrish acknowledges, “a killer”19

. The kid is described as a “creature” who

manages to “carry ... off” (3) his own mother in childbirth. The narrator then observes that “in

him broods already a taste for mindless violence” (3) and it is only shortly after these

depictions that we witness the kid begin his lengthy performance of violent acts. One of the

earliest examples of the kid demonstrating his fondness for mindless violence is when he

comes upon a bar in Bexar. When the barman refuses to give the kid a drink, the kid attacks

him with a bottle. “He backhanded the ... bottle across the barman’s skull and crammed the

jagged remnant into his eye as he went down” (27). This violence is not only unnecessary,

but also excessive, yet the kid simply takes “another bottle and tuck[s] it under his arm and

walk[s] out the door” (27). The kid is completely unemotional and fails to reflect on the

violence he has carried out; however this lack of sentiment becomes very normal in Blood

Meridian. Indeed, not a single character, including the kid, ever reflects upon the violence

that they perpetrate. The kid and his gang are ultimately uncaring and they are so devoid of

human emotion that, as John Cant writes, “they do not actually appear to be realistically

human at all” (160).

One phrase frequently repeated throughout Blood Meridian, which highlights the uncaring

nature of the desperados is “they rode on”.

They rode on into the mountains and their way took them through high pine forests, wind

in the trees, lonely birdcalls. The shoeless mules slaloming through the dry grass and pine

needles. In the blue coulees on the north slopes narrow tailings of old snow. They rode up

switchbacks through a lonely aspen wood where the fallen leaves lay like golden disclets

in the damp black trail (143)

After each violent encounter the gang simply ride on undeterred. McCarthy avoids spending

any time to reflect upon violence or death, just like the characters. Instead, episodes of

violence are commonly followed by extended descriptions of the gang’s trek, which replace

the interior feelings such as anger, guilt or fear of the kid and his companions. Thus, the

novel narrates action, but not contemplation and due to this lack of interiority, the characters

appear to be detached from human emotion. Thomas Pughe writes that the desperados

“appear ... to be ... too brutalised for any emotion”20

and this seems to be an accurate

19

Timothy Parrish, From the Civil War to the Apocalypse: Postmodern History and American Fiction

(Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press, 2008), 91. 20

Thomas Pughe, “Revision and Vision: Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian”,” Revue française d'études

américaines no. 62 (novembre 1994): 376.

18

observation, especially if we acknowledge the insensitive nature that the characters have

towards various tribes, each other, and even themselves.

The kid and his gang are ultimately desensitised to violence, more than likely due to their

repeated exposure to it. When the riders come upon the “tree of dead babies” (58), an image

which is unforgettable in its horror for most readers, they fail to react to such an utterly

disturbing scene.

The way narrowed through rocks and by and by they came to a bush that was hung with

dead babies. They stopped side by side, reeling in the heat. These small victims, seven,

eight of them, had holes punched in their under-jaws and were hung so by their throats

from the broken stobs of a mesquite to stare eyeless at the naked sky. Bald and pale and

bloated, larval to some unreckonable being. The castaways hobbled past, they looked

back. Nothing moved (60-1)

Whereas most humans would recoil in horror at such a sight, the desperados specifically stop

at the tree and then look back to it, almost as though they are engrossed by it. Not only are the

kid and his fellow travellers insensitive towards the victims that they come across, they are

also entirely uncaring towards each other. Unlike The Road, where the relationship between

the father and son demonstrates that all humanity is not lost, nowhere in Blood Meridian can

you find meaningful human connections. When a member of the gang dies, their death is

treated very matter of fact and is narrated with no feeling. Even when John Joel Glanton, the

gang’s leader, has his head “split ... to the thrapple” (290), Tobin, the expriest, simply tells

David Brown “Glanton’s dead” (302) and then they both ride on. The nonexistence of human

relationships in Blood Meridian is further emphasised at the end of the novel, when the scalp

hunters resort to fighting each other in order to survive in the American West. Ultimately

these characters care for no one.

As John Cant recognises, Blood Meridian depicts a “Hobbesian war of all against all”

(159). Thus, in this novel, each man fights for himself and human relationships are therefore

irrelevant. As every man stands for himself in Blood Meridian, all men are violent, including

the “injins” (83). The Indians have a capacity for violence which, at the very least, equals that

of their Anglo-Saxon adversaries. One Indian attack in particular emphasises their propensity

for violence:

A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical

or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces

of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners ... one in a stovepipe hat and one

with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained weddingveil ... and one in

19

the armor of a Spanish conquistador, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old

blows of mace or sabre done in another country by men whose very bones were dust ...

and their horses' ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose

horse's whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen's faces gaudy and

grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious ... (55)

Here, the violence of these beings, who are dehumanised to the extent that they are not even

recognisable as men, but as “a legion of horribles ... a company of mounted clowns”, is made

evident. Not only have they slaughtered what appears to be a countless number of people, but

they have also stolen materials from the bodies of their dead victims and wear them in pride

as symbols of their violent conquests. One wears a “bloodstained weddingveil” and it is

presumed that this Comanche is accountable for the murdering of a bride on the day of her

wedding, an act which exemplifies the extent of the tribe’s inhumanity. Another wears “the

armor of a Spanish conquistador”, an armor which would be very old, even in the mid-

nineteenth century. Thus, the violence of these individuals is not only ruthless, but it is passed

on through each generation. Violence in Blood Meridian is, as Jay Ellis identifies,

“timeless”21

.

Violence, it would seem, is deep-rooted in human history and the 300,000-year-old

scalped skull, described in the epigraph to Blood Meridian, makes this apparent. Even the

novel itself, although published in 1985, is set in the nineteenth century and depicts the

violence that accompanied the historic event of America’s westward expansion. Many critics,

including Stacey Peebles, choose to explain the violence in Blood Meridian “as a

demythologising of the American West”22

and the brutality of the desperados undoubtedly

challenges romanticised accounts of the West as a place of glory and progress. The only

progression in McCarthy’s American West is the progression of violence. Each victim slain

by Glanton’s gang perpetuates the gang’s violence until their killing is unrestrained and is not

just limited to the Indians, but expands to include all people regardless of ethnicity. As

Timothy Parrish acknowledges, “the act of killing supersedes the reason for killing” (87) and

if the kid and his gang started their killing spree out of the necessity of survival, they

certainly do not end it this way. Walter Sullivan suggests that the gang kill for money and

21

Jay Ellis, ““What Happens to Country” in Blood Meridian,” Rocky Mountain Review of Language and

Literature v. 60, no. 1 (2006): 86. 22

Stacey Peebles, “Yuman Belief Systems and Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian,” Texas Studies in

Literature and Language v. 45, no. 2 (2003): 231.

20

therefore survival, they “shoot first, pocket the loot, and keep on living”23

, he writes.

However, the fact that their killing becomes so widespread and unnecessary suggests

otherwise. Thus, McCarthy does not make heroes out of his scalphunters, in fact finding a

single hero in Blood Meridian is an impossible task. Instead, McCarthy seems to suggest that

violence and death characterised America’s westward expansion and perhaps, as the scalped

skull implies, all of human history.

Although humans are clearly brutal in this world, violence is not limited to humankind;

indeed, all nature is violent in Blood Meridian. Susan Kollin observes that “the novel

provides numerous descriptions of the West as a desecrated and violent terrain”24

, therefore it

appears that the characters are not only equally as violent as their enemies, but also the land

they roam. Even the sun in Blood Meridian mirrors the violent world it looks down upon and

watches over. “The sun in the east flushed pale streaks of light and then a deeper run of color

like blood” (47). The landscape of Blood Meridian is ruthless and just like the desperados, it

takes many lives.

