Animal Presentation in the Fiction of Cormac Mccarthy
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ANIMAL PRESENTATION IN THE FICTION OF CORMAC MCCARTHY by WALLIS SANBORN, B.A., M.A. A DISSERTATION IN ENGLISH Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Approved Chairperson of the Cpmniittee 't^&'"' •^*- Accepted Dean of the Graduate School May, 2003 Copyright 2003, Wallis R. Sanborn, III ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express special thanks to Dr. Patrick W. Shaw of Texas Tech University, without whom this trek into Cormac McCarthy's fiction might never have begun, or ended. Dr. Shaw's critical commentary helped the document evolve. As well, his personal assistance helped this author professionally and personally. Additionally, I would like to thank the other members of my committee. Dr. Wendell Aycock and Dr. BJ Manriquez, who provided advice and support throughout the evolution of this project. As well, I would like to thank Dr. Davis Troyansky for his critical commentary regarding my early drafts of this project. To those professors and staff who assisted me through my graduate school career, I am deeply indebted: Mary Valdez, Carolyn Cook, Daryl Lynn Davalos, and Juanita Ramirez, your help has been invaluable; Drs. Don Rude, Bruce Clarke, Michael Schoenecke, Bill Wenthe, Jill Patterson, Doug Crowell, Bryce Conrad, and Madonne Miner, you all have changed my hfe. To the members ofthe Cormac McCarthy Society who assisted me with commentary or advice, thank you: Rick Wallach, Robert Jarrett, James Bell, and John Wegner. As well, I would like to thank the various participants in the Cormac McCarthy Area at the 2002 and 2003 Southwest/Texas Meetings ofthe Popular Culture and American Culture Associations. The critical advice gleaned at these particular meetings proved to be quite valuable and useful to me. 11 I would also like to thank the Graduate School at Texas Tech University for the chance to fiirther my education. Finally, I would like to offer thanks to Laura Sanborn, my former wife, and Thomas Sanborn, my son, whose patience when I was working greatly assisted in the completion of this project. I'm nearly done y'all; I promise. HI TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ii ABSTRACT v CHAPTER L INTRODUCTION 1 II. ANIMALS AND DEATH IN THE GARDENER'S SON, THE STONEMASON, "BOUNTY," AND "THE DARK WATERS' 19 IIL ^m^mEY^TERAKCYiY Y^ THE ORCHARD KEEPER 36 IV. SWINE AS HARBINGERS OF mmAi^imAlTim OUTER DARK 61 V. BOVINES AND LEVITY IN CfflLZ) OF GOi) 87 VL BIRDS AND BATS IN Si/rmEE 112 VIL CANINE HIERARCHY IN 5ZC>6>Z)M£i?/i)Z4V. 136 VIIL HORSES AS WARRIORS IN ^irH£:Pi?£r7T//Oi?S£5 159 IX. WOLVES AS METAPHOR FOR MAN'S CONTROL OVER THE NATURAL WORLD IN THE CiJO^S/ATG 180 X. THE HUNT AS BALLET IN C/HEi'OF r/ffiPZ^/A^. 203 XL CONCLUSION 229 LIST OF REFERENCES 240 IV ABSTRACT Little textual criticism exists regarding the presentation of non-human creatures in the Cormac McCarthy oeuvre. However, the abundance of zoology in the texts offers more than enough breadth and depth to make scholarly study worthwhile, for McCarthy's literature contains a panoptic ofthe beastly world, and as McCarthy's work deals with an ongoing, ceaseless battle for survival, non-human animals—wild, feral, and domestic— exist in a constant stmggle for survival. As such, the animals in the text exist within McCarthy's fictional natural world, a world driven by biological determinism. Consequently, wild animals prey upon feral and domestic animals, horses exist as warriors, and the hunt is a ballet between man and hunting hound. Furthermore, hierarchies exist within geni, so that proximity to and dependence upon man results in mistreatment and death, while distance from man results in survival and fitness; for instance, both felines and canines can be categorized hierarchically by the degree of their association with man and their domesticity. McCarthy also utilizes non-human animals within a text to serve as harbingers that preface specific textual events. Hogs, for example, are harbingers of human death. McCarthy uses human treatment of non-human animals to evidence man's absolute desire to control the namral world and the beasts within the namral world. McCarthy repeatedly offers scenes that argue man's obsession for dominion over flying animals, avians and bats in particular, and many passages lament and articulate the expulsion and extinction ofthe Mexican gray wolf from the Southwestem United States; if man cannot control an animal, through capture and domestication, man will attempt to kill that animal. Man's desire to kill or control is also presented in lighter tones; bovines, stubborn and stupid, are devices of levity, with which McCarthy contrasts scenes of gmesome seriousness. Universally, McCarthy's human characters possess a need to control the fauna that exists in the natural world. In the text, felines, canines and horses are used as devices to present and argue biological determinism; swine