“The Border Trilogy: A Theology of Loss”
Adam Miller, Department of Philosophy
A. Rationale
Much of my professional research centers on exploring religious phenomena from an immanent
rather than supernatural perspective. Two of my published monographs focus in particular on
“grace” as an ordinary local phenomenon that includes a variety of complex experiences (desire,
suffering, loss, imposition, etc.) that might normally be taken as simply unpleasant or
undesirable.
In this light, Cormac McCarthy’s novels have increasingly drawn my attention as a powerful
exposition of these same themes. McCarthy is universally recognized as one of the greatest (if
not the greatest) of our contemporary American authors. Harold Bloom cited McCarthy’s Blood
Meridian as the single greatest achievement in American fiction since William Faulkner’s As I
Lay Dying. Of all McCarthy’s novels, The Border Trilogy (including All the Pretty Horses, The
Crossing, and Cities of the Plain) addresses theological and metaphysical issues most
substantially. These books collectively model a broadly tragic approach to theology where the
divine is persistently invoked as pervasive even as it is systematically displaced from direct
human experience.
I’ve structured my proposed study plan as an engagement with a range of primary and
secondary texts that will help me to think and write more carefully about the details of
McCarthy’s “theology of loss.” Part of the study plan focuses on careful, critical readings of a
handful of primary texts (especially The Border Trilogy) and part of the plan focuses on a
selection of secondary works designed to help situate McCarthy’s work both literarily and
theologically. I plan to undertake this research during the Fall 2013 semester.
B. Topics and Questions
Several key topics and questions are crucial to the completion of this project:
1. “God” in The Border Trilogy
It will be essential to clarify what “God” amounts to in The Border Trilogy. At what points in
the novels is God explicitly invoked by the narrator? Which characters invoke God in dialogue?
Are these various invocations by a variety of characters compatible or incompatible with each
other? How does God manifest as either present or absent in the narrative?
2. A Tragic Theology
If there is an underlying “theology” at work in McCarthy’s novels, it appears to be tragic. The
power of human intimacy and the power of human expression operate in McCarthy’s work as a
response to loss and suffering, but never as an answer or antidote. Given this, what can we say
about the relationship between God’s different manifestations (in either presence or absence) in
the novels and the different kinds of “losses” experienced by the central characters? To what
extent are human actions responsible for these losses? To what extent are impersonal forces
responsible for these losses? To what extent is a personal God involved in these losses or their
redress? Is there an underlying pattern?
3. Traditional Theology
McCarthy’s language is often described as thoroughly “biblical” in tone and quasi-gnostic in
content. To what extent does McCarthy’s approach to the divine and to human loss resonant in
terms of content with the biblical tradition? With which parts of the biblical cannon does his
work fit best? With which parts of the biblical cannon does it fit least? If McCarthy sometimes
diverges sharply from the biblical cannon in terms of theological content, then what is at stake
when he borrows a biblical tone?
C. Weekly Plan
The following research plan is organized in such a way as to: (1) emphasize a close reading of
five of McCarthy’s most celebrated novels, and (2) supplement this emphasis with five
secondary works that will help provide critical context for interpreting the theological and
metaphysical stakes of The Border Trilogy.
Week 1
Reading: Steven Frye, Understanding Cormac McCarthy
Justification: Frye’s book offers an insightful overview of McCarthy’s entire corpus. It
chronologically traces the development of McCarthy’s corpus from the mid-sixties to the
present day, evaluates changes in style, technique, and themes, situates each novel in relation to
the broader history of English and American literature, and summarizes each text’s critical
reception.
Week 2
Reading: Cormac McCarthy, The Sunset Limited: A Novel in Dramatic Form
Justification: The Sunset Limited is McCarthy’s most explicitly “theological” book. The novel is
bare bones and consists entirely of a dialogue between “White,” a well-educated, upper-class
nihilist, and “Black,” an ex-con who believes that Jesus speaks to him. A close reading of this
short book will set the stage for an investigation of McCarthy’s approach to theological and
metaphysical questions in The Border Trilogy.
Weeks 3-4
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Reading: Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West
Justification: Blood Meridian is McCarthy’s undisputed masterpiece. Blood Meridian is the first
of McCarthy’s “western” novels and the most violent and bleak in his corpus. As such, it
provides both crucial background and counterpoint to the more human and hopeful, though
still tragic, arc of The Border Trilogy.