Ten days out with four men dead they started across a plain of pure pumice where there

grew no shrub, no weed, far as the eye could see ... In two days they began to come upon

bones and cast-off apparel ... they saw panniers and packsaddles and the bones of men and

they saw a mule entire, the dried and blackened carcass hard as iron (47-48)

The setting of Blood Meridian is ultimately a place in which violence flourishes and law is

absent. In this environment, morality is no longer of value and therefore it ceases to exist.

Unrestrained by the constraints of society and law, the characters reflect the violent landscape

and their primal instincts take over.

The kid and his gang, just like Lester Ballard in Child of God, avoid societal inclusion and

consequently do not obtain the morality, which may have been – at least partly provided by

cultural rules. Thus, both Ballard and the characters of Blood Meridian are perhaps evidence

to suggest that without socially enforced restrictions, the human race descends to a violent

state. By depicting worlds in which his characters are predominantly withdrawn from society,

McCarthy perhaps suggests that humankind needs the moral order provided by societal rules

in order to control instinctive violence. In the natural world, away from the constrictions of

civilisation, morality is insignificant and as Neil Campbell notes, “the survival of the fittest is

23

Walter Sullivan, “About Any Kind of Meanness You Can Name: The Silence of Snakes by Lewis W. Green;

Godfires by William Hoffman; Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy,” The

Sewanee Review, v.93, no. 4 (Fall 1985): 652. 24

Susan Kollin, “Genre and the Geographies of Violence: Cormac McCarthy and the Contemporary Western,”

Contemporary Literature v. 42, no. 3 (Autumn 2001): 562.

21

uppermost”25

. The kid and his companions become players in what the judge calls “the

ultimate game” (263), a game in which existence is at stake. Glanton’s gang kill people, until,

in the end, they are killed by equally violent individuals. Eventually every member of

Glanton’s gang loses the game of survival and consequently they are removed from

existence, all that is, except Judge Holden.

The judge is, as Barcley Owens acknowledges, the “ultimate purveyor of violence”26

and

his survival at the end of the novel seems unjust. Blood Meridian is inundated with the

judge’s malicious tendencies and his violence is very distinct from that of the other

characters. When asked “what is the way of raising a child?” the judge replies that “at a

young age ... they should be put in a pit with wild dogs” (154). It would appear that the judge

lives the ultimate life of darkness and is blind to a life outside of violence. Perhaps most

troubling is the judge’s fetish for infanticide. Many children become victims of the judge. On

one occasion, after a battle with the Apaches, the judge leaves the scene with “a strange dark

child” (169). After three days of paternally playing with the child and feeding it jerky,

Toadvine finds “the child ... dead and [realises] the judge had scalped it” (173). In retaliation

to such mindless violence, Toadvine draws his pistol to the judge’s head, however the

situation is quickly deterred and ten minutes after, they again ride on. Indeed, the violence of

the kid and his gang seems relatively benign when we compare it to that of the judge.

However, it is certainly not that the violence of the kid and his gang is benign; rather it is that

the judge’s violence is hyperbolic.

It is important to acknowledge here, as Willard Greenwood does, that “the ... judge ... [is]

based on [a] historical character”27

. Samuel Chamberlain’s My Confession: The Recollections

of a Rogue is the historical source from which the judge and indeed Blood Meridian is

derived. Although the judge may be based on a historical figure, this is not to say that his

character is purely based on fact. Judge Holden is evidently an exaggerated version of the

judge found in My Confession which, as Barcley Owens states, would “not dare portray [him]

so graphically” (18). Nonetheless, there are many parallels which can be distinguished

between Chamberlain’s judge and the judge of Blood Meridian. The judge in Chamberlain’s

25

Neil Campbell, “Liberty beyond its proper bounds: Cormac McCarthy’s history of the West in Blood

Meridian,” in Myth, legend, dust: critical responses to Cormac McCarthy, ed. Rick Wallach (Manchester:

Manchester University Press, 2000), 224. Subsequent page references in text. 26

Barcley Owens, Cormac McCarthy’s Western Novels (Arizona: University of Arizona Press, 2000), 16.

Subsequent page references in text. 27

Willard Greenwood, Reading Cormac McCarthy (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2009), 51. Subsequent page

references in text.

22

account is described as “a man of gigantic size” and it is alleged that he is accountable for a

little girl who is found “foully violated and murdered”28

. Here, a direct comparison can be

made to the judge in Blood Meridian, who is “an enormous man ... close on to seven feet in

height” (6) and, as if often implied, violently assaults young girls. It seems that at every

settlement where Judge Holden resides, a young girl disappears and this happens so

frequently in the novel that it cannot possibly be understood as a coincidence. In the town of

Jesus Maria, “a little girl [goes] missing” (202) and in another town “a young Mexican girl

[is] abducted” and presumably killed as they find “parts of her clothes ... torn and bloodied ...

drag marks [and] a shoe” (252). Both judges, it would seem, share in common a lust for

violence and young women. The fact that the judge is, at the very least, based loosely on a

historical figure, suggests that the violence he perpetrates may very well be within the realm

of human capability. Furthermore, although the judge looks monstrous and is suggested to be

immortal, he is never presented by McCarthy as unrealistic to the extent that he is not within

the bounds of human possibility. Just like Lester Ballard in Child of God, who is supposedly

based on historical Tennessee murderers, the judge is also hauntingly real.

Despite his horror and antagonistic characterisation, the judge remains the sole survivor at

the end of the tale and disturbingly, the last line of the novel informs us of his immortality

when we are told “that he will never die” (353). The ending of the novel leaves very little

hope for humankind. While the judge exists, all that he represents - violence, war and death -

will endure. Therefore Blood Meridian not only suggests that violence is a dominant part of

our human history, but that it is very likely to dominate our future. The judge believes that

“war is God” (263) and this implies that war – the epitome of violence – is a never-ending,

inescapable part of existence. In the judge’s eyes, the human race is created for no other

purpose than to kill and be killed. Through the character of the judge, violence, war and death

have, as Ashley Kunsa observes “presided over the whole novel”29

. Indeed, from chapter one,

when we are first introduced to the judge, he provokes mindless violence. By misleadingly

declaring that the reverend “is an imposter ... [and] is ... wanted by the law in the states of

Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Arkansas” (7), the judge incites a riot amongst a

crowd in the town of Nacogdoches. Thus, from the first chapter, the judge’s violence

dominates the novel and this violence remains prevalent to the end of the text where he is

28

Samuel Chamberlain, My Confession: The Recollections of a Rogue (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1956),

271. 29

Ashley Kunsa, ““Maps of the World in Its Becoming”: Post-Apocalyptic Naming in Cormac McCarthy’s The

Road,” Journal of Modern Literature v. 33, no.1 (Fall 2009): 67. Subsequent page references in text.

23

ultimately triumphant. At the end of Blood Meridian, hope is considerably diminished by the

judge, not solely because he survives, but also because he has killed the kid.

