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ABSTRACT: Cormac McCarthy's minimalist 2006 "novel in dramatic form," The Sunset Limited, revives an ancient genre-philosophical dialogue. In the book, a born-again Christian ex-convict, Black, searches for reasons to convince a misanthropic professor, White, not to kill himself. Black's faith, White's despair, and their open-ended Socratic dialogue all reflect the influence of Soren Kierkegaard upon McCarthy. White, the suicidal ascetic, consistently extends what Kierkegaard once called "the most fearful" philosophy of all-Arthur Schopenhauer's pessimism. Can ordinary American Christianity refute this systematic Schopenhauerian despair? Taking cues from Kierkegaard, The Sunset Limited stages a dark and inconclusive philosophical dialogue. keywords: Cormac McCarthy, The Sunset Limited, Soren Kierkegaard, Arthur Schopenhauer, religion
In 2006, Cormac McCarthy published The Road and a sparser, perhaps even bleaker, book. The front cover calls The Sunset Limited a "novel in dramatic form," but it is simply a conversation between two unnamed characters, Black and White, in a small New York City apartment. The plot is simple, too. Black has rescued White, who jumped in front of the subway at 155th Street, and is trying to prevent White from repeating this suicide attempt.
Critics have compared the minimalism of The Sunset Limited to the dramas of Samuel Beckett (see, for instance, Lydia Cooper's No More Heroes), yet it is more properly a philosophical dialogue, the minimally literary genre closely associated with Plato and neglected by philosophers since the Enlightenment. Vittorio Hösle defines a philosophical dialogue as a literary genre in which the author focuses primarily on the problems that the characters-and through them, the author-are trying to solve (Hösle 46). Black and White debate a philosophical question familiar to readers of McCarthy: Can we hope for a reason to live? Suicidal White is a misanthropic professor. His rescuer, or perhaps captor, Black, is a Christian who was born again while imprisoned for murder. Black's cosmic optimism finds a powerful opponent in White's systematic pessimism. It is unclear which McCarthy ratifies, if either. The Sunset Limited, like Plato's early "aporetic" Socratic dialogues, is ultimately inconclusive.
At first, Black seems to play the role of Socrates to White's sophistry. Aware of his own ignorance, Black asks White searching questions about his beliefs, values, relationships, and view of reality. Black initially appears like the hero of...