Week 5
Reading: John Sepich, Notes on Blood Meridian
Justification: Blood Meridian is, as a novel, notoriously dense and layered. To maximize the
usefulness of re-reading Blood Meridian as crucial background for The Border Trilogy, it will
help to spend a week consolidating the ideas and impressions left by the book with a notable
piece of secondary literature.
Week 6-7
Reading: Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses
Justification: All the Pretty Horses is the first novel in The Border Trilogy and won both the
U.S. National Book Award and the National Books Critics Circle Award. All the Pretty Horses
introduces the character of John Grady Cole, a sixteen year-old Texan, who crosses the border
into Mexico in 1949 in search of work as a cowboy and ranch hand. The novel details the
poignant and tragic events that follow, including death, imprisonment, and lost love.
McCarthy’s deft handling of the material, together with a spare, lyrical prose that frequently
veers into the metaphysical, lays the foundation for the rest of what will come in the remaining
two books.
Week 8-10
Reading: Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing
Justification: This second novel, The Crossing, introduces the trilogy’s second main character,
Billy Parham. The novel traces Parham’s independent foray as a New Mexican youth into
Mexico both before and during World War II. Of the three novels, The Crossing reflects most
explicitly and at the greatest length about divinity and our relationship to it. The novel is
organized, in part, around a number of long, set-piece soliloquies in which exotic priests, blind
men, and gypsies lay out for Billy the tragic stakes of human life.
Weeks 11-12
Reading: Cormac McCarthy, The Cities of the Plain
Justification: The Cities of the Plain unites the protagonists of the first two novels. John Grady
Cole and Billy Parham work together as ranch hands on a small ranch in New Mexico. The
novel chronicles a series of trips back and forth across the border into Mexico as Cole attempts
to rescue and marry an epileptic Mexican prostitute. The rescue ends badly with both her and
Cole’s death. Parham is left to work out the remainder of his own life in the wake of these sad
events and the book ends with a long metaphysical conversation between an old and homeless
Parham and a mysterious fellow traveler.
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Week 13
Reading: Arnold and Luce, A Cormac McCarthy Companion: The Border Trilogy
Justification: This edited collection of general, secondary appraisal of The Border Trilogy will
help clarify the complex lines of relationship between the three novels, identify central themes,
and highlight the main elements of critical interest.
Week 14
Reading: Manuel Broncano, Religion in Cormac McCarthy’s Fiction: Apocryphal Borderlands
Justification: Broncano’s study will supply essential background for assessing the explicitly
religious dimensions of McCarthy’s fiction.
Week 15
Reading: Hanna Boguta-Marchel, The Evil, the Fated, the Biblical: The Latent Metaphysics of
Cormac McCarthy
Justification: This final secondary work will similarly help locate the veins of theological and
metaphysical ore running through the foundations of McCarthy’s narratives while providing a
helpful baseline against which my own assessment can be measured.
D. Outcomes
This research will generate the basic material necessary for the publication of at least one
scholarly article. Furthermore, this research will also benefit my teaching. As my understanding
of these particular questions deepens, my understanding of the general philosophical and
theological issues involved will also be broadened. In general, an enthusiastic engagement in
scholarly research naturally translates into an enthusiastic engagement in the classroom.
E. Bibliography
Arnold, Edwin and Dianne Luce. A Cormac McCarthy Companion: The Border Trilogy.
Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001.
Boguta-Marchel, Hanna. The Evil, the Fated, the Biblical: The Latent Metaphysics of Cormac
McCarthy. London: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012.
Broncano, Manuel. Religion in Cormac McCarthy’s Fiction: Apocryphal Borderlands. New
York: Routledge, 2013.
McCarthy, Cormac. All the Pretty Horses. New York: Vintage, 1993.
------. Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West. New York: Vintage, 1992.
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------. Cities of the Plain. New York: Vintage, 1999.
------. The Crossing. New York: Vintage, 1995.
------. The Sunset Limited: A Novel in Dramatic Form. New York: Vintage, 2006.
Frye, Steven. Understanding Cormac McCarthy. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press,
2009.
Sepich, John. Notes on Blood Meridian. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008.
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