Many critics, including Ronja Vieth, recognise that in the kid “hope for redemption”30

can

be found. However, this is the only glimpse of hope for humankind that can be deprived from

the novel. In Blood Meridian, all men are violent, though the kid is perhaps, as Vieth

acknowledges, “the most human of them all” (56). The kid participates in many acts of

mindless violence and violence is a large part of his nature, as the narrator at the beginning of

the novel informs us. Yet, the kid does display small signs of humanity in a few fleeting

passages within the text. When David Brown becomes badly injured, bearing “an arrow in his

thigh”, “none would touch it” (170) despite his constant pleading for assistance. “Will none

of ye help a man?” (170) Brown asks. The fact that no man is willing to help his comrade

from certain death emphasises the lack of humanity within every member of the gang.

However, just as Brown proceeds to remove the arrow himself, the kid offers to help him.

“The kid withdrew the shaft from the man’s leg smoothly”, however he is not praised for this

rare act of kindness, rather he is condemned by Tobin who declares him a “fool” (171). The

kid again demonstrates a small sign of humanity when shortly after he assists Brown, he

helps Dick Shelby. After several men become seriously injured in an attack, the gang decides

that it is in their best interest to kill them off. One of the Delawares does not hesitate to

“crush ... his [companions] skull with a single blow” (217), but, in contrast to the Delaware,

the kid genuinely struggles to kill a wounded fellow traveller. The kid is appointed to kill

Shelby, who “had his hip shattered by a ball” (218) and is critically injured, welcoming the

relief of death; however the kid fails to carry out this assignment. Instead of killing Shelby,

the kid hides him under a bush and “fill[s] his flask from his own” (220). Thus, the kid

displays some compassion which the other characters do not possess. He cannot let Brown

die, he fails to kill Shelby, but of more importance is that he is unable to destroy the judge.

Towards the end of the novel, the kid is presented with the chance to rid the world of the

judge’s violence. Despite Tobin’s persistent requests to kill the judge, the kid cannot do it.

“You’ll get no second chance lad. Do it. He is naked. He is unarmed” (301), Tobin says as he

argues with him. However, Tobin is wrong, the kid does get another chance to kill the judge,

in fact he is given several chances. Despite these chances, the kid is incapable of killing the

judge. Perhaps, as Lydia Cooper assumes, the kid “does not identify Holden as evil enough to

30

Ronja Vieth, “A Frontier Myth turns Gothic: Blood Meridian: Or, the Evening Redness in the West,” The

Cormac McCarthy Journal v. 8, no. 1 (2010): 51. Subsequent page references in text.

24

warrant killing”31

, the kid does acknowledge after all that “the judge [is] a man like all men”

(313). However, the kid kills many civilians without any hesitation and these people, we can

perhaps presume, are not as destructive as the judge. After all, the judge’s propensity for

violence appears to be on a much higher scale than that of the other characters. Here,

Cooper’s argument suggesting that the kid does not perceive the judge as evil enough to kill

perhaps falls apart. Instead, I propose that the kid fails to kill the judge precisely because he

recognises the pure corruption within him. The kid, as Steven Frye notes, “resists the judge’s

ethics of war”32

and this is what bothers the judge, causing him to criticise the kid. Although

the kid participates in many violent atrocities, readers will notice that the kid disappears from

several violent scenes, only to re-emerge after the violence is finished. Many critics,

including Timothy Parrish, also notice that the kid “remains largely unimplicated in acts of

violence”33

and indeed the judge recognises this too. The fact that the kid refuses to fully

commit to collective destruction is, from the judge’s point of view, a colossal weakness.

“You were a disappointment to me” (345) the judge tells the kid in the closing stages of the

novel. The kid defies the judge through his refusal to give in to complete corruption. Thus, by

refusing to kill the judge, the kid continues to disobey him by demonstrating that violence,

war and death do not necessarily persist. “War endures ... because young men love it” (262)

the judge declares, but the kid does not conform to this and such defiance costs him his life.

The kid may defy the judge’s principles of war, but in the end this disobedience is futile.

The kid presumably dies and with his death hope for humankind that can be derived from this

novel fades, but it is not entirely eliminated. The kid is evidence to suggest that morality,

although weak, can survive in a brutal world. Thus, if morality can exist within the kid, it

may also exist in other individuals. The kid is a redemptive figure in Blood Meridian and he

is certainly the character who provides the most hope for the human race, consequently his

death is tragic. The kid is found in “the jakes” (352) and although we do not witness his

death, we presume that the judge has raped and murdered him. After all, rape and murder

seem to be characteristic of the judge’s behaviour. The defeat of the kid demonstrates the

immense power of the judge, as throughout the novel the kid’s strength is exposed, he is a

survivor. Against all the odds, the kid survives through Indian attacks, injuries he obtains and

31

Lydia Cooper, No More Heroes: Narrative Perspective and Morality in Cormac McCarthy (Louisiana:

Louisiana State University Press, 2011), 73. Subsequent page references in text. 32

Steven Frye, “Histories, Novels, Ideas: Cormac McCarthy and the Art of Philosophy,” in The Cambridge

Companion to Cormac McCarthy, ed. Steven Frye (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 8. 33

Timothy Parrish, The Cambridge Companion to American Novelists (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 2013), 305.

25

the harsh desert environment. However, the kid’s survival skills are not a match for the

judge’s who appears to be able to survive anything. The judge’s exceptional survival skills

are recognisable early in the novel when he saves himself and the entire gang from certain

death by “workin up ... a foul black dough, a devil’s batter” (139), which the gang effectively

use as gunpowder. In this game of survival of the fittest, the judge is the winner. After

supposedly killing the kid in the jakes, the judge’s power is emphasised and it almost appears

as though he is regenerated by the kid’s death.

Towering over them all is the judge and he is naked and dancing, his small feet lively and

quick and now in doubletime and bowing to the ladies ... he bows to the fiddlers and

sashays backwards and throws back his head and laughs deep in his throat and he is a great

favourite, the judge ... he wafts his hat ... and takes possession of one of the fiddles and he

pirouettes and makes a pass, two passes, dancing and fiddling at once (353)

This description is of a man who is ecstatic. The judge has won. The only individual who

would not conform to his will - the kid - has been killed and this is important to the judge

who believes that survival is, as Neil Campbell notes, “about control, mastery and conquest”

(222). Thus, following the rebellious kid’s demise the judge dances a celebratory dance of

victory and is a man regenerated through violence and power. Glanton’s men have long been

dead; the kid has also met his fate and the judge in all his violence has finally prevailed.

Thus, the final message that Blood Meridian leaves its readers with is ultimately a

discouraging one.

In Child of God violence is largely perpetrated by one individual, consequently we can

presume, perhaps mistakenly, that Lester Ballard is a rare example of the violence humankind

is capable of. Whereas the dark aspects of human nature are explored through individuals in

McCarthy’s Appalachian works, in Blood Meridian brutality and violence become collective

and are investigated on a national scale. Thus, every man in Blood Meridian is brutal and the

idea that the entire human race is inherently violent becomes inescapable. The only character

within the novel to demonstrate humanity is the kid and even he is, at the very least, morally

flawed. The kid intermittently displays small examples of morality and as readers we

embrace these short-lived acts of goodness which provide some respite in a predominantly

dark world. Although the kid only provides us with only brief glimpses of hope, it is still

hope nonetheless and the kid is evidence to suggest that humankind is not yet entirely

corrupt. In Blood Meridian we find ourselves desperately searching for hope, for reassurance

that the human race is not entirely depraved and although it is not easy, we find this in the

kid. However, in The Road, hope is ever-present and not so difficult to find. The Road is

26

inundated with violence, but each violent act is counterbalanced by a display of human

affection. Unlike Blood Meridian, The Road does not “run ... from dark to dark” (279) and

McCarthy recovers the humanity in his writing that has perhaps been lost.

