Cormac McCarthy's Platonic Dialogues

• In Event: Literature and Political Philosophy

Abstract

Cormac McCarthy’s writing is famous for his unique prose descriptions of settings, scenery, and, at times, gruesome violence. However, McCarthy’s late work also makes extended use of the form of dramatic dialogue, devoid of most of his characteristic description and focused instead on the clash of ideas between interlocutors. In this, some of McCarthy’s works, particularly The Sunset Limited and Stella Maris, deserve reading with special attention to both the “argument and the action” befitting the genre of dialogue. By both explicitly and implicitly invoking Platonic themes and by drawing out complex arguments of philosophical and political import through these dramatic dialogues, McCarthy invites a closer and more political reading than he has sometimes received.

In the dialogues of Plato, philosophy is often undertaken in light of death. Facing death in his trial, in his prison cell, and immediately prior to his state-mandated suicide, Socrates engages in some of his most intense philosophizing about the purpose of life, the nature of the soul, and more. McCarthy borrows this pre-death clarity in both The Sunset Limited and Stella Maris. The two characters of the former debate the merits of the western canon and the meaning of existence following a prevented suicide attempt, while the two characters of the latter debate foundational and metaphysical questions preceding the suicide of one of the interlocutors. Reading these intense debates between characters in McCarthy’s literature alongside, e.g., Plato's Phaedo, gives insight into the nature of life, death, philosophy, and the role of a political community in the lives of two distinct characters contemplating their own suicides. McCarthy’s unique political literature can thus be illuminated by reading his works as and alongside Platonic dialogues.

Author

• Philip D. Bunn, Covenant College