WEBVTT 00:01.990 --> 00:04.000 Professor Amy Hungerford: Starting on page 00:04.002 --> 00:05.282 312, here is the little detail. 00:05.280 --> 00:11.150 00:11.150 --> 00:14.930 This is the kid after he has left the Glanton Gang. 00:14.930 --> 00:19.330 They've been routed by the Yumas, and now he is on his own. 00:19.330 --> 00:22.830 00:22.830 --> 00:25.240 He traveled about--[This is the middle of the page.] 00:25.239 --> 00:26.929 He traveled about from place to place. 00:26.930 --> 00:30.050 He did not avoid the company of other men. 00:30.050 --> 00:33.350 He was treated with a certain deference as one who had got on 00:33.352 --> 00:36.712 to terms with life beyond what his years could account for. 00:36.710 --> 00:40.500 By now he'd come by a horse and a revolver, the rudiments of an 00:40.499 --> 00:42.959 outfit. He worked at different trades. 00:42.960 --> 00:46.680 He had a Bible that he'd found at the mining camps and he 00:46.678 --> 00:50.728 carried this book with him, no word of which he could read. 00:50.730 --> 00:54.290 In his dark and frugal clothes some took him for a sort of 00:54.288 --> 00:56.908 preacher, but he was no witness to them, 00:56.910 --> 00:59.790 neither of things at hand nor things to come, 00:59.794 --> 01:03.354 he least of any man. It's that detail of the Bible 01:03.348 --> 01:04.768 that interests me here. 01:04.769 --> 01:07.249 He had a Bible he'd found at the mining camps, 01:07.249 --> 01:10.169 carried this book with him, "no word of which he could 01:10.169 --> 01:12.809 read." Why does the kid carry a Bible, 01:12.811 --> 01:16.321 when he is illiterate, and why does it appear at this 01:16.318 --> 01:18.138 moment in the narrative? 01:18.140 --> 01:20.550 These are the questions I want to try and answer. 01:20.549 --> 01:24.119 I want to account for this little detail through an 01:24.121 --> 01:28.481 argument that will pick up the points I made about allusion on 01:28.477 --> 01:33.117 Monday and integrate those into a different kind of argument. 01:33.120 --> 01:38.430 What does this Bible signify at this moment? 01:38.430 --> 01:42.310 The kid, I would guess to most of you, seemed like, 01:42.310 --> 01:45.100 at this point, he had become somewhat 01:45.103 --> 01:47.393 different. Is that right? 01:47.390 --> 01:49.470 Did you feel that, by this point, 01:49.466 --> 01:53.356 when he leaves the Glanton Gang, he's matured in some way? 01:53.360 --> 01:54.740 Did you feel that? 01:54.740 --> 01:56.940 Yes? No? 01:56.940 --> 02:00.300 Yes. Maybe. 02:00.299 --> 02:05.709 If you didn't, you swam against McCarthy's own 02:05.708 --> 02:08.598 prose. Remember that at a certain 02:08.599 --> 02:12.199 point late in the novel he is no longer called the kid; 02:12.200 --> 02:14.210 he is called the man. 02:14.210 --> 02:16.520 I'm sure most of you caught that. 02:16.520 --> 02:21.280 What this says to us is that McCarthy has built the structure 02:21.281 --> 02:24.931 of the narrative along the familiar line of the 02:24.931 --> 02:30.421 Bildungsroman, the novel of a boy growing into 02:30.422 --> 02:33.762 a man. It's hard to miss this when 02:33.758 --> 02:38.588 that's the character's only name, and it changes in the 02:38.594 --> 02:41.614 middle. This is a fairly obvious 02:41.614 --> 02:46.754 gesture towards that very well-known narrative structure. 02:46.750 --> 02:50.760 There are other indicators, though, that suggest a 02:50.759 --> 02:55.529 transformation of the kid, or some sort of complexity to 02:55.526 --> 03:00.306 the kid, that might be belied by the way the narrative is 03:00.309 --> 03:03.479 conducted. Remember that difference I 03:03.476 --> 03:07.106 pointed out on Monday between Melville and McCarthy, 03:07.110 --> 03:11.060 between the interiority you get through Ishmael as a narrator, 03:11.062 --> 03:13.592 the complexity of him as a character, 03:13.590 --> 03:16.220 and the flatness of the kid. 03:16.219 --> 03:20.479 You don't have an Ishmael character whose mind you can see 03:20.477 --> 03:22.757 into. We don't see into the minds of 03:22.761 --> 03:24.231 these people very often. 03:24.230 --> 03:27.520 03:27.520 --> 03:31.020 If the Bible signifies, as it seems to do to the people 03:31.022 --> 03:34.592 who see him and take him to be some kind of preacher, 03:34.590 --> 03:37.900 to have some kind of wisdom, if it suggests a development, 03:37.902 --> 03:39.822 what kind of development is it? 03:39.819 --> 03:44.859 The judge is the person who gives us something to go on in 03:44.863 --> 03:48.673 this respect, and if you look on page 299 we 03:48.668 --> 03:50.878 can see what that is. 03:50.880 --> 03:54.800 03:54.800 --> 04:00.490 The judge and the kid are at odds in the desert after the 04:00.486 --> 04:05.056 rout of the gang, and the kid is hiding with a 04:05.056 --> 04:09.376 loaded gun. And the judge is hunting him, 04:09.378 --> 04:12.948 and he keeps calling out to the kid. 04:12.949 --> 04:15.709 "The priest has led you to this boy. 04:15.710 --> 04:19.330 I know you would not hide. 04:19.329 --> 04:22.649 I know too that you've not the heart of a common assassin. 04:22.649 --> 04:25.989 I have passed before your gun sights twice this hour and will 04:25.987 --> 04:27.097 pass a third time. 04:27.100 --> 04:29.540 Why not show yourself? 