The Sunset Limited by Cormac McCarthy

Richard Wright’s short story entitled, “The Man Who Killed A Shadow” showed the reality and truth of a black man’s life and how quickly it can be jeopardized when race and sex are mixed together. When I began reading the story I felt heartbroken for the main character because he just seemed like a good human being. Saul basically grew up with no role models to guide him in his life and his parents and grandmother died when he was a young boy. Saul quickly had to adapt to these changes and began working to support himself. When Saul began working at a young age he did not understand why “the shadows” or white people saw him as inferior. This was something that he noticed that black people just seemed to accept and he began to accept it as well even though he had no idea why. Saul had to continue to work for the white shadows became increasingly unhappy with the way his life was going. The narrator states, “At the age of fifteen Saul knew that the life he was living was to be his lot, that there no way to rid himself of his plaguing sense of unreality, no way to relax and forget” (187). It was extremely depressing to me that Saul knew at the age of fifteen that this was the reality of the rest of his life. He knew he would never be happy and that he would have to work for the white shadows in order to feed himself.

Darkness at Noon, written by British novelist Arthur Koestler in 1940, is a criticism of Stalinism and the methods used by the Communist Party in the USSR. The novel was set in 1938 during the Stalinist Great Purge and Moscow show trials. Even though the story depicts actual occurrences, it does not specifically name either Russia or the USSR, but the characters do have Russian names while other generic terms are used to depict individuals and associations. For instance, the Soviet government is alluded to as "the Party" and Nazi Germany is alluded to as "the Dictatorship." Joseph Stalin, a terrorizing dictator, is represented by "Number One." The novel is a strong and moving picture of a Communist revolutionary caught up in the terror

In each novel of his personal literary journey, Cormac McCarthy examines death and God in different ways. Edwin T. Arnold, who wrote his essay “Blood and Grace: The Fiction of Cormac McCarthy” before The Road, examines how “McCarthy’s protagonists are most often those who, in their travels, are bereft of the voice of God and yet yearn to hear him speak” (14). In Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, the father explicitly describes his son as god; however, by juxtaposing the father and the son and examining their divine resemblances, it is not the boy but the man who embodies God, supporting Ely’s claim that this post-apocalyptic world is too harsh for God to exist.

Throughout centuries, humans have expressed different perspectives toward a single idea. The subject of religion invites challenging discussions from skeptical minds because religion is diversely interpreted based on personal faith. The authoress sets her novel in a fictional town, Cold Sassy, where religion plays a predominant role in people’s lives. Through Will Tweedy’s narration she explores the religious opinions of the town’s most prominent citizen Rucker Blakeslee, Will’s grandpa. Although Blakeslee spent his whole life in a religiously conservative town, he has a radical approach toward religious concepts such as predestination, suicide, funerals, faith, and God’s will, thus forcing him to challenge the traditional views of

Beneath the gore and smoke and loam, this book is about the evanescence of life, and why some men choose to fill their brief allotment of time engaging the impossible, others in the manufacture of sorrow. In the end it is a story of the ineluctable conflict between good and evil, daylight and darkness, the White City and the Black. (Larson

Howard Thurman removes the window dressing in the African American experience of segregation in America. Thurman in his book, “The Luminous Darkness” paints an obscure portrait that delved deep into the consciousness of Black men, women and children freshly freed from chattel slavery. Two hundred years of slavery and one hundred years of darkness seeping into each soul perpetuated by an evil explained only through the Word of God. Although this book was published in the 60’s, the stigma segregation continues resonate in the souls of those who remember and perhaps even in the souls of those who do not.

