Apocalypse in Two Tenses: Cormac McCarthy’s Imagined World

Mike Awalt, Belmont University

Location

Beaman A&B

Presentation Type

Presentation

Start Date

25-10-2010 4:00 PM

Description

In No Country for Old Men (2005), and The Road (2006), Cormac McCarthy has created a dark apocalyptic vision imagining both the present world of our experience and the future world of our hopes and fears. No Country for Old Men is set in the present and looks at a world that has lost its moral compass. It is a world in which evil appears to be unstoppable and invincible. Good men push on in this universe with little hope of overcoming the clear and present dangers of a world gone to seed. The Road is set in the future and deals with an unnamed holocaust that has left the world nearly uninhabitable. Working off of a journey theme, it portrays a quest for survival in a decimated world without hope. In both tenses the question is not “Can good overcome evil,” but “How can one survive in a world without limits?”

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Oct 25th, 4:00 PM

Apocalypse in Two Tenses: Cormac McCarthy’s Imagined World

Beaman A&B

In No Country for Old Men (2005), and The Road (2006), Cormac McCarthy has created a dark apocalyptic vision imagining both the present world of our experience and the future world of our hopes and fears. No Country for Old Men is set in the present and looks at a world that has lost its moral compass. It is a world in which evil appears to be unstoppable and invincible. Good men push on in this universe with little hope of overcoming the clear and present dangers of a world gone to seed. The Road is set in the future and deals with an unnamed holocaust that has left the world nearly uninhabitable. Working off of a journey theme, it portrays a quest for survival in a decimated world without hope. In both tenses the question is not “Can good overcome evil,” but “How can one survive in a world without limits?”