04:29.540 --> 04:33.250 No assassin," called the judge, "and no partisan either. 04:33.250 --> 04:36.680 There is a flawed place in the fabric of your heart. 04:36.680 --> 04:40.900 Do you think I could not know you alone were mutinous, 04:40.904 --> 04:45.854 you alone reserved in your soul some corner of clemency for the 04:45.845 --> 04:50.515 heathen." The judge sets the kid apart 04:50.524 --> 04:54.144 from himself and from the gang. 04:54.139 --> 04:57.529 In this moment, especially, we feel that the 04:57.528 --> 05:00.758 kid has some kind of moral superiority, 05:00.759 --> 05:05.129 some kind of resistance to the violence that has been 05:05.130 --> 05:08.660 dominating the novel up until this time. 05:08.660 --> 05:12.180 05:12.180 --> 05:18.690 You can see it, also, in a late example of the 05:18.692 --> 05:21.672 judge. He says, on 307, 05:21.670 --> 05:28.270 when he meets up with the kid much later when the kid is in 05:28.267 --> 05:33.947 prison (This is on 307, about two thirds of the way 05:33.954 --> 05:35.324 down): 05:35.320 --> 05:40.690 05:40.690 --> 05:44.280 "Only each was called upon to empty out his heart into 05:44.276 --> 05:46.036 the common and one did not. 05:46.040 --> 05:47.830 Can you tell me who that was?" 05:47.830 --> 05:49.510 "It was you," whispered the kid. 05:49.510 --> 05:51.420 "You were the one." 05:51.420 --> 05:55.730 [And then I'm going to skip down a little bit.] 05:55.731 --> 06:01.451 "Our animosities were formed and waiting before we two met, 06:01.449 --> 06:05.449 yet even so you could have changed it all." 06:05.449 --> 06:11.249 The judge, here again, singles out the kid as having 06:11.253 --> 06:16.603 somehow betrayed the gang, and he suggests that--this is 06:16.604 --> 06:20.414 on the prior page--he has lied to the authorities. 06:20.410 --> 06:25.350 But he suggests that the kid had actually conspired with the 06:25.353 --> 06:29.633 Yumas to make it possible for the Glanton Gang to be 06:29.626 --> 06:32.546 decimated, that he had given them 06:32.547 --> 06:36.517 information and allowed them to ambush the group. 06:36.519 --> 06:42.169 He suggests that the kid was actively working against the 06:42.170 --> 06:44.290 gang in this scene. 06:44.290 --> 06:49.430 Is this true? Is the kid somehow special? 06:49.430 --> 06:53.210 Does he stand apart from the gang? 06:53.209 --> 06:55.809 This is a question I want you to ponder. 06:55.810 --> 07:00.340 Now, one very distinguished reader of this novel, 07:00.340 --> 07:04.000 Harold Bloom, has called the kid a hero. 07:04.000 --> 07:08.390 There is a preface to the Modern Library Edition of this 07:08.392 --> 07:13.182 novel where Bloom argues that the kid is the hero against the 07:13.184 --> 07:15.504 heroic evil of the judge. 07:15.500 --> 07:18.720 And remember, in my discussion of Milton's 07:18.722 --> 07:22.262 role as a source of allusion in this novel, 07:22.259 --> 07:27.409 what Milton's Satan brings with him into this novel is that 07:27.408 --> 07:29.448 sense of heroic evil. 07:29.449 --> 07:34.079 Bloom sees the kid as the heroic good--flawed maybe, 07:34.081 --> 07:39.441 maybe a little bit modest--but yet still the heroic good. 07:39.440 --> 07:43.050 And Bloom actually makes a mistake that I think is quite 07:43.050 --> 07:45.480 indicative of a mistake in reading. 07:45.480 --> 07:48.100 That's he capitalizes "the kid." 07:48.100 --> 07:51.830 He makes "kid" like a proper name, capital K, 07:51.831 --> 07:55.661 Kid. You never see it that way in 07:55.664 --> 07:59.394 the novel. Is the kid a hero? 07:59.390 --> 08:02.330 Is there moral development? 08:02.329 --> 08:05.769 I want, now, to see whether there's any case 08:05.766 --> 08:09.516 to be made for this, and to do that I'm going to 08:09.523 --> 08:13.523 track the kid through the middle of the novel. 08:13.519 --> 08:17.709 There are about 75 pages in the exact center of the novel where 08:17.709 --> 08:20.209 the kid does not appear very often. 08:20.209 --> 08:25.649 This is also a structure that pertains in Moby-Dick, 08:25.646 --> 08:31.166 so this is again something that he has partly borrowed from 08:31.171 --> 08:35.221 Melville. When the kid does appear, 08:35.217 --> 08:37.987 let's see what he does. 08:37.990 --> 08:41.530 This is during the time, by the way, when they're just 08:41.531 --> 08:45.341 massacring anyone who is breathing on the desert plain. 08:45.340 --> 08:50.120 Any peaceful tribe they come across, they will skin anyone 08:50.124 --> 08:54.494 whose hair looks like it could be an Indian scalp. 08:54.490 --> 08:57.060 Let's look first at 157. 08:57.059 --> 09:02.239 This is the first place where the kid is noted to appear in 09:02.240 --> 09:03.580 this section. 09:03.580 --> 09:09.820 09:09.820 --> 09:15.600 This is McGill emerging from the burned encampment. 09:15.600 --> 09:18.430 McGill came out of the crackling fires and stood 09:18.426 --> 09:20.396 staring bleakly at the scene about. 