Walter Miller, the complex personality who produced the apocalyptic novel A Canticle for Leibowitz, shot himself in January 1996 following the unexpected death of his wife, Anne. His passing is an unfortunate loss to the world, but this novel survives and will continue to influence generations of people whose inner souls have been powerfully influenced and inspired by his work. A Canticle for Leibowitz is an emotional roller coaster, full of the fluctuations of life, and exhibits an eternal tale about treacherous times and the fall from innocence as well as the rise to a more technologically advanced, yet further delusional world. Like many novels, Canticle attempts to answer some of the most fundamental questions of life: Who are we? Why are we here? What is the purpose of life? These are significant questions that many different religions have attempted to answer, including the Catholic Church. According to Miller, science can answer questions about how the world works, but only religion can answer questions about why things are the way they are. Miller’s religious answers, given by theistic characters, are contrasted with the opinions of secular, nonspiritual characters in a way that embodies both the faith and ethics of the church. Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz contains the debates of the raging conflict of religion versus science, religious ethics and secular ethics, and sin and redemption. It is a comprehensive analysis of apocalyptic sequences and how they

James Joyce’s 1914 collection of 15 short stories The Dubliners has the continuous theme of money which further dwells into the idea of class systems, how colonies became a dichotomy, and how in the end, the colonists were nearly the same. Since Joyce writes these stories in the early 20th Century, there has been a large history behind colonization and the life that comes with it. In using everyday examples or little segments of the average day, Joyce expresses the idea and components of the class system in Dublin which shows the distinction and yet the similarities between the impoverished and the well to do.

The short story the dead is written by James Joyce an Irish writer who lived between 1882-1941,he is best known for his modern writing techniques, with stories such as “The Dead”, this story is well known for its deep analogy of Irish culture, history, and how the story relates to life struggles, the difficulties of time and age and dealing to forget the dead ones we have lost.

David Morris the author of “The Evil Hours”, shares his story of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) that also affects many people, including 8% of the population at some point in their lives. He was a former Marine that now suffers from this disorder today, which is the 4th most common psychiatric disorder in the United States. The disorder still remains a mystery to many people. He discusses with several other victims of PTSD and further analyzes the cultural history of the illness. Throughout the book he talks to several different people including those who are currently suffering, family members, and to many Americans and others who are unaware. He goes through and talks about those who have had near death experiences with war

Cormac McCarthy adapts and changes traditional archetypes in his novel, “The Road” to support the theme of extreme skepticism interfering with basic everyday things, such as moving on from the past. McCarthy uses archetypes such as “The Innocent One”, “Good versus Bad”, “The Journey”, and “The Philosopher” to display to his audience the idea that these archetypes contribute to one of the woes of postmodernism -- extreme skepticism.

In a world dominated by evil and despair, McCarthy’s novel challenges the reader to consider an alternative pathway that involves faith or one’s inner ‘fire’ or spirituality in order to avoid a negative fate.

O’Connor portrays these “holy” and religious people in a way that makes the presence of God in the story doubtful: humans think they have the capacity to do the work of a god, but this attitude is proven absurd as each character meets a devastating moment of enlightenment or

What makes Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel The Road stick out from most dystopian works is that The Road takes place not before or during but after the end. The novel follows a man and his son as they survive the dangers of what once was the United States after an unspecified calamitous event. There is not much left of the world: no food, no animals, and no hope. Many readers will ponder how someone could still be motivated to keep moving forward under such circumstances. If we were living in the same conditions as the man and the boy, this question might seem more imperative. But arguably it is a question that can be applied to today: what, if anything, makes human life valuable or worthwhile? Through the dialogue between the characters, the novel provides two conflicting arguments that serve as potential answers for this question. The first argument is hope, which is associated with the Christian religion, while the other argument is futility, which has a nihilistic outlook of the ravaged world. This paper will examine the Christian imagery and nihilistic arguments contained in the novel and how the moral systems of the two conflict. While at first The Road might present itself as a powerful challenge to both Christian and nihilistic views of the world, in the end, the novel never explicitly reject either worldview.

Modernist fiction is incredibly dense and abstract. Writers from the twentieth century also seem to carry with them the weight of the world, and thus their fiction has been filled with realistic misery and pain. Still, these writers often add to this element with existentialist thematic structures, which construct a very unique and experimental viewpoint on a modern existence. This is what is occurring in both Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot as well as Albert Camus' The Stranger. The two a very different in format, yet both play upon the modernist idea of abandonment by God and the idea that there is an underlying sense of nothingness that guides modern life. Each focuses on the notion of free will and how it determines our lives in a world devoid of God. Together, these great works of contemporary fiction are a telling testament to the changing nature of sentiments regarding both religion and the meaning of life in a tumultuous twentieth century paradigm.