27

3

“CARRYING THE FIRE”

THE ROAD

The Road is McCarthy’s latest novel and although it is comparable to his previous work, it

is also remarkably different. The Road is thematically related to its many predecessors and

continues McCarthy’s exploration into human nature, violence and survival, an investigation

that he started nearly forty years prior with Outer Dark. In Outer Dark, the tinker clearly

resents humankind and he expresses his pessimistic views of the human race. “I’ve seen the

meanness of humans till I don’t know why God ain’t put out the sun and gone away” (192),

he says. This single reflection closely connects one of McCarthy’s earliest novels to his latest

novel, a connection which is incredibly easy to overlook. The tinker seems to foresee the

future and in this statement he perhaps gives us an insight into McCarthy’s upcoming work, a

small but significant glimpse into the world of The Road. By the time McCarthy publishes

The Road, it seems, just as the tinker predicts, that God has indeed “put out the sun and gone

away”. In The Road, the earth is described as “godless”34

and its sun is “lost” (31), “unseen”

(71) and “indifferent” (234). Consequently it appears that in McCarthy’s bleakest world, even

God has abandoned the human race. However the father and son have not given up on

humankind and this is where The Road departs from McCarthy’s dark corpus. The novel

focuses upon the human desire present within the father and son to survive as “the good

guys” (145) in a harsh and unpromising world. Vital to their survival is “goodness” (137) and

the hope that this goodness will ultimately prevail. The small belief that goodness exists

suggests that humankind may not yet be doomed and as a result, McCarthy leaves behind the

deep pessimism which dominates his earlier work.

Although The Road is not overwhelmingly pessimistic, it is neither optimistic. After all,

humankind is ultimately presented as self destructive and akin to Lester Ballard in Child of

God and the desperados in Blood Meridian, man is portrayed as animal. In The Road, the

majority of the human race has resorted to cannibalism as a means to survive and therefore

they have travelled beyond the boundaries of acceptable human behaviour. Consequently

34

Cormac McCarthy, The Road (London: Picador, 2009), 2. Subsequent page references in text.

28

most of the inhabitants in The Road appear more animalistic than they do human. This is true

from the first cannibal the father and son directly encounter: the roadrat. Even through his

identification as a “roadrat” (68), this character is dehumanised. The word ‘rat’ directly

relates the man to an animal, however of more importance is that it relates him to an animal

which has particularly negative connotations, an animal which is typically associated with

betrayal and deceit. However the roadrat’s dehumanisation is perhaps more apparent from his

initial description where it is said that he is “like an animal inside a skull looking out the

eyeholes” (65). The only thing remotely human about the roadrat is his outward appearance.

Along with many of the occupants of The Road, the roadrat has long lost his human attributes

and he is merely one example out of many where we stumble upon people who are deprived

of human qualities. Euan Gallivan accurately acknowledges that, “at every turn in The Road,

we are faced with the dehumanized”35

.

Just a few pages after the roadrat threatens the boy by “holding ... [a] knife at his throat”

(68) and is subsequently killed by the father, we again come across the dehumanised. When

the father returns to the site where they had the violent encounter, he finds “a pool of guts....

[and] bones ... [that] looked to have been boiled” (73-4). These, we presume, are all that

remains of the roadrat after being eaten by his fellow travelling companions. These cannibals

appear to be so dehumanised that they are withdrawn from any human relationships. Erik

Wielenberg believes that this is the “heavy price”36

the cannibals of The Road pay for

survival. In order to survive the cannibals have abandoned their humanity and along with it

human connections. The roadrat is cooked and eaten by his fellow travellers because their

desire for survival supersedes their humanity. When faced with having to fight for survival,

the majority of humankind, it would seem, turn their back on humanity and instead turn

towards violence.

The father and son are exceptional in the universe of The Road, as unlike the majority of

humankind, they favour humanity over survival. Thus, the inhumanity of the cannibals is

constantly juxtaposed with the humanity of the father and son and after every incident of

human brutality; we are comforted by a display of genuine human love. After the father

comes across the leftovers of the roadrat we feel unsettled at the innate corruption of human

nature, however shortly after this, our faith is partially restored in humankind when the father

35

Euan Gallivan, “Compassionate McCarthy?: “The Road” and Schopenhauerian Ethics,” The Cormac

McCarthy Journal v. 6, no. 1 (Autumn 2008): 100. Subsequent page references in text. 36

Erik Wielenberg, “God, Morality, and Meaning in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road,” The Cormac McCarthy

Journal v. 8, no. 1 (2010): 14. Subsequent page references in text.

29

demonstrates the immense love he has for his child. The father carries the boy “on ... his

shoulders” (74) when he becomes tired, he makes “two ... trips into the woods” for “brush

and limbs” (76) to keep the boy warm and he washes the “dead man’s brains out of [the

boy’s] hair” (77). The father and son constantly show humanity through compassion and are

a stark contrast to the cannibals who have lost these human attributes.

Although the father is considered as one of the good guys, he is not always compassionate

toward strangers who travel the road and there are various incidents in the novel where his

morality is challenged. When the father and son come across “a small figure ... on the road,

bent and shuffling”, the father is instantly suspicious and fears that “it could be a decoy”

(171). Although the father is quite happy to leave the seemingly vulnerable “old man” (173)

in “the road ... among the ashes” (172), the boy is not satisfied with this and instead

approaches the man who goes by the name of Ely. Unlike the father, the boy is not content

until he feels assured that he has helped the man. Therefore the boy can be considered as a

more moral version of his father and the father certainly recognises this. The boy begs his

father to give food to Ely and after the man is fed, the father says to him “you should thank

him [the boy] you know ... I wouldn’t have given you anything” (184). Here the father

acknowledges the difference in moral standards between him and his son. The boy has

incredibly high moral standards and this is, as Lydia Cooper reminds us, “exceptional in the

context of the rest of McCarthy’s corpus” (154), where his novels are commonly inhabited by

characters who have no intention whatsoever of helping others. However the boy’s high

moral standards are perhaps even more exceptional when considered in the context of The

Road, where the world is seemingly devoid of human morality. The boy is evidence to

suggest that is it possible for human morality to survive in a world of violence.

Through the boy’s acts of kindness towards strangers, the father recognises that he should

become a better human being. Thus, it appears that the boy is not only, as the novel’s narrator

observes, the father’s “warrant” (3) for survival, but also his model for moral goodness.

When the father’s morality lapses the boy forces him to face his immorality and put right

what he has done wrong. This is perhaps most evident when they confront “the thief” (273)

who steals their cart. The cart is ultimately the lifeline of the father and son, so it is therefore

understandable when the father becomes mad at the thief after they finally find him. The

father leaves the thief “raw and naked, filthy, starving” (275) and this is traumatic for the boy

who cries, keeps looking back for the nude man, sobs in the road and begs his papa to “just

help him” (277). After the boys pleading, the father eventually acknowledges the immorality

30

of his act and piles up the man’s belongings at the point in the road where they previously

encountered him. It appears that the boy keeps the father on the road of moral goodness and

without this guidance from the child; it is arguable that the father would not be one of the

good guys. The father has instilled morality in the boy by telling him “old stories of courage

and justice” (42) and the boy ensures that they do not stray too far from these stories. The boy

prevents his father from being a hypocrite and engaging in the same immoral behaviour that

he condemns “the bad guys” (97) for. Thus, the boy teaches the father just as much about

morality as the father has taught him.