09:20.399 --> 09:23.519 He had been skewered through with a lance and he held the 09:23.524 --> 09:24.924 stalk of it before him. 09:24.919 --> 09:28.969 It was fashioned from a sotol stalk and the point of an old 09:28.971 --> 09:33.371 cavalry sword bound to the haft curved out from the small of his 09:33.371 --> 09:35.921 back. The kid waded out of the water 09:35.923 --> 09:39.453 and approached him and the Mexican sat down carefully on 09:39.450 --> 09:41.920 the sand. "Get away from him," said 09:41.918 --> 09:44.008 Glanton. McGill turned to look at 09:44.006 --> 09:47.876 Glanton and as he did so Glanton leveled his pistol and shot him 09:47.880 --> 09:51.600 through the head. It looks like the kid is 09:51.597 --> 09:55.387 approaching him as a kind of act of mercy. 09:55.389 --> 09:59.429 Here is a man skewered through with a brutal weapon, 09:59.431 --> 10:01.731 and the kid approaches him. 10:01.730 --> 10:06.000 Glanton's response is simply to kill him, seeing him as more of 10:06.002 --> 10:08.692 a burden to the gang than anything else, 10:08.689 --> 10:10.549 but the kid approaches. 10:10.549 --> 10:15.569 Here, you do see a difference between the kid and Glanton, 10:15.573 --> 10:19.013 at least in their approach to McGill. 10:19.009 --> 10:26.399 162, a somewhat similar case when Davy Brown has an arrow 10:26.403 --> 10:31.763 through his leg. Brown has asked someone to help 10:31.760 --> 10:36.760 him push it through so he can then extract the arrow, 10:36.761 --> 10:39.551 and everybody has refused. 10:39.550 --> 10:42.200 This is on 161. "Boys," said Brown, 10:42.197 --> 10:44.997 "I'd doctorfy it myself but I can't get no straight grip." 10:45.000 --> 10:47.290 The judge looked up at him and smiled. 10:47.290 --> 10:49.110 "Will you do us Holden?" 10:49.110 --> 10:52.050 "No, Davy, I won't, but I tell you what I will do." 10:52.050 --> 10:55.210 "What's that?" "I'll write a policy on your 10:55.214 --> 10:57.574 life against every mishap save the noose." 10:57.570 --> 11:01.030 "Damn you, then." So, they're just kind of 11:01.027 --> 11:05.047 playing with him, and laughing at him as he 11:05.047 --> 11:08.677 suffers. "Then finally the kid rose. 11:08.680 --> 11:09.720 'I'll try her,' he said. 11:09.720 --> 11:12.240 'Good lad,' said Brown." 11:12.240 --> 11:16.180 And they go through the process of pushing the arrow through, 11:16.180 --> 11:19.530 and the priest chides him after this is all done. 11:19.529 --> 11:21.959 When the kid returned to his own blanket, 11:21.961 --> 11:24.551 the ex-priest leaned to him and hissed at his ear, 11:24.552 --> 11:27.942 "Fool," he said. "God will not love ye forever." 11:27.940 --> 11:29.660 The kid turned to look at him. 11:29.659 --> 11:31.929 "Don't you know he'd have took you with him? 11:31.929 --> 11:34.669 He'd have took you, boy, like a bride to the 11:34.665 --> 11:37.545 altar." I think what he means there is 11:37.547 --> 11:41.147 that David Brown would have killed him, would have killed 11:41.146 --> 11:43.456 the kid if he had had the chance, 11:43.460 --> 11:47.690 somehow, in his moment of pain. 11:47.690 --> 11:53.360 So, the kid does look, again, he looks quite merciful, 11:53.355 --> 11:59.985 in this passage. We see him on 169 at dinner 11:59.985 --> 12:07.475 with the governor of Chiapas, Angel Trias. 12:07.480 --> 12:13.550 This is on 169. This is a very brief mention. 12:13.549 --> 12:17.339 "The kid in the first starched collar he'd ever owned and the 12:17.341 --> 12:21.071 first cravat sat mute as a tailor's dummy at that board." 12:21.070 --> 12:26.050 The ex-priest has sort of indicated with his eyes to note 12:26.046 --> 12:30.836 that the judge and Trias are conversing in some unknown 12:30.844 --> 12:33.504 language, a language that none of them 12:33.500 --> 12:36.500 know, and it's as if to say--that look is as if to say, 12:36.500 --> 12:42.450 "See there. He has a kind of mystical evil 12:42.450 --> 12:45.500 about him. He speaks even in these other 12:45.496 --> 12:48.096 languages that no one can understand. 12:48.100 --> 12:51.510 He's an otherworldly figure," the ex-priest seems to be saying 12:51.507 --> 12:52.677 just with his eyes. 12:52.679 --> 12:56.829 The kid is just like a dummy here. 12:56.830 --> 12:57.780 He is just a blank. 12:57.780 --> 13:01.090 13:01.090 --> 13:06.160 On 173, this is the passage I noted on Monday where Toadvine 13:06.160 --> 13:10.800 and the kid are grumbling against the judge and Glanton 13:10.800 --> 13:15.960 because of their penchant for massacring peaceful Indians and 13:15.957 --> 13:20.337 Toadvine puts the pistol to the judge's head. 13:20.340 --> 13:25.600 There is a parallel moment in the desert after the rout of the 13:25.597 --> 13:29.387 gang when the kid does not kill the judge; 13:29.389 --> 13:33.109 the kid has his chance and he also does not kill the judge. 13:33.110 --> 13:35.150 So, this is another appearance of the kid. 13:35.150 --> 13:36.850 They're talking together. 13:36.850 --> 13:39.420 And, I won't read it, but you can look at it if you 13:39.420 --> 13:42.760 like. That's on 173. 13:42.759 --> 13:47.099 178, the kid instigates a bar fight. 13:47.100 --> 13:50.970 13:50.970 --> 13:55.620 This is towards the middle of the page. 13:55.620 --> 13:57.840 They're all assembled in a bar. 13:57.840 --> 14:00.850 The kid addressed the table in his wretched Spanish 14:00.854 --> 14:04.144 and demanded which among those sullen inebriates had spoken an 14:04.137 --> 14:05.957 insult. Before any could own it, 14:05.962 --> 14:08.732 the first of the funeral rockets exploded in the street 14:08.734 --> 14:11.564 as told and the entire company of Americans made for the 14:11.558 --> 14:15.628 door. And this begins the chaos that 14:15.625 --> 14:21.565 will eventuate in piles of bodies in this cantina as the 14:21.574 --> 14:26.314 Americans leave. And then on 204, 14:26.306 --> 14:36.676 this is about the time that the kid returns to the narrative. 