Cormac McCarthy (J. Bell)

The purpose of this presentation is to identify elements of nihilism and Biblical allusions in Cormac McCarthy's The Road. The paper will also reveal a relationship between the different features and explore McCarthy's perception of human existence.    

Abstract -- While most scholars in the field recognize that several of Cormac McCarthy’s novels are replete with allusions W. B. Yeats, they seem to have missed the fact that McCarthy is not simply engaging with Yeats’s poetics. More accurately, McCarthy is engaging with Yeats’s entire metaphysical project. For both Yeats and McCarthy, metaphysics and poetics are inextricably entwined. Therefore a productive analysis of either author depends upon an understanding of the metaphysical assumptions that underlie their literary productions.

This paper attempts to explore Lester Ballard--the central character of McCarthy's Child of God--using Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents in order to understand/explain Ballard's search for happiness removed from normal society. 

I am a PhD student at the University of Texas at Arlington, focusing on 20th century American literature and the literature of the American Southwest. I have previously presented at SWTX PCA/ACA on place and identity in McMurtry's The Last Picture Show.