Cormac McCarthy
1933-present
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 Naturalist
“There’s no such thing as life without bloodshed. I think the
notion that a species can be improved in some way, that
everyone could live in harmony, is a really dangerous idea.
Those who are afflicted with this notion are the first ones to
give up their souls, their freedom. Your desire that it be this
way will enslave you and make your life vacuous”
(Woodward 30)
McCarthy’s dark philosophy is based
around the existence of a impersonal
force of pure evil found both inside of us
and surrounding us. This evil leads to
the inevitable bloodshed all creatures
are doomed to face.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhXJcfczNIc
 What is he talking about when he says “you’ve
been putting it up your whole life you just
didn’t know it”
 What does the fact that it is just another coin
show? The coin don’t have no say it’s just you
 What does this shopkeeper’s undeserving
encounter show?
Born July 20th 1933
Moved to Knoxville
Moved by surroundings
“What happened in these shacks fueled
his imagination more than anything that
happened inside his own family”
(Woodward 31)
Joined Navy
Several awards
 “appreciates wildness—in animals, landscapes, and
people—and although he is a well born, well spoken, well
read man of 58 (78 now) years, he has spent most of his
adult life outside the ring of the campfire” (Woodward 28)
 “Aware that gifted American writers don't have to
endure the kind of neglect and hardship that have
been his, McCarthy has chosen to be hard headed
about the terms of his success. As he commemorated
what is passing from memory-the lore, people and
language of a pre-modern age-he seems immensely
proud to be the kind of writer who has almost ceased
to exist” (Woodward 31)
I have only one way to live. It doesn’t allow special cases.
A coin toss perhaps. In this case to small purpose. Most people
don’t believe that there can be such a person. You can see what a
problem that must be for them. How to prevail over that which you
refuse to acknowledge the existence of. Do you understand?
When I came into your life your life was over. It had a beginning, a
middle, and an end. This is the end. You can say things could have
turned out differently. That they could have been some other way.
But what does that mean? They are not some other way. They are
this way. You’re asking that I second say the world. Do you see?
Yes, She said, sobbing. I do. I truly do.
Good, he said. That’s good. Then he shot her.
“the characters in Carson McCueller’s work
made those in the Faulkner canon look like
“the folks next door,” but such tame
comparisons are meaningless when one
comes to speak of McCarthy’s personae”
(Sullivan 342)
Do you think God knows what’s happenin?
I expect he does.
You think he can stop it?
No. I don’t.
“When, past his crisis, he speaks with an attending priest he tells him
that what he has learned close to death is that god ‘is not a thing.
Nothing ever stops moving.’”
The papers said it was a crime of passion but there wasn’t passion to it.
He’d been dating this girl, young as she was. He was nineteen. And he
told me he had been plannin to kill somebody for about as long as he
could remember. Said that if they turned him out he’d do it again. Said
he knew he was goin to hell. Told it to me out of his own mouth. I don’t
know what to make of that. I surely don’t…I really believe he knew he
was going to be in hell in fifteen minutes. I believe that. And I’ve
thought about it a lot. He was not hard to talk to. Called me sheriff. But
I didn’t know what to say to him. What do you say to a man that by his
own admission has no soul?