are harbingers of human death; birds, bats, wolves, and bovines are receptors of man's obsession with control ofthe natural world. VI CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION The literature of Cormac McCarthy has been critically studied as Literature ofthe South and as Literature ofthe Border Southwest. While articles, anthologies and book- length studies have been devoted to McCarthy's body of work, little textual criticism exists regarding the omnipresence and presentation of non-human creatures in the McCarthy oeuvre. However, the abundance of zoology in the texts offers more than enough breadth and depth to make scholarly study worthwhile. McCarthy's literature contains a panoptic ofthe beastly world, and as McCarthy's work deals with an ongoing, ceaseless battle for survival, non-human animals—^wild, feral, stock, and domestic—exist in this battle for survival, as human characters do as well. As such, the animals in the text exist within McCarthy's fictional natural world, a world driven by biological determinism. Consequently, wild animals prey upon feral and domestic animals, horses exist as warriors, and the hunt is a ballet between man and hunting hound. Furthermore, hierarchies exist within geni so that proximity to and dependence upon man results in misfreatment and death, while distance from man results in survival and fitness; for instance, both felines and canines can be categorized hierarchically by the degree of their association with man and their domesticity. McCarthy also utilizes non-human animals within a text to serve as harbingers that preface specific types of events m the text. Repeatedly, the appearance in the text of a specific type of animal will signify a specific textual event to follow. Hogs, for example, are easily identifiable as harbingers of death, and specifically here, as harbingers of human death. Hogs appear in the text, and humans are killed by malice or accident. Hogs and human death become so analogous that McCarthy's narrator and characters explicitly posit the theory that hogs are conjoined to the devil for particular evil purpose. Thematically, McCarthy uses human treatment of non-human animals to evidence man's absolute desire to control the namral world and the beasts within it. In particular, McCarthy repeatedly offers scenes that argue man's obsession for dominion over flying animals, avians and bats in particular. Further, the many passages that lament and articulate the expulsion and extinction ofthe Mexican Gray Wolf from the Southwestem United States show man's abject ability to extinguish that which he cannot control and domesticate. If man cannot control an animal, man will attempt to kill that animal— individually, collectively or cumulatively. This desire by man to control or kill is also presented in lighter tones; bovines, stubborn and stupid, are often devices of levity, with which McCarthy confrasts scenes of gmesome seriousness. Universally, McCarthy's human characters possess a need to confrol the fauna—in the air, on land, or in the water—that exists in the natural world. Clearly, McCarthy utilizes non-human animals within his texts for a variety of purposes. Specifically, felines, canines and horses are used as devices to present and argue biological determinism. Swine are harbingers that preface human death. Birds, bats, wolves, and bovines are receptors of man's obsession with control ofthe natural world, and, uiuquely, hunting hounds are vehicles with which man confrols the natural world. This study is an effort to apply the above tetra-partite animal based thesis to McCarthy's body of work (Excluding "Wake for Susan" and "A Drownkig hicident") on a text-by-text basis, in order to better understand tiie author's presentation of anknals in tiie text; in each ofthe examples here, animals and death are conjoined in the texts, and tiie theme of death is the unifying theme in McCarthy's textual presentation of animals. The first analytical chapter examines animal presentation and death m 77?^ Stonemason, The Gardener's Son, and two rarely discussed "short stories,' "Bounty" and "The Dark Waters." The following eight chapters focus on one text, The Orchard Keeper to Cities ofthe Plain, one animal—^felkie, swine, bovine, avian, canine, equine, lupine, hound— and one sub-thesis which exists under the unifying theme of death. Each chapter also briefly examines the specific chapter-animal, as it exists in other McCarthy texts and other works of literature Working Terms As this study is a literary one and not a scientific one, an extended glossary is not necessary. How^ever, a very limited number of working terms need to be explicated. Biological Determinism refers to events that are causally determined by natural laws, which are, themselves, determined by a combination of environment and genetics; animals—genetic products—of all types, that endlessly stmggle for survival, are victims of environmental forces beyond thek confrol or understanding.