Morality in Cormac McCarthy's Fiction

Russell M. Hillier is Associate Professor of English at Providence College, Rhode Island, USA. He is the author of Milton’s Messiah (2011) and has published numerous scholarly articles on William Shakespeare, John Milton, John Donne, George Herbert, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Cormac McCarthy.

• Chapter 1.- Introduction.- Chapter 2. “Give the Devil His Due”: Judge Holden’s Design in Blood Meridian.- Chapter 3. “Antic Clay”?: The Competing Ethical Appeals of Blood Meridian.- Chapter 4. “A Knowing Deep in the Bone”: Cowboy Stoicism and Tragic Heroism in All the Pretty Horses.- Chapter 5. “Like Some Supplicant to the Darkness Over Them All”: The Good of John Grady Cole in Cities of the Plain.- Chapter 6. “Nothing is Crueler Than a Coward”: No Country for Old Men and The Counselor as Tragic Fables of the Contemporary Southwest.- Chapter 7. Coda — The Good of Story in The Road.- Bibliography.- Index.

“Hillier focuses on examining one aspect of McCarthy’s moral vision in each chapter, the result of which is a book that is well organized around this central theme. Hillier includes quotations from McCarthy’s novels in his chapter titles, each of which fittingly summarizes the moral concerns in the narratives. His scholarship, which is rooted in the Western literary and intellectual tradition, in combination with his nuanced textual readings and his unearthing of frequently overlooked textual clues makes his argument insightful and compelling.” (Aihua Chen, Soundings, Vol. 101 (04), 2018)“This book reads easily, as it should, and is therefore recommended not only to graduate students and scholars but toadvanced undergraduates. … The overall structure of each chapter, and how the chapters produce the larger argument, generally present yet another admirable quality of this book.” (Jay Ellis, The Cormac McCarthy Journal, Vol. 16 (2), 2018)