The boy’s existence is not only connected to the father’s morality, but, as Lydia Cooper

acknowledges, it is also “inextricably linked to the man’s survival”37

. The father is

surprisingly honest to the boy when he tells him, “if you died I would want to die too” (9).

The relationship between the father and son in The Road is enormously significant as they are

ultimately each other’s life force and this is remarkably different to the parental relationships

in McCarthy’s previous works. In Child of God, Lester Ballard’s dad hangs himself and in

Blood Meridian, the kid’s biological father “lies in drink” (3), consequently, when both

Ballard and the kid are still just children, the relationships they may have once had with their

fathers are brought to an end. It is important to acknowledge that there may be a pattern here

between parental guidance and morality. The boy in The Road obtains a large part of his

morality from the father. After all it is the father who teaches him, as Matthew Mullins

phrases it, that “we do not eat each other”38

and this is the fundamental difference between

the good guys and the bad guys in The Road. In opposition to the boy, without father figures

to guide them, Ballard and the kid seem to descend into worlds of immorality and violence.

This perhaps suggests that the human capacity to be moral may not be a part of human nature,

but may instead be nurtured. Whereas the human capacity to be violent may be a part of

human nature which dominates when nurturing fails to take place.

As is typical of McCarthy’s work, The Road lacks a mother figure and like Lester

Ballard’s mother in Child of God, who “had run off” (21) and the kid’s mother in Blood

Meridian, who had been “dead ... fourteen years” (3), the boy’s mother in The Road is also

absent. In a world of pointless violence, the boy’s mother perceives life to be meaningless

and as a result, before the events in the novel take place, she commits suicide. Unlike the

37

Lydia Cooper, “Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” as Apocalyptic Grail Narrative,” Studies in the Novel v. 43,

no. 2 (2011): 226. Subsequent page references in text. 38

Matthew Mullins, “Hunger and the Apocalypse of Modernity in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road,” Symploke v.

19, no. 1-2 (2011): 81.

31

father, the mother fails to see her son as a warrant for survival. Despite a lack of female

presence throughout the novel, at the end of the text there is, as John Cant notes, “a regaining

of the lost female” (279). The boy is introduced to a woman, who we presume, perhaps

wrongly, will be his surrogate mother.

The woman when she saw him put her arms around him and held him. Oh, she said, I am

so glad to see you. She would talk to him sometimes about God. He tried to talk to God

but the best thing was to talk to his father and he did talk to him and he didnt forget. The

woman said that was all right. She said that the breath of God was his breath yet though it

pass from man to man through all of time (306)

Although the woman’s mention is brief, it is enormously significant especially in terms of its

chronological position within the novel. The ending of The Road is renowned for its

ambiguity; however the introduction of a mother figure and, indeed, the appearance of the

only full family to feature in a McCarthy novel, surely signifies hope. At the beginning of

The Road we are told that “the days [are] more gray each one than what had gone before” (1)

and this appears true up until the father’s death. However, after the father’s death, with the

regaining of a complete family, there is a sense that each day for the boy will not be grayer.

The boy’s father is instantly replaced by a man who claims to be “one of the good guys”

(302), he regains a mother figure which he once lost and it is implied that he will acquire

travelling companions, “a little boy and ... a little girl” (304). However, this reading is largely

deprived from guesswork and it is important to acknowledge that the man at the end of The

Road may not be the good guy he claims to be. We do not know whether the man is good or

bad or whether the boy survives, but of significance is that the boy is given a fighting chance

for survival and we do not witness his death.

It is in the ending of The Road where the novel most recognisably departs from

McCarthy’s previous work, including Child of God and especially Blood Meridian. Unlike

Child of God and Blood Meridian, McCarthy unexpectedly creates hope at the end of The

Road. At the end of Child of God, Lester Ballard’s demise does not provide hope for

humankind. Rather than removing violence from society, Ballard’s death suggests that worse

violence will transpire as in his entrails medical students see “monsters worse to come”

(194). The ending of Blood Meridian is significantly more hopeless. Blood Meridian ends

with the judge, who Ronja Vieth describes as “evil incarnate” (53), as victorious. At the end

of Blood Meridian, the judge presumably kills the kid, who is the only character who has any

possibility of redemption and as a result, the judge in all his violence triumphs. In the last line

of the novel, the judge “says that he will never die” (353) and along with him, all that he

32

represents - violence, war and death - will persist. If the judge can be identified as Vieth

describes him, as “evil incarnate”, we can perhaps describe the boy in The Road as good

incarnate. The boy embodies goodness and the fact that McCarthy does not write his death at

the end of The Road is almost beyond belief. As Willard Greenwood acknowledges, there is a

possibility that “the boys survives, and with him, hope persists” (80).

The boy’s survival is intrinsically linked to the redemption of the human race. Although

The Road specifically focuses on the survival of the father and son, its wider concern is the

survival of humankind. Whereas Child of God and Blood Meridian are concerned with the

survival of isolated outsiders - Lester Ballard and the kid - more is at stake in The Road.

Although The Road follows the father and sons struggle to survive in a post-apocalyptic

world, the biggest threat in the novel is the survival of the human race. However, more

important than the survival of humankind, is the survival of human goodness. As Lydia

Cooper notes, “human beings may not in fact deserve to survive” (221) in the world of The

Road, after all, it appears that the vast majority of humans have a violent and destructive

nature and are willing to contribute to their own extinction. Even the boy recognises that

goodness is largely outnumbered, “there’s a lot of them, those bad guys” (97) he observes.

The father is certainly aware of the overwhelming moral corruption in the human race and

this is most evident through the lack of trust he has towards over travellers on the road, as

Scott Yarbrough writes, the father “presumes the entirety of [humankind] ha[s] backslid into

an atavistic savagery”39

. Although the father presumes that all humans have become barbaric

cannibals, he makes this assumption for the safety of both him and his son. The father clearly

believes that the human race is worth preserving and that human goodness still exists. This is

made evident when the boy questions him about the possible existence of other good people.

There are other good guys. You said so.

Yes.

So where are they?

They’re hiding.

Who are they hiding from?

From each other.

Are there lots of them?

We dont know.

But some.

Some. Yes.

Is that true?

39

Scott Yarbrough, “Tricksters and Lightbringers in McCarthy’s Post-Appalachian Novels,” The Cormac

McCarthy Journal v. 10, no. 1 (2012): 52.

33

Yes. That’s true.

But it might not be true.

I think it’s true.

Okay.

You dont believe me.

I believe you (196)

The father provides the boy with what Randall Wilhelm describes as “an ethical roadmap for

the future”40

and he does this because he believes that human goodness can and does exist.

Just as the father has successfully imparted important ethics to his son, the boy has the same

ability to pass on human kindness. Although human goodness may be largely outweighed by

human corruption, while the boy survives so does the small hope for humankind.

Although The Road is without doubt the most hopeful of McCarthy’s novels, the acts of

human violence cannot be ignored. The journey of the father and son in The Road is

constantly interrupted by the extreme acts of violence humans inflict upon each other. Among

the horrific examples of human depravity that the father and son witness, there are two

incidents which are most memorable due to their disturbing depiction of what the human race

has become. The father and son first come across captives in a locked cellar who, it is

implied, have been partially eaten by a gang of cannibals. “On the mattress lay a man with his

legs gone to the hip and the stumps of them blackened and burnt” (116). Nearly one hundred

pages later, the father and son are reminded again of the troubling inhumanity of the

cannibals when they see “a charred human infant headless and gutted and blackening on [a]

spit” (212). Just like Child of God and Blood Meridian, The Road also depicts the worst

aspects of human nature and suggests that violence is an inevitable part of human existence.

