Cormac McCarthy Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

ormac McCarthy’s novel The Road is, among other things, a meditation on morality, what makes human life meaningful, and the relationship between these things and God. While the novel is rife with religious imagery and ideas, it suggests a... more

ormac McCarthy’s novel The Road is, among other things, a meditation on morality, what makes human life meaningful, and the relationship between these things and God. While the novel is rife with religious imagery and ideas, it suggests a conception of morality and meaning that is secular in nature. In this paper I show that while the existence of God remains ambiguous throughout the novel, The Road contains both a clear moral code and a view about what makes life meaningful. I describe this moral code and examine its connection with meaning in life. Along the way, I discuss the struggle of the man and child to live up to the moral code. I then make the case that the views of morality and meaning found in The Road imply that morality does not depend upon God for its existence or justification. Through this discussion, I hope to deepen our understanding both of morality and of The Road.

“The work is everything,” says Ben, the main character of McCarthy’s play The Stonemason, summing up his grandfather Papaw’s view of the craft of the stonemason as the ground of beauty, justice, and truth. Judging from McCarthy’s... more

“The work is everything,” says Ben, the main character of McCarthy’s play The Stonemason, summing up his grandfather Papaw’s view of the craft of the stonemason as the ground of beauty, justice, and truth. Judging from McCarthy’s inclination to indulge in extended descriptions of all sorts of labors and crafts he must, at least in part, agree with his character. As has been noted elsewhere, craftsmanship is a privileged theme in Cormac McCarthy’s oeuvre, and the available archival material proves that the author has always been meticulous in gathering information about the crafts he has set himself to describe, undertaking extensive bibliographical research in all technical aspects and at times seeking help from specialist advisers. Relying on some manuscripts and letters held at the Wittliff Collections in San Marcos, Texas, this article investigates the way McCarthy collaborated with two specialist medical advisers, Dr. Oren Ellis and Dr. Barry King, in the writing of a scene of his novel The Crossing. The intention is to provide insight into McCarthy’s creative process and to further understand the way descriptions of crafts integrate within his overall poetics in what can be defined as an attempt to oversaturate the representation of reality.

Lettura del romanzo "La strada" (The Road) di Cormach McCarthy (2006)

This chapter argues that, despite its defeat, humanity in McCarthy’s novel is buried alive as a resilience of ethics. Filipovic explores McCarthy’s vision of a humanity backed up against its limit. In a colourless landscape of the novel... more

This chapter argues that, despite its defeat, humanity in McCarthy’s novel is buried alive as a resilience of ethics. Filipovic explores McCarthy’s vision of a humanity backed up against its limit. In a colourless landscape of the novel where all distinctions have been burnt to cinders that cover the Earth as the ubiquitous remainder of their absolute destruction, the topography of what makes us human can yet be traced in the ethical intrigue that, in spite of it all, flickers in the ashes and powers the novel. For McCarthy, Filipovic argues, the call of goodness is the gravity of being whose pull, in the end, remains stronger than its fear of death.

In this seminar course, we will closely read four of Cormac McCarthy’s novels: Child of God, Blood Meridian, All the Pretty Horses, and The Road. We will explore these four novels by Cormac McCarthy, engaging in close reading of the texts... more

In this seminar course, we will closely read four of Cormac McCarthy’s novels: Child of God, Blood Meridian, All the Pretty Horses, and The Road.
We will explore these four novels by Cormac McCarthy, engaging in close reading of the texts and exploring their aesthetic, ethical and metaphysical dimensions. Issues covered include:
• violence and the problem of evil
• the role of frontier mythology in American self-identity
• nature, naturalism and science as they relate to the metaphysics of fictional worlds and characters situated within them
• determinism and free will
• the relationship between a literary style and its content.
At the end of the course, you will have a greater understanding of the work of one of the major figures in contemporary literature and how his literary concerns reflect broader currents in contemporary literature, the history of American literature, and the wider cultural sphere. You will be better able to engage in the transferable skills of close reading and critical thinking, thus complementing your core courses in English and contributing to your general Arts education. You will also have learned how to turn your experience of a collective and discursive engagement with works of literature into lucid, persuasive and independent arguments, both verbal and written.