14:36.680 --> 14:40.950 This is with Shelby. 14:40.950 --> 14:49.240 Remember, they've drawn lots to see who will conduct the mercy 14:49.240 --> 14:51.950 killing. "Of the wounded men two were 14:51.945 --> 14:53.335 Delawares and one a Mexican. 14:53.340 --> 14:57.820 The fourth was Dick Shelby and he alone sat watching the 14:57.824 --> 15:02.394 preparations for departure," and the kid draws the arrow, 15:02.390 --> 15:05.000 but he does not kill Shelby. 15:05.000 --> 15:08.580 He lets Shelby die in the desert. 15:08.580 --> 15:12.340 These moments look like a kind of mercy, 15:12.340 --> 15:16.100 but I'm going to argue that they are not, 15:16.100 --> 15:20.820 in fact, instances of mercy, that in the end they are not 15:20.816 --> 15:24.856 accountable for by any kind of moral calculus, 15:24.860 --> 15:29.670 that they resist that kind of evaluation. 15:29.670 --> 15:33.320 Why? Because every time the kid 15:33.321 --> 15:39.261 shows mercy, he shows mercy to one of his own gang and we know 15:39.261 --> 15:42.281 what the gang goes on to do. 15:42.280 --> 15:47.040 Right? They simply go on killing more 15:47.036 --> 15:51.076 people. So, the allegiance that he 15:51.083 --> 15:58.253 seems to show with suffering, the mercy, is so selective that 15:58.246 --> 16:04.026 it can't be called such, and it's a kind of trick of 16:04.030 --> 16:09.820 McCarthy's narrative to allow us to see the suffering of these 16:09.815 --> 16:15.115 men in this kind of detail, while the suffering of all the 16:15.119 --> 16:18.479 people they kill goes by pretty quickly. 16:18.480 --> 16:22.050 You do see infants being bashed together, or you see people run 16:22.052 --> 16:23.322 through with lances. 16:23.320 --> 16:24.730 You see people's heads hacked off; 16:24.730 --> 16:26.460 you see many scalpings. 16:26.460 --> 16:30.730 But there's never a moment when that's really focused on, 16:30.730 --> 16:35.380 that we really see it and are asked to feel for that suffering 16:35.381 --> 16:38.521 person. It's spectacular violence, 16:38.515 --> 16:43.455 in that literal way that we know that word "spectacle." 16:43.460 --> 16:46.980 16:46.980 --> 16:50.310 There is no moral development. 16:50.309 --> 16:53.579 Why do we think that there should be? 16:53.580 --> 16:56.320 I pointed out two reasons. 16:56.320 --> 17:00.070 One is that the judge points out, or argues that, 17:00.073 --> 17:04.693 or advances the rhetoric that, the kid is different from all 17:04.687 --> 17:07.577 the others. That's one reason we think that. 17:07.579 --> 17:11.799 The other reason is that he transformed from "kid" to "man," 17:11.796 --> 17:15.436 and that old narrative of Bildungsroman suggests the 17:15.441 --> 17:17.301 acquisition of wisdom. 17:17.299 --> 17:20.969 And we associate wisdom with moral complexity, 17:20.972 --> 17:23.912 moral sophistication, moral depth. 17:23.910 --> 17:29.520 These are things we bring to the novel out of our immersion 17:29.524 --> 17:33.594 in a cultural tradition of such stories. 17:33.589 --> 17:37.859 There are other reasons, though, and I'm going to go to 17:37.863 --> 17:42.233 page 143 now. This is the parable of the 17:42.227 --> 17:45.807 traveler. You'll recall that this is a 17:45.814 --> 17:51.134 story that the judge tells as a kind of instructive story to the 17:51.133 --> 17:53.923 men as they're sitting around. 17:53.920 --> 17:59.930 And the story is that there's a traveler passing through a wild 17:59.925 --> 18:05.055 part of the mountains, and he is accosted by a man who 18:05.060 --> 18:06.610 lives there. 18:06.610 --> 18:10.520 18:10.519 --> 18:17.839 The harness marker who lives there invites the stranger in, 18:17.839 --> 18:24.779 and then tries to get money off him and then finally the 18:24.780 --> 18:30.460 traveler gives him a lecture on morality. 18:30.460 --> 18:35.720 In the end, as the traveler leaves, the harness maker 18:35.717 --> 18:40.367 accosts him again, and kills him and buries his 18:40.368 --> 18:43.858 bones. The wife discovers this and 18:43.864 --> 18:47.274 cares for the bones of the traveler. 18:47.269 --> 18:53.069 The son of the harness maker becomes himself a killer of men. 18:53.069 --> 18:55.289 So, it's a little story that we get here. 18:55.290 --> 19:00.050 19:00.049 --> 19:05.739 The story seems to be about a contention between good and 19:05.738 --> 19:12.138 evil, between the harness maker who is a wild and chaotic force: 19:12.138 --> 19:17.978 he lives in the woods; he dresses up as an Indian to 19:17.982 --> 19:23.172 perpetuate his crimes, and he takes advantage of 19:23.171 --> 19:25.381 innocent victims. 19:25.380 --> 19:29.510 The traveler is possessed of moral knowledge. 