Child of God and Blood Meridian indicate that violence has always been a dominant part

of human history and therefore human nature. One only needs to look at the past memories of

violence in Child of God

That was in 99. That was Pleas Wynn and Catlett Tipton that had murdered the Whaleys.

Got em up out of bed and blowed their heads off in front of their little daughter ... Tipton

and Wynn, they hung them on the courthouse lawn right yonder ... [the] trap kicked open

from under em and down they dropped and hung there a jerkin and a kickin for I don’t

know, ten, fifteen minutes. Don’t ever think hangin is quick and merciful. It ain’t (166-7)

or read one of the epigraphs to Blood Meridian “Clark, who led last year’s expedition to the

Afar region of northern Ethiopia, and UC Berkeley colleague Tim D. White, also said that a

40

Randall Wilhelm, ““Golden Chalice, good to house a god”: Still Life in “The Road”,” The Cormac McCarthy

Journal v. 6, no. 1 (Autumn 2008): 142.

34

re-examination of a 300,000-year-old fossil skull found in the same region earlier shows

evidence of having been scalped” in order to recognise that McCarthy is suggesting that

humankind is violent and that this violence has been ever-present. However, The Road

departs from past recollections of violence and instead, as Euan Gallivan recognises, it

suggests that “violence ... will continue to be the hallmark of our human future” (105). Unlike

Blood Meridian which focuses on a past event – Westward Expansion – The Road describes

the aftermath of an apocalypse, an event which has not yet occurred in human history.

Through his corpus, McCarthy proposes that human violence is not just a part of our past and

present, but will also feature in our future. Violence, it seems, is an intrinsic part of human

nature and The Road identifies that this innate violence may one day lead to the collective

destruction of the human race. The old hunter in Blood Meridian tells the story of the

extinction of the buffalo, “they’re gone,” he says “ever one of them that God ever made is

gone as if they’d never been at all” (334). Humankind causes the extinction of the buffalo in

Blood Meridian and is indeed causing the extinction of itself in The Road. In McCarthy’s

corpus, there appears to be no limit on the destruction that the human race is capable of.

Although The Road, like Blood Meridian, depicts acts of human violence, there is a

remarkable difference between the portrayal of violence in these two texts. Ashley Kunsa

accurately acknowledges this difference in the representation of violence when she says that

“rather than merely revelling in the horror, as does Blood Meridian, The Road tries to move

beyond it” (68). The violent scenes in Blood Meridian are prolonged and often continue for

pages at a time until the characters we follow eventually decide to resume “ridin on” (134)

after having indulged in the violence. In opposition to this, incidents of violence and horror in

The Road are considerably more brief, namely because the protagonist - the father - does not

take pleasure from such violence. Whereas the main characters of Blood Meridian revel in

horror, the father and son try their best to avoid this brutality. Episodes of violence and horror

in Blood Meridian become significant, detailed events and often have their own headings

within the chapter such as “tree of dead babies”, “scenes from a massacre” and “the captain’s

head” (58). However, violence and horror is not so substantial in The Road. The father and

son do not revel in scenes of horror, but instead attempt to retreat from them as quick as

possible.

Beyond a crossroads in that wilderness they began to come upon the possessions of

travellers abandoned in the road years ago ... A mile on and they began to come upon the

dead. Figures half mired in the blacktop, clutching themselves, mouths howling. He put

his hand on the boy’s shoulder. Take my hand, he said. I dont think you should see this.

35

What you put in your head is there forever?

Yes (203)

Episodes of violence and horror are considerably brief in The Road as the father attempts to

protect his son from witnessing such brutal scenes. Thus, the father and son “just go on”

(203).

The different treatment of violence in The Road is directly related to the novel’s

protagonist, a protagonist who is noticeably unique in McCarthy’s corpus. Ashley Kunsa

acknowledges that “the novel’s focus [is not] the road-wandering marauders and cannibals ...

but ... a sympathetic, likeable middle-aged man and his young child” (59) and this is

considerably significant. Here, The Road, yet again departs from McCarthy’s earlier novels.

In Child of God the protagonist - Lester Ballard - is a murderer and necrophile, in Blood

Meridian we follow a group of scalphunters as they journey west and continuously perpetrate

violence and murder, however in The Road the protagonists are fundamentally good. The

Road does not follow violent characters and therefore less emphasis is placed on violence

within the text. The father and son “carry the fire” (298) and it is the carrying of this fire

which makes them far removed from the majority of McCarthy’s characters, including Lester

Ballard, the desperados of Blood Meridian and the cannibals who roam the world of The

Road.

Most of McCarthy’s characters have long lost the fire, the same fire that the father and son

constantly keep ignited. Erik Wielenberg suggests that “carrying the fire is just a crude myth

adopted by the two [father and son] to keep themselves going” (4), however this reading is

considerably limited and the notion of “carrying the fire” (136) has much more significance.

When the father is dying he does indeed use the idea of carrying the fire to encourage the boy

to keep going.

I want to be with you.

You cant.

Please.

You cant. You have to carry the fire.

I dont know how to.

Yes you do.

Is it real? The fire?

Yes it is.

Where is it? I dont know where it is.

Yes you do. It’s inside you. It was always there. I can see it (298)

36

However, in this passage the father not only uses the notion of carrying the fire to motivate

his son, he also uses it to reinforce its importance to the boy. Carrying the fire is directly

associated with morality, after all, it is only the good guys who carry the fire. This is made

evident at the end of the novel when the boy asks the man with the shotgun “are you carrying

the fire?” (303) in order to determine whether he is good or bad. However, the link between

carrying the fire and morality is even more obvious through the various conversations the boy

has with his father.

We wouldnt ever eat anybody, would we?

No. Of course not.

Even if we were starving?

We’re starving now.

You said we werent.

I said we werent dying. I didnt say we werent starving.

But we wouldnt.

No. We wouldnt.

No matter what.

No. No matter what.

Because we’re the good guys.

Yes.

And we’re carrying the fire.

And we’re carrying the fire. Yes.

Okay (136)

This passage highlights that good guys carry the fire, but more importantly it indicates that

the bad guys do not. Carrying the fire is evidently related to goodness and as Andre Almacen

suggests, “the cannibals ... have abandoned or lost the fire they once carried”41

. It is important

to the father that he successfully instils the fire of goodness within the boy and that the boy

never loses this fire. The cannibals in The Road are evidence of how easily human morality

can be overwritten by the fight for survival and the father is more than aware of this. Thus,

when the father is on his deathbed, he attempts to strengthen the boy’s belief in the fire. The

father not only tells the boy that he is carrying the fire, but he says that he can see it too,

fortifying its existence. This is the father’s last effort to ensure that the boy upholds his moral

standards; it is not merely a ploy to get the boy to continue his journey on the road. The father

knows that while the boy continues to carry the fire, he also continues to carry hope for

humankind. The fire is a beam of hope within the boy, which provides light in an otherwise

dark world.

41

Andre Almacen, God, Morals, and Justice in the Post-Apocalyptic World of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road

(Munich: GRIN Verlag, 2013), 8.