At the heart of McCarthy's novel resides a tremendous interpretive challenge: how can we reconcile the ending, which is hopeful about the future, with the fatalism that dominates the text? This paper explores how Søren Kierkegaard's... more

At the heart of McCarthy's novel resides a tremendous interpretive challenge: how can we reconcile the ending, which is hopeful about the future, with the fatalism that dominates the text? This paper explores how Søren Kierkegaard's treatment of Abraham and Isaac, found in his work, Fear and Trembling, can help elucidate the tension between hope and nihilism in The Road. Based on a note referring to Kierkegaard found in an early draft of McCarthy’s novel, this paper argues that the father in The Road displays an absurd faith in goodness and the future which can be best explained in relation to Kierkegaard's depiction of Abraham’s faith in Fear and Trembling.

Analisi del romanzo "La Strada" (2006) di Cormac McCarthy.

Friedrich Nietzsche once said that “To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.” Cormac McCarthy’s Papa and Boy engage this existential crisis daily in his novel, The Road, as they struggle to continue... more

Friedrich Nietzsche once said that “To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.” Cormac McCarthy’s Papa and Boy engage this existential crisis daily in his novel, The Road, as they struggle to continue their lives in a post-apocalyptic world where all meaning seems to have been lost, all relationships meretricious. The world is now merely a wisp of what once was and we are the tattered strands floating in the wind that still blows.

In order to investigate the saffron yield and its components at different levels of corm size and plant density, an experiment was conducted at East Azerbaijan Agricultural and Natural resources Research Center, as a factorial based on... more

In order to investigate the saffron yield and its components at different levels of corm size and plant density, an experiment was conducted at East Azerbaijan Agricultural and Natural resources Research Center, as a factorial based on randomized complete block design with three replications for two years (2012-2013). First year was considered for better plant establishment. The factors consist of corm sizes based on the corm diameter in two levels (A1=2-4 cm and A2=4-6 cm), planting rows space in three levels (B1=10, B2=20 and B3=30 cm) and corm space within the row in two levels (C1=7 and C2=14 cm). Traits including plant emergence percentage, number of plants and flowers per unit area, length of rod, length of stigma, fresh and dry weight of flowers, fresh and dry weight of stigmas, total stigma yield, the onset of flowering and flowering period were evaluated on the plants. Results showed that all above mentioned traits except length of rod were significantly affected by corm size. Bigger corms showed more emergence percentage and flower fresh weight. Number of plants was significantly affected by the interaction which three factors so that maximum number of plants per unit area was observed at treatment of bigger corms with 10 (cm) corms spacing between rows and 7 (cm) corms spacing within rows. 7 (cm) corms spacing on the row created maximum flower number per unit area. Length of stigma, dry weight of flower, fresh and dry weight of stigma were significantly affected by the interaction between corm size with corms spacing within row so that bigger corms with less spacing were superior. Maximum stigma yield was obtained from the bigger corms in 7 (cm) corm space on the row and 10 (cm) corm space between rows. Flowering of bigger corms began sooner and their flowering period was more than others.

Similarities in the apocalyptic narrative of Beckett and McCarthy

Compares McCarthy's Chigurh to Milton's Mammon.

Blood Meridian is celebrated by various critics as a twentieth century masterpiece. It is also among the most violent books ever published. This article considers the book as a provocation to the reader, a call to reassess one's responses... more

Blood Meridian is celebrated by various critics as a twentieth century masterpiece. It is also among the most violent books ever published. This article considers the book as a provocation to the reader, a call to reassess one's responses and boundaries with regards to the aesthetics of violence. The novel, in this reading, measures its audience's sensibilities through what is looked at, and what is looked away from. McCarthy is not suggesting that all humans are essentially violent, I argue here, but rather that all humans have a fascination with violence, and that this fascination, this compulsion to ritualise and aestheticise violence ought to be investigated.