19:29.509 --> 19:36.439 He can give a coherent moral speech, and he is not unwilling 19:36.435 --> 19:42.535 to exhort the harness maker towards a better life. 19:42.539 --> 19:48.689 It seems to be all about moral contention, and the point of the 19:48.687 --> 19:55.027 story, from the judge's point of view, is to show that evil is an 19:55.033 --> 19:58.793 inheritance. So, the son of the harness 19:58.785 --> 20:03.525 maker becomes a killer of men, too, but that the lack of a 20:03.531 --> 20:06.751 father (The traveler, we find out, 20:06.746 --> 20:12.826 had fathered a child who was as yet unborn, and so that child 20:12.828 --> 20:16.318 when born is, as the judge says, 20:16.318 --> 20:19.328 "euchered of his patrimony." 20:19.329 --> 20:24.579 This is on the bottom of 145: "All his life he carries before 20:24.575 --> 20:30.075 him the idol of a perfection to which he can never attain.") the 20:30.084 --> 20:35.244 absent father takes on this quality of being a perfect model 20:35.242 --> 20:38.392 that the son can never attain. 20:38.390 --> 20:42.250 He never learns that this man was a human being, 20:42.252 --> 20:46.862 and therefore that he could never be the kind of ideal he 20:46.855 --> 20:48.905 can be as a dead man. 20:48.910 --> 20:53.050 So, his point is that that child's life is, 20:53.053 --> 20:58.103 as he says, "broken before a frozen god and he will never 20:58.098 --> 21:02.138 find his way." What this ending of the story 21:02.144 --> 21:06.744 doesn't tell us is that the descendants of the traveler, 21:06.742 --> 21:11.262 of the innocent victim, actually also become killers of 21:11.257 --> 21:14.527 men. And we discover this at the 21:14.530 --> 21:19.110 very end of the novel, when the man makes his last 21:19.105 --> 21:21.715 kill, and this is on 323. 21:21.720 --> 21:23.840 Remember the scene? 21:23.839 --> 21:31.039 The man is camped out outside the village, and this group of 21:31.038 --> 21:35.798 bone pickers, or sort of migrants in the 21:35.797 --> 21:40.807 desert come up to him, and they're curious about the 21:40.808 --> 21:42.518 scapular of ears he wears. 21:42.519 --> 21:44.609 I said on Monday that this belonged to Toadvine. 21:44.610 --> 21:47.740 I was mistaken. It belongs to Davy Brown; 21:47.740 --> 21:49.620 it belonged to David Brown. 21:49.619 --> 21:53.639 So, he's wearing Brown's scapular of ears, 21:53.637 --> 21:57.847 and the travelers are curious about this. 21:57.849 --> 22:02.939 And one boy in particular won't believe him about their origin, 22:02.942 --> 22:06.722 and taunts him and sort of calls him a liar. 22:06.720 --> 22:08.880 The group backs away. 22:08.880 --> 22:13.330 That night, that young man comes back with his gun and he 22:13.328 --> 22:14.518 says on 322: 22:14.520 --> 22:18.440 22:18.440 --> 22:21.840 "I know'd you'd be hid out," the boy called. 22:21.839 --> 22:24.429 He [now "the man"] pushed back the blanket and 22:24.434 --> 22:27.844 rolled onto his stomach and cocked the pistol and leveled it 22:27.836 --> 22:31.696 at the sky where the clustered stars were burning for eternity. 22:31.700 --> 22:34.650 He centered the foresight in the milled groove of the frame 22:34.653 --> 22:37.763 strap and holding the piece so he swung it through the dark of 22:37.759 --> 22:41.069 the trees with both hands to the darker shape of the visitor. 22:41.070 --> 22:42.570 "I'm right here," he said. 22:42.569 --> 22:45.839 The boy swung with the rifle and fired. 22:45.839 --> 22:49.809 "You wouldn't have lived anyway," the man said. 22:49.809 --> 22:54.559 And they come up, the boy's family or his 22:54.561 --> 23:00.741 companions in the dawn, to get his body and they say, 23:00.739 --> 23:04.349 top of 323: "I know'd we'd bury him 23:04.354 --> 23:07.034 on this prairie. They come out here from 23:07.033 --> 23:10.163 Kentucky, Mister, this tyke and his brother, 23:10.161 --> 23:12.491 his mama and daddy both dead. 23:12.490 --> 23:16.770 His granddaddy was killed by a lunatic and buried in the woods 23:16.767 --> 23:20.827 like a dog." So, that little sentence tells 23:20.828 --> 23:26.348 us this is a descendant of the traveler from the judge's story. 23:26.349 --> 23:30.649 That's who was killed by a lunatic and buried in the woods 23:30.649 --> 23:34.769 like a dog. The brother who's been killed 23:34.767 --> 23:39.957 by the kid, now the man, tried to kill the kid. 23:39.960 --> 23:43.920 So, we know that he has become a killer of men with that same 23:43.922 --> 23:47.952 taste for mindless violence that broods in the kid at the very 23:47.951 --> 23:51.981 start of the novel, and his younger brother, 23:51.977 --> 23:56.467 about twelve, inherits the dead boy's gun. 23:56.470 --> 24:01.220 So, we see that inheritance, yet, of violence, 24:01.218 --> 24:04.268 continuing. So, what appears to be a 24:04.274 --> 24:08.424 parable, what's told to the group of men by the judge in the 24:08.415 --> 24:12.905 form of a parable-- invoking the parables of the Bible which have 24:12.907 --> 24:16.947 spiritual, moral lessons to them or 24:16.946 --> 24:23.536 can have spiritual, moral lessons to them--that 24:23.541 --> 24:27.711 discourse is not, in the end, a discourse that 24:27.712 --> 24:31.382 will divide killers of men from people who are not the killers 24:31.378 --> 24:33.938 of men. It does not help us to divide 24:33.938 --> 24:36.368 up the world between evil and good. 24:36.369 --> 24:41.819 It does not track along those lines that the judge's story 24:41.819 --> 24:45.839 about the kid, that the kid is his nemesis, 24:45.835 --> 24:50.515 that the kid is the counterforce to his evil. 24:50.519 --> 24:56.569 It does not track along those lines, and in fact, 24:56.566 --> 25:03.656 the whole novel renders the idea of a moral machinery moot, 25:03.660 --> 25:04.960 and you can see that, a little bit, 25:04.961 --> 25:05.881 too, in the epigraphs. 