Some critics judge the works of Cormac McCarthy—who died on Tuesday, shortly before his ninetieth birthday—to be fundamentally nihilistic. But Alexander Riley argues that, despite its bleak depictions of human capacity for evil, McCarthy’s fiction is in fact pervaded with religious meaning. Riley focuses on the final two of the writer’s twelve novels, the companion works The Passenger and Stella Maris:
Many critics read McCarthy’s novels the way they do so many other art forms: devoid of the possibility of hope, transcendence, and a living God. But this often glosses over the genuinely conflicted character of the art. The Passenger and Stella Maris offer more than just an artistic representation of reality’s inescapable brutality. They forcefully struggle with the greatest questions of human existence. Like any good work of art, these books don’t allow any reader—religious, atheist, materialist, Christian—to walk away feeling perfectly comfortable in their understanding of the world.
McCarthy gives Alicia, [a main character of both The Passenger and Stella Maris], much more complexity than most of the critics have noted. She fiercely struggles with the fallen aspects of her character. A first-rate violinist, she lovingly describes music as sacred. She especially admires Bach, and she knows what (or Who) motivated the great German composer’s music. When she describes having spent her inheritance on a rare Amati violin, she recalls weeping when she played it for the first time. Tears come also when she recalls her pure bliss at the sound of Bach’s Chaconne emerging from her violin. The instrument must have originated in the mind of God, she insinuates, so perfect is its construction.
Amid this discourse on music, Alicia tells Cohen, her psychologist and interlocutor through the entirety of Stella Maris, what she believes to be “the one indispensable gift”: faith.
Read more on Public Discourse: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2023/06/89262/