37

Whereas the dark world of Blood Meridian appears almost irredeemable, The Road depicts

a world in which hope for the human race is ever-present. Hope is embodied in the father and

the boy who, despite inhabiting a world which has been devastated and destroyed by

humankind, are still able to believe in human goodness. The father and son recognise their

moral responsibilities and present a sharp contrast to many of McCarthy’s characters, most of

which appear to have little or no morality. Through showing moral awareness and

demonstrating acts of kindness, the father and son become evidence that individuals are still

capable of acting humanely, even in a world where people literally fight for survival. Thus, if

people are capable of acting ethically, the apocalyptic world of The Road is neither devoid of

humanity or hope. Of all McCarthy’s works, this last novel offers the most hope for

humankind and leaves us with the belief that the world is not yet doomed. The Road provides

a beacon of light at the end of the dark tunnel of McCarthy’s corpus.

38

CONCLUSION

FINDING HOPE FOR HUMANITY IN MCCARTHY’S NOVELS

What is constant in history is greed and foolishness and a love of blood and this is a thing that

even God – who knows all that can be known – seems powerless to change.

– CORMAC MCCARTHY, All the Pretty Horses

He poured the coffee and stirred in milk from a can and sipped and blew and read of wildness

and violence across the cup’s rim. As it was then, is now and ever shall.

– CORMAC MCCARTHY, Suttree

Violence, McCarthy suggests, is a part of human nature, perhaps even the most dominant

part. Even Alfonsa recognises the prevalence of violence, telling John Grady Cole that it “is

constant in history” (239), as does Suttree when he says “as it was then, is now and ever

shall”42

, after reading stories of murder and bloodshed in the newspaper. Jay Ellis writes that

“nothing is so persistent in all McCarthy’s books as the idea that violence is timeless” (86)

and Child of God, Blood Meridian and The Road demonstrate this. The publication of these

novels alone, which from Child of God to The Road spans thirty-three years, suggests that

violence is still dominant despite the passage of time. Violence is persistent throughout

McCarthy’s writing career and it is in fact more prevalent in The Road than it is in Child of

God. This is perhaps representative of McCarthy’s view that violence will, despite time,

always endure. Each of McCarthy’s novels convey violence as a central part of human

history, but more troubling is that they suggest it will continue to dominate human future. Not

one of these novels rests in the assurance that human violence has been defeated. In Child of

God, students see “monsters worse to come” (194) when examining Lester Ballard’s entrails,

in Blood Meridian Judge Holden - the ultimate perpetrator of violence- is victorious and in

42

Cormac McCarthy, Suttree (London: Picador, 1989), 381.

39

The Road the majority of humankind remain murderers and cannibals. Thus, if hope for the

human race can be found in these novels, it is only a small glimmer, as McCarthy has made

evident the profound darkness of humankind.

The human race, it would seem, descends to a primitively violent state once social control

has been removed and each of McCarthy’s novels share in common a similarly wild setting

detached from civilisation. McCarthy’s characters live in uncivilised environments and this

provides the ideal setting to explore the capabilities of human evil when societal rules and

morality are no longer important. Ballard lives in a network of caves on the edge of society,

the desperados of Blood Meridian reside in the desert far removed from society and the father

and son in The Road occupy a world where society ceases to exist. Thus, if we examine these

publications chronologically, it would seem that McCarthy’s settings escalate in terms of

their deprivation until social context is no longer present. Ballard and the gang in Blood

Meridian have the opportunity to return to the societies from which they have become

detached and indeed Ballard does go back to society where he is accepted provided that he

remains in “the state hospital ... in a cage” (193) for the rest of his life. However, the majority

of the characters in Blood Meridian never return to society, largely due to the fact that most

of them do not survive the violence of the American West. Whereas in Child of God and

Blood Meridian the characters are able to go back to society, in The Road the father and son

do not have this option. The world in The Road is so depraved that ordered communities no

longer exist and the communes that the father and son encounter do not share laws, instead

they are united by the act of cannibalism. As the characters inhabit worlds which are

increasingly distanced from society, they become more immersed in the natural world and

their environments become progressively more violent.

Where society is not present, it would seem that the violence of the natural world reigns.

In Child of God, Ballard experiences the violence of the natural world when floods destroy

his dwellings and jeopardise his life.

Before he even reached the creekbed he was wading kneedeep. When it reached his waist

he began to curse aloud ... anyone watching him could have seen he would not turn back if

the creek swallowed him under. It did. He was in fast water to his chest ... Ballard ... bore

on into the rapids below the ford and ... was lost in a pandemonium of noises ... his mouth

wide for the howling of oaths until ... the waters closed over him (155-6)

40

In Blood Meridian the natural world is considerably more violent. The land has, as Barcley

Owens observes, “been blasted and pitted with eons of natural violence – wind, water,

earthquakes, volcanoes” (7).

Lightning shaped out the distant shivering mountains and lightning rang the stones about

and tufts of blue fire clung to the hordes like incandescent elementals that would not be

driven off ... they rode for days through the rain and they rode through rain and hail and

rain again ... mountains shuddered again and again in clattering frames and burned to final

darkness (196-7)

In The Road the violence of McCarthy’s natural world has become so intense that the

majority of people, both dead and alive, that the father and son come across are victims to it.

He was as burntlooking as the country, his clothing scorched and black. One of his eyes

was burnt shut and his hair was but a nitty wig of ash upon his blackened skull ... the boy

kept looking back. Papa? he whispered. What is wrong with the man?

He’s been struck by lightning.

Can we help him? Papa?

No. We cant help him ... There’s nothing to be done for him (51)

Thus, the settings of these novels not only intensify in terms of their deprivation, but also in

terms of their violence. Here, another pattern can be identified. As McCarthy’s worlds

become increasingly violent, so do the inhabitants.

Again, if we consider these novels chronologically, it is not only the violence of the

natural world that escalates, but also the violence of humankind. From Child of God to The

Road, the violence of the human race becomes more intense and widespread. In Child of God

we are presented with a single murderer who has several victims, in Blood Meridian we

follow a gang of murderers who kill a countless number of people and in The Road we

witness a whole world seemingly plagued by murderers and cannibals. It would seem that

violence increases from an individual level, to a collective level, to a point in which it is

almost all inclusive. Thus, the violence of humankind appears to be intrinsically linked to the

violence of the natural world. It seems that where society is absent the violence of the natural

world takes over and of great significance is that the violence of the natural world is equalled

by the characters that are surrounded by it. However, what is uncertain is whether

McCarthy’s characters reflect the brutality of their environment or whether the environment

reflects the violence of human nature. Determining whether humankind or the natural world

is more violent is not important, what is significant is that the natural world and its

inhabitants mirror each other and through this McCarthy suggests that all nature is equally

violent.

41

McCarthy insists that all human beings share an innate capacity for violence. At the

beginning of Blood Meridian we are told to “see the child” and acknowledge his “taste for

mindless violence” (3). This child is unnamed and is potentially any child, thus when we are

invited to “see the child” we are also invited to recognise the potential for “mindless

violence” that, as Michael Madsen writes, is “in all of human[kind]” (23). The kid, then,

appears to have an innate capacity for violence, as violence is evidently present within him

from a young age. Moreover, directly after stating that he has “a taste for mindless violence”

the kid is described as “the child the father of the man” (3), a phrase McCarthy borrows from

William Wordsworth’s poem My heart leaps up when I behold or The Rainbow. In this poem,

the expression “The Child is father of the Man”43

suggests that personal traits are established

at a young age and that these qualities remain in adulthood. Thus, McCarthy implies that the

kid will have the same “taste for mindless violence” as an adult that he has as a child and that

this violence is inherent. Similarly, Ballard’s violence also seems to be innate. The folk of

Sevier County recollect many stories of Ballard, where even as a child, his violence is

evident. One narrator remembers Ballard getting into a dispute with another young boy about

who should get a ball that had rolled into a field, “he [Ballard] punched him in the face.