25:05.880 --> 25:07.840 I won't stop on those right now. 25:07.839 --> 25:11.029 The epigraphs to the novel suggest, also, 25:11.029 --> 25:13.899 the futility of a moral discourse. 25:13.900 --> 25:18.310 25:18.309 --> 25:23.859 I argued on Monday that there were two threads of tradition, 25:23.860 --> 25:27.690 or inheritance, or influence that McCarthy is 25:27.686 --> 25:32.516 drawing on: one historical--and I noted Sam Chamberlain's source 25:32.522 --> 25:37.362 material from his account of his life with the Glanton Gang--and 25:37.359 --> 25:41.119 then that whole train of literary allusions that I 25:41.120 --> 25:43.040 unearthed for you. 25:43.039 --> 25:48.209 The historical is made moot in this wonderful little passage 25:48.210 --> 25:51.990 from the judge. If the moral is made moot in 25:51.994 --> 25:56.344 all these ways that I am discussing, the historical is 25:56.337 --> 25:58.957 dismissed quite quickly, 330. 25:58.960 --> 26:07.200 26:07.200 --> 26:10.680 He says: "Men's memories" [This is 26:10.681 --> 26:14.581 the very last line of the page.] "Men's memories are uncertain 26:14.580 --> 26:18.290 and the past that was differs little from the past that was 26:18.287 --> 26:20.967 not." Think about that claim, 26:20.970 --> 26:24.940 in the context of a historical novel: "The past that was 26:24.939 --> 26:28.259 differs little from the past that was not." 26:28.259 --> 26:32.589 You can read "the past that was not" as the fictive past, 26:32.585 --> 26:34.125 the imagined past. 26:34.130 --> 26:38.260 This claim is that the true past has no significant 26:38.261 --> 26:43.221 distinction from the fictive past, that men's memories are no 26:43.218 --> 26:46.108 source of truth about the past. 26:46.109 --> 26:51.499 In this little line McCarthy says to us, "That historical 26:51.497 --> 26:55.727 record that I was quite careful to invoke, 26:55.730 --> 26:59.690 that I was quite careful to follow in some places, 26:59.688 --> 27:04.128 from which I got lots of detail that I used in my novel: 27:04.132 --> 27:05.912 forget about that. 27:05.910 --> 27:12.990 My novel stands on an equal plane of authority. 27:12.990 --> 27:17.610 It gives me a platform to make equally valid claims of truth 27:17.611 --> 27:20.511 about history and about the world." 27:20.509 --> 27:30.169 This is a kind of grandiloquent argument for fiction as opposed 27:30.165 --> 27:36.035 to history. On 309, we have another 27:36.043 --> 27:45.263 interesting look back to the material that I was talking 27:45.257 --> 27:50.397 about on Monday. This is when the kid is 27:50.401 --> 27:55.601 dreaming about the judge while he's undergoing surgery for the 27:55.602 --> 27:57.822 arrow wound in his leg. 27:57.820 --> 28:01.420 28:01.420 --> 28:05.100 In that sleep and in sleeps to follow the judge did 28:05.103 --> 28:07.483 visit. Who would come other? 28:07.480 --> 28:11.940 A great, shambling, mutant, silent and serene. 28:11.940 --> 28:16.630 Whatever his antecedents, he was something wholly other 28:16.632 --> 28:20.462 than their sum, nor was there system by which 28:20.455 --> 28:24.885 to divide him back into his origins for he would not 28:24.886 --> 28:27.646 go. What does that mean, 28:27.647 --> 28:31.727 "There was no system by which to divide him back into his 28:31.728 --> 28:34.058 origins for he would not go"? 28:34.059 --> 28:38.989 What I did on Monday was excavate some of the origins of 28:38.989 --> 28:43.559 the judge as a figure in Ahab, in Milton's Satan. 28:43.559 --> 28:47.429 This tells us--in the voice of the narrator, 28:47.433 --> 28:52.303 this time--that you can't reduce his character to those 28:52.298 --> 28:55.998 origins, that to excavate the allusions, 28:56.001 --> 29:00.231 or to note the literary tradition out of which such 29:00.228 --> 29:05.198 characters arise, does nothing to reduce the 29:05.201 --> 29:10.881 singularity of McCarthy's artistic creation. 29:10.880 --> 29:15.280 Even finding that eerily similar description of Judge 29:15.282 --> 29:18.502 Holden in Sam Chamberlain's account, 29:18.500 --> 29:26.430 McCarthy seems to be saying to us, doesn't reduce him to some 29:26.431 --> 29:30.001 understandable character. 29:30.000 --> 29:34.630 That claim for the judge's preeminence as a character is 29:34.625 --> 29:39.665 brought home to us at the very end when the novel switches to 29:39.672 --> 29:44.552 the present tense and makes these remarkable claims for the 29:44.550 --> 29:47.480 judge. And this is when they are 29:47.479 --> 29:52.089 dancing after the kid has been killed in some horrific manner 29:52.086 --> 29:54.156 of which we're not told. 29:54.160 --> 30:00.490 And here is the judge dancing, and you get the refrain that 30:00.486 --> 30:03.536 "He never sleeps, he says. 30:03.540 --> 30:04.990 He says he'll never die." 30:04.990 --> 30:05.970 He never sleeps, he says. 30:05.970 --> 30:07.490 He says he'll never die. 30:07.490 --> 30:10.790 He bows to the fiddlers and sashays backwards and throws 30:10.789 --> 30:13.549 back his head and laughs deep in his throat. 