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Desolation In Cormac Mccarthy's Child Of God

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Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God portrays perhaps the most convincing dystopian setting of the three authors. Seviere County is the very definition of desolation and corruption. Although this book is set in the 1970s, the main character, Lester Ballard, literally gets away with murder and he is not even intelligent about his methods, which shows how out of touch the majority of this county is with the rest of the world, and even the city that lies within it. The inhabitants of the rural portion of the county are poverty-stricken, uneducated, and somewhat uncivilized, and many of McCarthy’s characters embody a sense of hopelessness and acceptance of fate. Lester, however, has something to live for, no matter how sick and twisted it is: he murders …show more content…

When he was in high school, he was dating a girl named Ginny and he was very much in love with her. She, however, moved away to go to college, and Colly was, not forced but guilted into, staying home with her to take over the family farm because his father had passed. Colly feels a conscious desire to escape from his hometown and go see the world like he believes Ginny is doing; this feeling of being trapped and weighed down by societal pressures is Colly’s own version of a dystopian society, and there is a constant reminder of his oppressed nature: Jim. Jim has been living in that town for his entire life, and has become a regular in the diner they were in at the beginning of the story. Jim even has his own coffee cup that hangs on the wall next to the cups of those that have passed on; his coffee cup symbolizes that Jim will never leave and will always be a part of this community, even when he is dead. He is a constant reminder for Colly because he realizes that he is on the fast track to becoming just like Jim, and that is not what Colly wants out of life. Ginny is also a reminder of that for Colly; he sees her as going off into the world …show more content…

There are two stories in which the idea of escaping a dystopian society is prominent: “Falling Star” and “Burning Bright.” “Falling Star” is about the relationship between the main character, Bobby, and his wife, Lynne. Bobby has done manual labor his entire life, and as he is getting older, he is starting to feel the effects that his life has had on his body. Lynne, on the other hand, seems for vivacious than she ever has and has decided to go back to school. Because she is taking college classes and they have a young daughter, Lynne rarely has time to devote to Bobby anymore, and Bobby feels as though it is something that he has done himself. He begins to feel jealous of anyone who gets to spend time with Lynne, going so far as to slash the tires of one of her professors while she is in class. Bobby describes his relationship with Lynne as a Lynne being in a locked glass room, and Lynne has the only key. Bobby is trying to make contact with her and she can see him but cannot hear him, so she chooses to ignore him altogether. This disconnect in his relationship is Bobby’s dystopia. Throughout the entire story, he tries to get his relationship back with Lynne, but the relationships is broken and there is nothing he can do to fix it, and he realizes this toward the end of the story. However, Bobby cannot help but to think about a perfect world, and daydream about it: because he is

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