East Tennessee State University Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University Undergraduate Honors Theses Student Works 5-2013 McCarthy's Outer Dark and Child of God as Works of Appalachian Gothic Fiction. Ava E. Gooding East Tennessee State University Follow this and additional works at:https://dc.etsu.edu/honors Part of theLiterature in English, North America Commons Recommended Citation Gooding, Ava E., "McCarthy's Outer Dark and Child of God as Works of Appalachian Gothic Fiction." (2013).Undergraduate Honors Theses.Paper 79. https://dc.etsu.edu/honors/79 This Honors Thesis - Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Works at Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Undergraduate Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University. For more information, please [email protected]. McCARTHY’S OUTER DARK AND CHILD OF GOD AS WORKS OF APPALACHIAN GOTHIC FICTION Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of Honors By Ava Gooding The Honors College English Honors in Discipline Program East Tennessee State University April 23, 2013 Dr. Michael Cody, Faculty Mentor Dr. Jesse Graves, Faculty Reader Dr. Tom Lee, Faculty Reader Gooding 1 Chapter 1: Introduction The Gothic imagination might be said to have been around since the first unsettling stories were told around a fire. The modern idea of the Gothic novel, however, originated in Europe near the end of the 1700s, in part as a reaction against the formality of Neoclassical writing. The European Gothic style worked with what existed in the writer’s environment to create suspense in readers. Settings were often castles or abbeys fallen into ruin, full of dark unexplored places such as dungeons or basements. In addition to the elements of gloom presented by the setting, Gothic novels also usually prey upon the reader’s fear of the unknown, adding to the overall suspense of the piece with characters from unknown backgrounds or ancient prophecies and family mysteries. The Gothic novel can often seem overwrought and melodramatic, with emotions played to the utmost to engage the reader. The main purpose of these Gothic pieces is to thrill the reader through its elements of superstition and fear. Gooding 2 American Gothic literature developed at first as a natural extension of Gothic literature in Europe. It wasn’t long, however, before both authors and readers realized that the devices used in American novels “should differ essentially from those which exist in Europe” (Brown). Castles in Connecticut simply weren’t believable, and it was impossible to have centuries-old family legends wreaking supernatural havoc when the country was so new. Instead, American writers began to focus on elements of their situation and society that provoked unease. American Gothic literature came to be typified by exposure to the wilderness, isolation, religious guilt, and strangeness in the familiar, as well as more psychological fears. No longer were the dangers all external; much of the threat in American Gothic novels was self-inflicted, due to a character’s own psychological instabilities (such as in Charles Brockden Brown’s short story “Somnambulism” or Shirley Jackson’s novel The Haunting of Hill House). Furthermore, the protagonists often reach their demise by their inability to think logically, a direct contradiction to the Enlightenment movement prizing logic and rational thinking as means of liberating the self. As the country expanded westward, so did the imaginations of writers and their audiences. Capitalizing on natural fears, Frontier Gothic novels focused on a fear of wild, untamed spaces. In these works there is an emphasis on the unknown and the unclaimed. Anxiety is created by being lost in the woods, or not knowing what might be in the woods with you. Instead of nature as a peaceful place to reconnect with the self, nature is an embodiment of the unkempt mind, a mind that actively resists the influences of civilization and the efforts of others to mold it. Gooding 3 While American Gothic and Frontier Gothic literature have long existed across a broad literary spectrum, the Gothic novel in America has become even more diversified with elements unique to locales. Southern literature in particular has become practically synonymous with American Gothic, with authors like Flannery O’Connor and William Faulkner being recognized internationally for their literature. The Southern Gothic narrative introduces more complicated social dynamics, with the South’s history of violence and slavery. Much of Southern Gothic literature focuses on repressed guilt, channeled through twisted religion that haunts a character’s every action. The characters in these novels suffer from being surrounded by the grotesque in a culture that emphasizes seclusion and violence. The Appalachian Mountains inspire a unique type of gothic writing, which combines elements of both Frontier Gothic and Southern Gothic literature. Appalachian Gothic emphasizes the isolation of groups of people who live in the mountains, as well as the social conflicts that are amplified in the Appalachians, such as racism, poverty, and clannish religious and family dynamics. The mountains serve as an identifying feature in these novels, as they limit the characters in terms of social interaction, geographical mobility, and psychological openness. The forests and hollows and caves of the Appalachians insulate the characters, removing them from the outside world, and they also provide a barrier. Much like in the Frontier Gothic, landscape represents an untamed space, one that is frightening to outsiders, and resistant to the change they might bring. Appalachian Gothic novels tend to center on darker themes, with the characters suffering from an inability to change their own fates, driven perhaps by the Gooding 4 stagnation of their minds plagued by ancestral guilt. These novels use disturbing characters and derelict settings to display the ugly events, their causes and effects, which stem from the cultural elements of isolation, violence, poverty, racism, and guilt. While Appalachian Gothic novels continue to gain notoriety through modern works by Ron Rash and Wiley Cash, the author who laid the foundation for this genre was Cormac McCarthy. Born in the 1930s, he relocated with his family at a young age to the northeast corner of Tennessee, and he continued to live there into his adult life. His first published novel, The Orchard Keeper, focused on the Appalachian region, exploring social problems through the lens of the Gothic. Since then he has published several other novels in the Gothic vein. In his later works, McCarthy shifts away from Appalachian literature, maintaining his Gothic origins but instead portraying them in a Western setting. Outer Dark and Child of God, his second and third novels respectively, remain his most clearly Appalachian novels, both in setting and theme. In both Outer Dark and Child of God, McCarthy does a masterful job of blending the elements of Appalachian Gothic to present a novel that is darkly suspenseful and grimly thought-provoking. Outer Dark focuses on the complex incestuous relationship between a brother and sister and their interaction with