30:13.549 --> 30:15.779 And he is a great favorite, the judge. 30:15.779 --> 30:19.329 He wafts his hat and the lunar dome of his skull passes palely 30:19.329 --> 30:22.699 under the lamps and he swings about and takes possession of 30:22.704 --> 30:26.084 one of the fiddles and he pirouettes and makes a pass, 30:26.079 --> 30:29.109 two passes, dancing and fiddling at once. 30:29.110 --> 30:30.950 His feet are light and nimble. 30:30.950 --> 30:34.540 He never sleeps. He says that he will never die. 30:34.539 --> 30:37.519 He dances in light and in shadow and he is a great 30:37.520 --> 30:40.050 favorite. He never sleeps, the judge. 30:40.050 --> 30:41.880 He is dancing, dancing. 30:41.880 --> 30:46.100 He says that he will never die. 30:46.099 --> 30:50.389 The judge himself is a figure for the artist. 30:50.390 --> 30:52.120 He's a music maker. 30:52.119 --> 30:55.449 He's a performer, a dancer, in this passage, 30:55.452 --> 30:59.252 but the assertion is that he will last forever. 30:59.250 --> 31:02.190 And the only way, I think, to understand that, 31:02.188 --> 31:04.798 is to see him as a literary character. 31:04.799 --> 31:08.839 Very self-consciously in this moment, that like Milton's 31:08.844 --> 31:13.114 Satan, he's a character that will live in the tradition, 31:13.109 --> 31:18.129 that will never die out in the imagination of readers. 31:18.130 --> 31:22.610 It's a remarkably ambitious claim to make for your own 31:22.606 --> 31:25.296 character. But when you read it with that 31:25.296 --> 31:27.866 passage I just read, about the impossibility of 31:27.866 --> 31:29.986 dividing him back into his origins, 31:29.990 --> 31:33.580 you begin to see McCarthy's literary ambition, 31:33.577 --> 31:38.277 and that is to add to the tradition in a significant way. 31:38.279 --> 31:43.599 McCarthy says about writing novels that it's not worth 31:43.599 --> 31:49.389 doing--you cannot write a good book--unless it's about life and 31:49.386 --> 31:51.186 death. He dismisses, 31:51.189 --> 31:53.659 for example, Proust and Henry James as 31:53.662 --> 31:57.142 important writers on this ground, because they're not 31:57.139 --> 31:59.879 writing novels about life and death. 31:59.880 --> 32:06.550 I would argue that McCarthy needs his novel to be about life 32:06.552 --> 32:13.342 and death because he is looking for the sound and the feel of 32:13.338 --> 32:15.938 literary authority. 32:15.940 --> 32:19.610 In these passages, I'm suggesting that it's a 32:19.609 --> 32:24.279 literary authority coming out of a Miltonic tradition, 32:24.279 --> 32:28.139 perhaps out of the tradition of great American novels like 32:28.141 --> 32:30.851 Moby Dick, but it goes much deeper 32:30.851 --> 32:34.651 than that, and this is where I get to my 32:34.649 --> 32:39.959 original little detail of the Bible, the illiterate kid 32:39.956 --> 32:42.016 holding the Bible. 32:42.019 --> 32:52.459 248, we get a discussion among the men of the Bible in the 32:52.457 --> 32:58.497 context of a discussion of war. 32:58.500 --> 33:02.510 This is what is said about it. 33:02.510 --> 33:05.610 33:05.609 --> 33:08.879 This is Irving, or, actually, 33:08.880 --> 33:13.320 first Black Jackson and then Irving. 33:13.319 --> 33:16.819 "The good book says that he that lives by the sword shall 33:16.819 --> 33:19.019 perish by the sword," said the black. 33:19.019 --> 33:21.339 The judge smiled, his face shining with grease. 33:21.339 --> 33:23.109 "What right man would have it any other way?" 33:23.110 --> 33:26.390 he said. "The good book does indeed 33:26.390 --> 33:28.370 count war an evil," said Irving. 33:28.369 --> 33:33.349 "Yet there's many a bloody tale of war inside it." 33:33.349 --> 33:38.949 I would argue that this is a description of McCarthy's own 33:38.949 --> 33:43.959 book, except there is one thing that's different. 33:43.960 --> 33:46.780 The good book does, indeed, count war an evil. 33:46.779 --> 33:52.219 McCarthy's novel does not fail in making us see war as evil, 33:52.215 --> 33:57.835 because we're confronted over and over again with these scenes 33:57.835 --> 34:01.315 of violence, over and over again with its 34:01.323 --> 34:02.693 gratuitous nature. 34:02.690 --> 34:09.190 We feel the waste when that last young boy is killed by the 34:09.187 --> 34:13.177 man. We feel the waste of his life. 34:13.179 --> 34:17.149 We feel the tragedy in discovering that the sons of the 34:17.149 --> 34:21.409 harness maker and the sons of the traveler both come to the 34:21.413 --> 34:24.283 same end and become killers of men. 34:24.280 --> 34:29.610 We see that evil and, like the Bible, 34:29.608 --> 34:35.528 there is many a bloody tale within it. 34:35.530 --> 34:40.600 It does not count war an evil, because it has not allowed 34:40.596 --> 34:45.336 a moral machinery to have a place in this universe or in the 34:45.340 --> 34:47.190 logic of the novel. 