Exploring the Literary Wasteland of Cormac McCarthy through William Faulkner and Joseph Campbell
Cormac McCarthy, especially in his earlier novels, was inspired heavily by the works of William Faulkner. The major theme that both writers shared was the concept of sin and the extent to which the novel’s characters purify themselves of it. In Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces, this purification is done by the hero through a sacrificial ritual that sheds his former identity for a new one at the end of the process. Like Campbell’s example of Theseus slaying the Minotaur, this process is often violent. This violence is then deemed necessary for the sake of the ritual and the greater good it serves.
Unlike Campbell, however, the justification of violence in Light in August is questioned. Due to their socio-political biases, mainly racism, the characters in Light in August have differing views on whether or not miscegenation is a sin. The maintenance of the pure bloodline of whites is deemed integral by the residents of Jefferson to create their perceived ideal future for the South. To make their disillusioned utopia, violent acts that cleanse society from miscegenation are socially accepted. Faulkner uses Joe Christmas in Light in August to expose this disillusionment. Joe Christmas was abandoned at an orphanage after his family disowned him for being part-black. While the truth behind his parentage is never discovered, the sociological implications of being a mulatto shape his identity for the rest of his life. Once Joe Brown accuses Christmas of being part-black, the townsfolk form a lynching mob to kill Christmas. Despite his struggles, Christmas is captured and castrated before being brutally murdered. The removal of the reproductive organ by the lynch mob further supports Campbell’s model of sacrificial ritual as the primary purpose of killing Christmas is to prevent the creation of mulattos. Unlike Campbell’s model, however, the absence of a morally justified reason for the sacrifice only exposes the immorality of the Jefferson residents while unveiling the actual sin in the narrative that caused the tragic death of Joe Christmas, racism.
The theme of sin and cleansing rituals is widely observed throughout Cormac McCarthy’s Outer Dark. In the novel’s beginning, Culla and Rinthy Holmes commit incest, a primal sin resulting in a hideous baby that Culla abandons in the woods. The curselike nature of sin is extremified in Outer Dark. In fact, it is personified as a mysterious trio that incessantly stalks the siblings in their journey while bringing them endless misfortune. Culla is ousted from every community and often accused of committing crimes done by the trio. Rinthy, while receiving more hospitable treatment from the strangers, is still unable to settle in a place as she is obsessed with pursuing the impossible quest of finding her monstrous offspring. At the novel’s end, the child is found and killed in a ritual-esque fashion, and the siblings seemingly look like they have been freed from their curse. Upon closer examination, however, one can see that there is no change in the siblings’ fate from this sacrifice. Culla Holmes continues to wander in the epilogue in an eerily similar environment that he was at the beginning of the novel. Culla’s hesitant, indecisive personality at the novel’s beginning is revealed to have not changed when he refuses to warn the blind man of the swamp ahead of his path. The staticity of both character and narrative development leaves the reader wondering if the ritual was indeed successful or even necessary. In Light in August, readers are encouraged to utilize their own moral compass to identify the true sin of racism and condemn the unnecessary sacrifice of Joe Christmas. For Outer Dark, Christopher Nelson identifies the difficulty in using conventional morals to invalidate the sacrifice of the child like one can do with Faulkner’s novel. The danger of this invalidation lies with the erratic behavior of the trio that acts as the alleged curse. Their wanton and cruel killing of random bystanders contradicts the role of a vengeful spirit that punishes the siblings for their transgression. With the failure of applying Campbell’s framework, readers are left behind with a morally ambiguous wasteland that McCarthy elaborates on in his later work, Blood Meridian.
Returning to Faulkner, Light in August does not stop at the death of Joe Christmas and instead explores the sin’s transference to younger generations through filial, notably patrilineal, inheritance. During Lena’s birth, Joe Christmas’ grandmother misidentifies the newborn child as “Joe.” Mary Carden suggests that this delirious mislabeling possesses an ulterior meaning. As Joe Christmas was a name given to him by the people of the orphanage to ridicule his mixed blood, the name consequently embodies the sin of racism that plagues Jefferson. As such, Christmas’ grandmother’s mislabeling of the child insinuates the continuance of racism and its malpractices through younger generations. This ominous portent, fortunately, does not seem likely as Byron Bunch is free from the biases of racism and will consequently not pass down its curses to their child.
Scholars such as Petra Mundik assert that Blood Meridian is a modern Gnostic epic where the kid acts as a tragic hero who struggles in the demiurge’s hostile lands. In Blood Meridian, the moral wasteland seems to take center stage as McCarthy as he narrates the carnage of the Glanton gang led by Judge Holden. Often nihilist views seen through the Judge’s sermons to the gang, along with the hostile wasteland in which the story takes place, seem to support the existence of a Gnostic narrative. It is irrefutable that the Judge follows the Campbell model of sacrifice throughout the novel. Unlike the trio in Outer Dark, the Judge kills for specific purposes. All of his victims follow the moralist ideology of modern civilization, and his desire to uproot the system is apparent through his obsession with raping and murdering children, the future of any society. Mundik identifies the Judge’s tendency and links it to a behavior of an archon, the servant of the demiurge that removes any beings that can see past the worldly illusion and transcend above its master’s evil world.
Mundik’s observation only works if the entire landscape upholds the nihilistic philosophy of Judge Holden. The kid is saved twice by some natural, mystical occurrences with strong allusions to the Old Testament. When he wanders the desert with no water, he runs into a rock with flowing water, much like the Hebrews in Exodus. When he is stranded alone in the darkness, a burning tree keeps him safe from the deadly creatures held at bay by the flames. These are two evident contradictions to the Gnostic narrative where there are active, merciful aspects of this otherwise hostile world. It is also worth noting the way that McCarthy introduces the Judge. With eloquent speeches, he successfully slanders a wandering preacher to be lynched. No matter how powerful, the Judge’s words are not to be trusted as dogma and can hardly be used as a reliable method to illustrate the world.
Perhaps because the kid identifies these irregularities, he rejects the Judge’s temptation until the very end. His confession to the mummified corpse as if she is praying seems to imply that he seeks redemption from the sins he committed in the Glanton gang. As the Judge’s redemption is sure damnation, the kid seeks alternative methods until he becomes “the man.” And here is where one can encounter the true tragedy of the novel. The kid cannot find someone to mimic and be redeemed as he wanders around until death carrying a bible he cannot read.
