From hills to plains

Abstract

Cormac McCarthy’s novels focus on two specific regions in the United States. Along with his tenth novel, The Road, McCarthy’s first four novels are set in Appalachian Tennessee while the next five take place around the U.S-Mexico border. The novels of these geographical settings chronicle over 100 years of human relationship to the landscape by emphasizing both individual and collective response to the environment. I will examine how McCarthy’s application of landscape differs between each work. An analysis of each novel as it relates to the other novels of its region will reveal common themes and variations on those themes. In comparison, a study of noted authors of American landscape, such as William Bartram and Willa Cather, will examine McCarthy’s work in the context of America’s literary understanding of its environment. Further, I will gauge McCarthy’s influence of narrating the landscape by comparing his Appalachian narratives to more recent works about the region, such as Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain. The Appalachian novels provide protagonists who encounter their environment on personal levels, and these relationships emphasize different psychological and theological dynamics of their contact with landscape. The landscape in the Southwestern novels, alternatively, emphasizes America’s collective response to environment by echoing the lost cultures forced out by expansionism. While many can see in McCarthy’s novels a strong conservationist theme, his work delves past ideas of preservation and reveals more fundamental elements of America’s collective understanding of the physical world. Ultimately, McCarthy’s novels show how we relate with landscape on psychological, spiritual, and metaphysical levels.