34:47.190 --> 34:51.450 What it holds out instead is the feeling of morality, 34:51.448 --> 34:56.608 the feeling that you could have a rhetoric that would divide the 34:56.608 --> 35:00.128 kid from the judge in a meaningful way, 35:00.130 --> 35:05.180 that would divide killers of men from not killers of men, 35:05.181 --> 35:09.061 that would divide the good from the evil, 35:09.059 --> 35:14.589 that would divide the peaceful from the warlike, 35:14.593 --> 35:20.013 even that would divide history from fiction, 35:20.010 --> 35:26.000 if there's something moral about the truth of history. 35:26.000 --> 35:29.390 Why does McCarthy use the pattern and the sound of 35:29.394 --> 35:32.024 biblical language throughout the novel? 35:32.020 --> 35:34.470 I think this is why. 35:34.469 --> 35:38.439 Robert Alter--who, if you've studied the Bible in 35:38.435 --> 35:42.395 any college course, you've probably at least come 35:42.401 --> 35:48.021 to know his work--he is a great translator of the Old Testament, 35:48.019 --> 35:52.629 and he came out recently with a version--I think it was in 35:52.627 --> 35:56.747 2004--which he titles The Five Books of Moses. 35:56.750 --> 36:02.000 It's the Pentateuch, and it's retranslated in a very 36:02.001 --> 36:06.401 startling style. It's trying to honor the syntax 36:06.395 --> 36:09.325 of the Hebrew, which is paratactic, 36:09.329 --> 36:14.509 which means that it's strung together with "ands" rather than 36:14.507 --> 36:18.557 subordinated the way that Latinate languages are 36:18.563 --> 36:22.523 subordinated. So, the King James Bible has, 36:22.515 --> 36:26.655 in the English tradition, been the prestigious literary 36:26.660 --> 36:28.810 translation of the Bible. 36:28.809 --> 36:33.139 Alter, in 2004, tries to make the modern 36:33.141 --> 36:37.251 equivalent of the King James Bible. 36:37.250 --> 36:40.320 And, in the introduction to that translation, 36:40.316 --> 36:44.566 he says that what he's trying to do is to take the innovations 36:44.567 --> 36:48.167 of writers like Stein, Faulkner, and--the only one 36:48.171 --> 36:51.821 from the late twentieth century he mentions--McCarthy, 36:51.820 --> 36:58.170 to make a Bible that is true to the Hebrew syntax. 36:58.170 --> 37:02.520 This citation from Alter, this foremost scholar on the 37:02.521 --> 37:07.121 Bible and biblical translation, suggests just how successful 37:07.116 --> 37:11.336 McCarthy has been in persuading the ear that he is writing 37:11.343 --> 37:13.423 something like scripture. 37:13.420 --> 37:22.150 He has persuaded Alter's ear that this book is the equivalent 37:22.150 --> 37:27.250 of Hebrew prose. He is so successful in doing 37:27.252 --> 37:31.332 that, that he can make these gigantic claims. 37:31.329 --> 37:37.929 And I would point you back to the beginning of the novel, 37:37.931 --> 37:43.521 the citation of his father, the only line we get really 37:43.516 --> 37:47.126 about the kid's father: "His father has been a 37:47.126 --> 37:50.176 schoolmaster. He lies in drink. 37:50.179 --> 37:54.669 He quotes from poets whose names are now lost." 37:54.670 --> 38:00.930 It's as if McCarthy is telling us, "I'm erasing all that past 38:00.931 --> 38:05.211 that I'm invoking from the Bible on up, 38:05.210 --> 38:10.110 from the Bible to The Iliad, to Milton, 38:10.105 --> 38:13.255 to Wordsworth, to Melville. 38:13.260 --> 38:17.640 I'm invoking it all, but forget all those names. 38:17.639 --> 38:22.709 Remember just one: the judge or, 38:22.709 --> 38:26.469 better yet, McCarthy. 38:26.469 --> 38:29.599 That's the one that you can remember." 38:29.599 --> 38:33.939 So, McCarthy gives us the feel of scripture, 38:33.944 --> 38:38.904 and yet he erases all that could be the content of 38:38.895 --> 38:43.245 scripture. That's why I am interested in 38:43.253 --> 38:47.723 the Bible in the hand of an illiterate kid. 38:47.719 --> 38:53.609 What is the Bible in the hand of an illiterate kid but 38:53.610 --> 38:57.640 the symbol of that kind of narrative, 38:57.639 --> 39:03.319 the symbol that there can be an authoritative narrative about 39:03.319 --> 39:07.749 the nature of the world, about all of history, 39:07.752 --> 39:11.322 about its meaning, about its structure, 39:11.321 --> 39:14.891 a book that can compel its readers, 39:14.889 --> 39:19.909 that can speak to life and death in the most ultimate way, 39:19.914 --> 39:25.294 but because it's in the hand of an illiterate person it cannot 39:25.292 --> 39:28.782 be read? So, what McCarthy is saying to 39:28.776 --> 39:33.056 us in that tiny detail, is that the Bible is important 39:33.063 --> 39:36.343 as an artifact, as a literary artifact, 39:36.344 --> 39:39.364 proof that such narratives can exist. 39:39.360 --> 39:42.960 And McCarthy sets out to produce one, and, 39:42.957 --> 39:47.167 in keeping with the illiterateness of the kid, 39:47.170 --> 39:52.280 one that has no moral content at all, has only made claims 39:52.283 --> 39:57.223 about the material of the universe and not the spiritual 39:57.217 --> 40:02.567 quality of the universe, and that persuades entirely by 40:02.567 --> 40:08.237 the sound of rhetoric and the structures that are familiar to 40:08.242 --> 40:12.312 us from the narratives of our tradition. 40:12.309 --> 40:15.609 That's the ambition of the novel. 40:15.610 --> 40:19.000 I'm actually right on time, so I will stop there.