Blood flew out of the Finney boy’s nose” (18), the narrator states. Another narrator implies

that Ballard’s violence may be inherited from his ancestors, “I remember his gran-daddy”

(80) says the narrator, “He was a by god White Cap. O yes. He was that. Had a younger

brother was one too” (81). Just like the kid, violence appears to exist in Ballard as a built-in

characteristic. Violence is inherent in many of McCarthy’s characters, perhaps suggesting

that the ability to be violent may be inborn in every being. This is made most evident in The

Road where the majority of humankind, when faced with chaos and disaster, descend to a

violent state.

All of McCarthy’s central characters are exposed to extreme deprivation and violence;

however, this culminates in The Road, where humankind no longer has a social framework

and the world has reached the pinnacle of violence. The Road depicts a world in which the

human race has become so depraved that the text is flooded with images of suicide, murder

and cannibalism. However, McCarthy’s bleakest world, where the darkness of humankind is

most profound, is also the novel which provides the most hope for the human race. Thus, a

chronological interpretation of McCarthy’s novels suggests that he has perhaps accepted the

43

William Wordsworth, The Collected Poems of William Wordsworth (Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions,

1994), 79.

42

idea that human morality, albeit evident in only a few individuals, may be able survive in

even the most violent world. Through the relationship between the father and son, we witness

human compassion in The Road and through these good human qualities we are shown that

even the darkest world may not be entirely devoid of human goodness. The relationship

between the father and the son is, as John Cant accurately acknowledges, “the great

difference between The Road and earlier texts” (277).

In Child of God, Ballard struggles to form human relationships and the attempts he makes

to create relationships with other human beings often end disastrously. When Ballard finds “a

lady sleeping under the trees” (41), he tries to assist her, but his attempts to help are

misunderstood and he finds himself wrongly arrested for assaulting her. Indeed, the only

relationship Ballard is capable of creating is that between himself and the bodies of his dead

victims. Ballard establishes a relationship with the first body he encounters: “He poured into

that waxen ear everything he’d ever thought of saying to a woman. Who could say she did

not hear him?” (88-9). From this point onward, Ballard no longer attempts to form

conventional human relationships, with which he has had little success, instead he tries to

fulfil his need for companionship through the community of corpses that he collects.

Similarly, in Blood Meridian, genuine human relationships are nonexistent. Every man in

Blood Meridian fights for himself and even though the main characters travel in a gang,

strong friendships are never formed. Human connections in Blood Meridian are dangerous

and despite spending a large amount of time together, there is no mutual trust among the

people of Glanton’s gang. Camaraderie does not exist within the gang; instead there is

hostility between the characters and they often turn on each other as they fight for their own

survival. When the kid is appointed to kill an injured member of the gang, Dick Shelby,

Shelby tells him “if I had a gun I’d shoot you” (218), emphasising the deficiency of

companionship within the group. However, relationships in The Road starkly contrast those

in McCarthy’s earlier texts. McCarthy not only depicts a genuine human relationship in The

Road, but he portrays perhaps the strongest human relationship possible, the relationship

between a father and his son. This human connection between the man and his child is

evidence to suggest that love and humanity can still be found within a predominantly dark

world. Thus, the depiction of such a meaningful relationship in The Road departs from

McCarthy’s earlier novels and suggests, at the very least, that the world is not entirely bereft

of human goodness.

43

The Road, however, does not only depart from McCarthy’s earlier work through its

depiction of a strong human relationship. Another difference between The Road and the

earlier texts - Child of God and Blood Meridian - lies in the demise of their main characters.

Individual death comes at the end of each of these novels and Ballard, the kid and the father

all die within the last few pages of each of the texts. The deaths of Ballard and the kid leave

us with little hope for humankind, instead the demise of these characters creates a sense of

doom and encourages the belief that violence will prevail in the form of “monsters worse to

come” (194) and the “naked dancing ... judge ... [who] will never die” (353). However, the

death of the father in The Road has a remarkably different effect. Although heart-rending, the

father’s death does not evince the same sense of inevitable ruin. Against all the odds, the

father has instilled morality in the boy and while the boy lives, he remains proof that people

can still be capable of goodness, therefore humankind cannot yet be doomed. Thus,

McCarthy’s decision not to write the death of the boy leaves readers of The Road with rare

feelings of hope and optimism which Child of God and Blood Meridian, despite their

greatness, lack.

Lydia Cooper acknowledges another difference between The Road and McCarthy’s earlier

novels. She notes that whereas McCarthy’s earlier texts, especially Blood Meridian, are “very

much about the worst in human nature ... The Road ... is very much about the absolute best”

(228). However, it is important to acknowledge that the father and son are the only two

beings who value morality in The Road and they wander a largely evil world. Thus, The Road

still remains, like McCarthy’s other universes, overwhelmingly dark. In my view, The Road,

like Child of God and Blood Meridian, is also very much about the worst in human nature,

however it juxtaposes these dark aspects of human nature with examples of human morality,

suggesting that humans have the capacity, albeit a small capacity, for goodness. When we

consider the large population of cannibals in The Road and contrast this to the father and son,

who are the only two characters in the text that we can categorically describe as moral, it is

apparent that there is a larger capacity for evil in human nature than there is for good. Thus,

The Road is not solely about the best in human nature, as the darkest aspects of human nature

are well established in this world.

McCarthy’s novels not only share a profound belief in the darkness of human nature, but

also the belief that human morality, however faint, has not completely gone astray. Here,

there is another similarity. In all three of these novels, each of the protagonists display signs

of moral goodness. Lester Ballard is primarily evil; however his morality is not entirely

44

absent in Child of God. In the end, Ballard decides to return to society, and goes back to the

hospital recognising that he is “supposed to be [t]here” (192). Thus, Ballard chooses morality

instead of returning to his life of violence and this decision suggests that he still has some

awareness of morals. Similar to Ballard, the kid is ultimately corrupt, but he also

demonstrates human goodness. The kid shows a willingness to help others and he saves both

David Brown and Dick Shelby from certain death, thus he too retains some sense of morality.

In The Road, goodness is not so difficult to find and the father and son are obvious examples

of the existence of human morality in a dark world. Thus it is possible to find glimpses of

morality in all of these protagonists and this perhaps suggests, as Lydia Cooper notes, that

“morality in McCarthy’s novels is a function of human nature as much as violence and

depravity are, if a less common function” (14).

The message which Child of God, Blood Meridian and The Road share is that there is an

“awful darkness inside the world” (118) and it is McCarthy’s noticeable assurance of this

“awful darkness” which troubles readers and initiates a search for hope. Indeed, hope for

humankind can be located in all three of these novels, even though it is neither easy to find or

unproblematic. Although it may be challenging, hope for the human race can be found in

Child of God through Lester Ballard and in Blood Meridian through the kid, as well as in The

Road where is it considerably more obvious through the father and son. As readers we

embrace the signs of morality in these characters which, although fragile, provides comfort

and reassurance in awfully dark worlds. Thus, in the end, our hope resides in just a few

individuals who, despite their many struggles and flaws, demonstrate that humankind,

although dark, is not yet entirely corrupt.

45

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