others. The novel follows the two on a journey through the wilderness where they must cope with the unknown qualities of that wilderness, as well as the guilt stemming from their own behaviors. In Child of God, McCarthy explores the grotesque nature of a life lived in isolation and poverty in the mountains. This novel focuses more on an individual descent into the gruesome depths that illustrate the main character’s depravity. In these two novels Gooding 5 McCarthy examines the darker side of life in Appalachia, and forces readers to question the purpose and meaning for the characters’ lives and actions. Chapter 2: Outer Dark, Child of God, and the Appalachian Gothic Outer Dark is McCarthy’s first novel firmly rooted in the Appalachian region, and it uses elements of the Appalachian Gothic to create a horror story with a purpose. Set in northeastern Tennessee, the novel follows the journey of two main characters through the wilderness. These two are siblings, isolated together in the mountains and embroiled in an incestuous relationship. Culla Holmes is the brother, and Rinthy is the sister. The novel opens with the end stages of Rinthy’s pregnancy. Isolated from society, as well as any other kind of familial influence, the two have produced a child. After the birth, while Rinthy recovers, Culla takes the newborn and abandons it in the woods, telling his sister “It died” (25). When Rinthy discovers this deceit, she sets off in search of her lost infant; her only goal is to find the tinker that, as her sole point of contact with the outside world, she is sure must have taken her child. Rinthy encounters a variety of people on her journey to find her son, all of whom go out of their way to help her. She is often fed and housed when all she asks for is a glass of water. It isn’t until she finds the tinker that she is treated cruelly, as he discovers the truth behind the infant’s parentage. Gooding 6 When Rinthy leaves home, Culla leaves as well, though his motives are unclear. While Rinthy often finds acceptance and kindness from the people she meets, Culla meets with nothing but suspicion and hostility from everyone he encounters. After he meets with the trio of outlaws who haunt the story with their acts of violence, they seemingly pursue him through the landscape until their final encounter with him and his thrown away child at the end of the novel. Child of God explores some of the same issues as Outer Dark (albeit more graphically): the inadequate nature of the words “good” and “evil,” as well as the necessity for transcending the need for these words. Child of God follows the descent of a man, Lester Ballard, through the depths of moral depravity as McCarthy forces his readers to grapple with an inherent desire to dismiss the novel as unnecessarily depraved and with no basis in reality. Our first introduction to Lester Ballard is during the auction of his house. The county has either foreclosed or condemned his land, it isn’t clear what has happened, and they are now auctioning it off. Lester is introduced as a "small, unclean, unshaven" man, who is watching the scene unfold before him (Child of God 4). This description of him fits in with the scene that is unfolding. He is powerless to stop the actions of the people around him; he is “small” and cannot even hold on to what has belonged to him and his family. McCarthy goes on to say that Lester is a “child of God” (4), much like the reader may be. McCarthy creates sympathy for Lester, while at the same time indicating his place in society. The auctioneer clearly looks down on him, both literally (from the back of his truck) and figuratively in his sneering contempt and lack of concern for the Gooding 7 gun Lester carries. Throughout the first section of the novel, McCarthy intersperses narration of Lester’s actions with accounts of Lester as told by the people who live in the nearby town of Sevierville. Even though Lester may be a “child of God,” it is clear that the townspeople do not view him in the same way that they view themselves, and that they have created their own mythology for him, even before he becomes the perpetrator of immoral actions. It is through the townspeople’s narratives that we learn the little of Lester’s background that we are privy to as readers. One person describes how as an adolescent Lester assaulted a child who wouldn’t do what he wanted (18) and another describes how Lester found his father dead—a suicide (21). It is in this narration that we begin to see the origins for Lester’s fascination with watching things. He watches as they cut his father down and “never said nothin” (21). The townspeople continue to build a mythology for Lester, sprinkled with anecdotes about their own lives. Even when talking specifically about Lester, they are unable to stay on one topic, as is the case with the man who tells the story about how Lester came by his rifle; Lester is so unimportant to him that he spends easily three times as long talking about himself as he does talking about Lester (60). The townspeople create a history, scarce as it is, for Lester and mark him a man of violence and displacement, with no family and no value. There is no way of knowing if we can rely on the townspeople as there is “no single reliable narrative voice” (Winchell 27). Instead there are a bunch of monologues told to an unknown listener by townspeople, and a “seemingly omniscient” narrator of Lester’s actions (Winchell 27). As the novel Gooding 8 progresses, the reader begins to question some of the reports, which reek of the desire to produce titillating gossip about a local oddity, especially when the townspeople spend longer talking about themselves than about Lester, or as is the case with one narrative, which tells a story solely about the sheriff rather than Lester (44). The novel begins its steep downward descent when Lester stumbles upon the asphyxiated bodies of two lovers in a car. After coupling with the dead woman, Lester takes her body back to the shack he is living in. This starts his necrophiliac tendencies, but it is only after his shack burns (along with the body of the woman), that he becomes violent. He then starts killing people and adding women to his collection of bodies as he retreats to the caves in the woods that surround the town. Lester is eventually captured and transported to a prison for the insane. Only much later are the bodies of the women he killed discovered, languishing in a cave in a gross parody of a communal family abode. Both Outer Dark and Child of God feature isolation and loneliness as prominent parts of their structure. This is a prevalent motif in much of Appalachian Gothic literature. The setting of the Appalachian Mountains lends itself to feelings of isolation and enclosure. The forests are old, and full of places that are not often tread by humans. The people of the mountains take their lead from their surroundings. The forest keeps her secrets, and so to do the people who live there. As a result, the people of the Appalachian Mountains have developed a reputation for being clannish and secretive, living in small communities, sometimes with only a single family, and very little contact with anyone beyond their group.