No More Heroes: Narrative Perspective and Morality in Cormac McCarthy

by Lydia R. Cooper

Critics often trace the prevailing mood of despair and purported nihilism in the works of Cormac McCarthy to the striking absence of interior thought in his seemingly amoral characters. In No More Heroes, however, Lydia Cooper reveals that though McCarthy limits inner revelations, he never eliminates them entirely. In certain crucial cases, he endows his characters with ethical decisions and attitudes, revealing a strain of heroism exists in his otherwise violent and apocalyptic world.
Cooper evaluates all of McCarthy's work to date, carefully exploring the range of his narrative techniques. The writer's overwhelmingly distant, omniscient third-person narrative rarely shifts to a more limited voice. When it does deviate, however, revelations of his characters' consciousness unmistakably exhibit moral awareness and ethical behavior. The quiet, internal struggles of moral men such as John Grady Cole in the Border Trilogy and the father in The Road demonstrate an imperfect but very human heroism.
Even when the writing moves into the minds of immoral characters, McCarthy draws attention to the characters' humanity, forcing the perceptive reader to identify with even the most despicable representatives of the human race. Cooper shows that this rare yet powerful recognition of commonality and the internal yearnings for community and a commitment to justice or compassion undeniably exist in McCarthy's work.
No More Heroes directly addresses the essential question about McCarthy's brutal and morally ambiguous universe and reveals poignant new answers.

Genres: Criticism

200 pages, Hardcover

First published May 3, 2011

About the author

Lydia R. Cooper is an author and educator who lives in Omaha, Nebraska.

Reviews

[Abdul Alhazred · Rating 2 out of 5]

The title belies the conclusion which is the very opposite. It has the very annoying habit of using other works than the one discussed to try to make a point, The Sunset Limited, despite not being the focus of any chapter, pops up time and time again to try and validate interpretations about other books. At several points I was asking myself how the author could possibly interpret passages that way, and wondering if they read the book at all; the interpretation of "He's a psychopathic killer, but so what?" does back breaking lifting in trying to interpret the entire structure of the book NCFOM, where it in context serves to present Wells' blasé attitude about Chigurh (something later undercut by his being completely outmaneuvered by the same). The attempt to fit Campbell's hero's journey to The Road similarly stumbles. The Sunset Limited's Black's ending excoriation of God for not giving him "the words", is not seen in the framework of the play's battle about faith, and Black's own wavering conviction having been unsuccessful at dissuading White from suicide, but is somehow literally about the linguistic question about persuasion.

Despite the shaky interpretations it's a decent discussion of the themes and moral dilemmas in the books, and doesn't make the mistake of (as discussed in the introduction) dismissing McCarthy as a nihilist.