“You’ve Heard It All Your Life”: Echoes of the Divine in the Novels of Cormac McCarthy
Even when his sentences gouge uncomfortably deep into the awful brutality that lurks in every human psyche, Cormac McCarthy gives us novels that reveal what humanity tries to suppress
“Cormac McCarthy,” John Piper once commented, “is to the American literary canon what Judges is to the biblical canon.”
Much like the biblical book of Judges, the novels of Cormac McCarthy provide us with a vision of humanity that isn’t necessarily enjoyable but it is necessary.
I read McCarthy’s works regularly, not because they make me more happy but because they make me more human.
Even when McCarthy’s sentences gouge uncomfortably deep into the awful brutality that lurks in every human psyche, there is a sacred awe in his writing.
If it weren’t for this shadow of holiness that lurks in the belly of his prose, McCarthy’s sparsely-punctuated plots would be unbearable. As it is, his stories depict us as we are, complex bundles of dignity and depravity with souls inescapably bruised by an infinite ache for more than this terrestrial existence can provide. Despite his agnosticism and ambivalence toward religion, McCarthy’s imagination remains baptized in his Irish Catholic upbringing. Echoes of Old Testament prophets entwine with hints of the holy sacraments throughout his novels.
Flannery O’Connor famously observed that
while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted. The Southerner, who isn't convinced of it, is very much afraid that he may have been formed in the image and likeness of God.
This Christ-hauntedness is stitched into the seams of every novel that Cormac McCarthy has pieced together. His stories are rich with a sacred ache that awakens our awareness that, beyond the created order, there is an invisible and eternal Presence without whom the cosmos itself is inexplicable and impossible (Romans 1:20). His words reveal that none of us is ultimately able to suppress the presence of the divine. If that presence were ever to be withdrawn, you would—in the words of Tobin in Blood Meridian—“know you’ve heard it all your life.”
With that in mind, over the next few posts, I’m going to reflect on some of my favorite sentences from a few of the works of Cormac McCarthy.