Hope In Darkness

Cormac Mc Carthy is regarded as one of the most important American writers of the age.His works,with their profound connotation,have attracted the attention of a large number of critics from both abroad and at home.In an examination of critical responses to Cormac Mc Carthy’s fiction,the scholars at home and abroad tend to focus on his single work or the works of one period,centering on postmodern features,violence,environmental ethics,ethicality as well as the spiritual inquiry,which appears to be diverse.Overall,these studies are fragmented,lack of the overall and systematic attention to his novels.About the comprehensive view of Mc Carthy’s novels,two opposing viewpoints emerge.Vereen Bell has noted the allegedly nihilistic nature of Mc Carthy’s canon.Edwin Arnold,however,rejects this approach and contends that Mc Carthy’s fiction possess a distinctly Christian vision.Till now,the academic circle generally holds that The Road is the one that Mc Carthy focuses on hope and Redemption.Li Xiaohai,a Ph.D candidate of Shanghai International Studies University,in his dissertation,argues that both No Country for Old Men and The Road contain the idea of redemption.Selecting Mc Carthy’s whole output,this dissertation investigates the pursuit of redemption and the hope hidden in the darksome world described by Cormac Mc Carthy with the comprehensive view and the specific analysis.The dissertation holds that each of his eight novels in 20^th century possesses a redemptive quality;the redemption insight is presented in different forms,so is the source of the redemption insight.Consequently,this dissertation tends to make researches on Mc Carthy’s redemptive quest hidden in his novels,highlighting the coherence of the redemption quality is highlighted,and aiming at exploring the redemptive sources of different forms which underlie in Mc Carthy’s writings,in the hope of correcting the biased interpretation in the former researches and opening a new window for understanding Mc Carthy’s novels as an artistic whole.The dissertation consists of an introduction,five expository chapters and a conclusion.The introduction briefly introduces Mc Carthy’s literary career and the major research work done both at home and abroad.Then the dissertation makes a literature review about the existing redemption studies on his works.On the basis of these,the aim and the innovations of this dissertation are also introduced in this part.There are violence,human depravity and ethical collapse in his works,and with redemption,we could get a better interpretation of the darksome world presented by Mc Carthy.Though critics apply various critical approaches to the reading of his novels,none of them tries to use redemption to interpret his whole output.Chapter One proposes a theoretical basis for this project—redemptive pattern which stems from Daniel Mc Adams’American Redemption Framework.Considering the evolution of redemption,the writer puts forward the concept of redemptive pattern.The eternal theme of redemption has developed from sin-forgiveness to human self-examining and human beings-caring.In this redemptive pattern,there are three kinds of redemption:sin-forgiveness,injustice-conviction and human beings-caring.The redemptive sources are also classified into three categories:marginal light,self light and great light.Chapter Two to Chapter Four mainly discusses Mc Carthy’s eight novels in 20^thcentury.From The Orchard Keeper to Blood Meridian,Mc Carthy is committed to describing the abnormal violence,reflecting the lower people’s lives in the south-central region of the United States.In his early five novels,in ethical plight,the main characters depend on the help of outside and the unexpected redemptive sources are neither related to the religion nor to the existing ethical codes.These sources give the main characters a redemptive awareness unexpectedly and their redemptive awareness is embodied in the form of sin-forgiveness or guilt.Chapter Three specially discusses the disillusionment of the church which is usually considered as an important role in redemption.Border Trilogy describes the brutal killing and remaining warmth along the American Mexico border,and analyses the main characters’psychological distortion caused by the great social pressure and their struggle against the fate.In these three novels,the redemptive insight is manifested in the conviction of the injustice,and the source of the redemption insight comes from their integrity,also their inner ethical code.Also Chapter Four explores a spiritual conflict of Good and Evil in Cities of the Plain.Their inner ethical code may be grounded in a spiritual context and this code becomes a relevant redemptive source which becomes a light in a word darkened by evil.So,a string of the redemptive quality is depicted:a significant shift occurs in Border Trilogy,from unlikely outer forces working inward to inner forces working outward.Chapter Five investigates a world imbued with an apocalyptic mood and redemptive feelings in No Country for Old Men and The Road.Actually,the world described by these two novels contains something similar to the real world.Through Bell—the representative of order,and“fire”—the symbol of hope,Mc Carthy has a serious reflection on the relationship between human and society in reality and in the future,concerned about the common destiny of western civilization and human beings.Throughout the canon,his journey of setting out from the south to the west leaves traces in the works of different periods which give him a taste of the real world and show his desire for humanity redemption and spirituality.The dissertation aims to illustrate that there is a string of the implicit redemption to explicit redemption in Cormac Mc Carthy’s novels.There is also a string of source for redemption insight from the outside“marginal light”to the internal“self light”,and to human&future-attentive“great light”,from which we could observe maturity of his writing technique and the responsibility a serious novelist undertakes.