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Apocalypse in the Novels of Cormac Mccarthy

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Apocalypse in the Novels of Cormac Mccarthy “The Salitter drying from the earth”: Apocalypse in the novels of Cormac McCarthy A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in English in the University of Canterbury by Christopher Yee University of Canterbury 2010 Contents Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................... 3 Abstract ..................................................................................................................................... 4 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 5 1. Apocalypse ........................................................................................................................ 6 2. Manifest Destiny ............................................................................................................... 8 3. Overview of Chapters...................................................................................................... 12 Chapter One: Apocalyptic Time in Blood Meridian ............................................................... 18 1. Resistance of linear time: Holden and the narrator ......................................................... 20 2. The Kid ............................................................................................................................ 32 3. The Epilogue ................................................................................................................... 39 Chapter Two: Apocalypse without hope in All the Pretty Horses and No Country for Old Men ................................................................................................................................................. 43 1. All the Pretty Horses ....................................................................................................... 45 (i) The eruption of modernity .......................................................................................... 48 (ii) John Grady and old codes in a New World ............................................................... 52 (iii) Alfonsa: History as a puppet show ........................................................................... 55 2. No Country for Old Men ................................................................................................. 59 (i) The disappearance of the frontier ............................................................................... 60 (ii) Chigurh and Determinism ......................................................................................... 64 (iii) Sheriff Bell and Nostalgia ........................................................................................ 68 Chapter Three: Renewal without God in The Road ................................................................ 73 1. The Road’s eschatology .................................................................................................. 76 2. Godless Landscapes ........................................................................................................ 79 3. The Man .......................................................................................................................... 82 4. The Boy ........................................................................................................................... 89 5. Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 95 Works Cited............................................................................................................................. 99 Acknowledgements First I would like to thank my supervisor Paul Millar, whose support and guidance of my thesis has been instrumental. My project would not be what it is today without his advice and encouragement. I would also like to thank John Newton for offering a fresh perspective on my thesis. I am grateful to the University of Canterbury for their support. Thank you Jennifer Middendorf for her administrative assistance. I would like to thank my mum and step-dad for their support, both emotional and financial, and for always providing a place to retreat to when things got hectic. Thank you to my friends Rich, Liv, Sam, Sync, Grant, and Rakesh for their wisdom and assurance that I would see this through to the end. Thanks Melissa for the weekly lunches (and thesis rants). Thanks Jeffrey, my office buddy, for putting up with me for two years and offering his invaluable advice when I needed it. 3 Abstract In this thesis, I analyse four novels by Cormac McCarthy through the lens of Apocalypse theory. Looking at his later, south-western, novels Blood Meridian , All the Pretty Horses , No Country for Old Men and The Road , I examine to what extent they respond to biblical and secular apocalyptic ideologies and narrative tropes. Particular attention is paid to the distinction between biblical apocalypse and secular, or nihilistic, apocalypse. The former draws its framework from the Book of Revelation, and entails a war between Heaven and Hell, the rule of the Anti-Christ and God’s final judgement. Although cataclysmic, a biblical apocalypse also promises worldly renewal through the descent of New Jerusalem. Thus, the end of the world was a desirable, rather than dreaded, event. However, as the world moved into the twentieth century, and we saw modernity give birth to weapons of global destruction, apocalyptic attitudes became pessimistic. The belief that God would save the world from corruption quickly gave way to an entropic end, in which human civilisation will simply collapse into nothingness. I consider McCarthy’s south-west fiction within these opposing apocalyptic ideas, and demonstrate how the four novels build a line of history that begins with Blood Meridian’s Manifest Destiny and ends with The Road’s nuclear bomb. I argue that McCarthy explores both biblical and nihilistic apocalyptic modes before combining them in The Road , which I argue offers a new apocalyptic mode: renewal and salvation without God. Within this context, I argue against common interpretations of McCarthy as a completely nihilistic writer with no vested anthropological concerns. Through these four novels, I instead suggest he negotiates between biblical and nihilistic apocalyptic modes before coming to the conclusion, in The Road , that hope exists. 4 Introduction “It is supposed to be true that those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it. I dont believe knowing can save us.” (Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses 239) The Dueña Alfonsa of Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses claims that “[w]hat 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” (241). This bleak interpretation of history ostensibly aligns itself with a nihilistic dialectic that characterises much of McCarthy’s fiction. Yet instead of promoting a cycle of perpetuating violence, as implied in the epigraph, the novels studied in this thesis move towards an end, which contains either the promise of renewal or a worldly collapse into unredeemable chaos. Nevertheless, I would argue that there is something intrinsically apocalyptic about McCarthy’s fiction, and it is from this viewpoint that this thesis will investigate his work. Focussing on the novels Blood Meridian , All the Pretty Horses , No Country for Old Men and The Road , I will consider how apocalyptic thought, ideology and theory inform and contextualize these narratives. Specifically, I will look at how each novel responds to two different apocalyptic ideologies, and how they build in chronological sequence to create an interpretation of history that appears to end with The Road . To situate my argument, I will first provide an overview of apocalyptic thought as traditionally expressed in fiction. Additionally, as these chosen novels predominately take place in the American south-west, I will examine how they draw inspiration from the defining tropes of the western genre, the history of Manifest Destiny, the 5 role of the cowboy, and the closing of the frontier. I will unify these approaches to McCarthy’s fiction by identifying parallels between apocalyptic ideology and frontier theory. 1. Apocalypse History in apocalyptic thought is teleological rather than cyclical, the prevailing idea being that time moves linearly towards an end that will make sense of all that has come before it. While the idea of history bereft of a final destination might be perfectly logical, Malcolm Bull argues that “infinite duration is difficult to conceive, and the notion of eternal aimlessness repugnant to the moral imagination” (1). Thus, the popularity of apocalypse to the narrative imagination comes from an intrinsic need for completion. Lois Parkinson Zamora reiterates this by suggesting stories or prophecies of apocalypse “symbolically satisfy the desire of the apocalyptist and his audience for control over the otherwise intractable movement and meaning of history” (13). Against the satisfaction of such narrative modes, the apocalyptic mind addresses the dissatisfaction of chaos. The strength of apocalyptic thought is apparent by its resilience in the face of history’s attempts to negate it. Since apocalypse is yet to come into being, narratives concerning the end always take the form of prophecy. From the early teachings of Zoroaster,
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