March 15, 2020
(The
Sunset Limited, a novel in dramatic form, by Cormac McCarthy)
I loathe
strawman arguments. The
ones I’ve composed (usually in my head, but sometimes on paper) I
dislike the most. They
are usually self-serving, occasionally fatuous, and rarely edifying.
As the name implies, instead debating a real opponent, the
strawman opponent is intentionally easy to knock down, making the
author or reader feel good about themselves and their moral or
intellectual superiority.
In general, they are at best a waste of time.
So when
I started reading Cormac McCarthy’s strawman arguments in The
Sunset Limited, I was naturally put off.
But it is Cormac McCarthy after all, and I’ve never known his
brilliance to be limited or his writing to be disappointing.
I kept reading.
If a strawman is a fictional debate opponent, isn’t all of fiction
populated by straw men and women, the products of the imagination of
the author? Ah, but
there is the difference.
The fictional “straw people” are characters and not just arguments,
and it is the characters, who and what they are, that matter.
They may have arguments to make, but by bringing their
characters to life the good novelist gives us far more than an
intellectual argument, they give us a relationship, a connection, a
reason to care. The
novelist exposes us to more than rational examination – they give us
a slice of life, and possibly a bit of truth to ponder.
The
characters in The Sunset Limited are Black and White, an
obvious double entendre.
White, the professor, is less a character than a stereotype of the
soulless intellectual, a sad, suicidal middle-aged white man lacking
even a drop of hope for the world.
His was the voice of unbelief, one whose worldview was easy
to dismiss as worse than jaded, as dangerous.
Black was at least fleshed out more as a character, though
he, too, was not much more than a well-drawn stereotype:
a black ex-con who found Jesus in the jailhouse, now intent
on saving souls.
But it
wasn’t till the end that I realized that McCarthy had done something
quite unique. He had
given us not one, but two strawman arguments, battling against each
other. For White, there
is nothing in this world that makes life worth living, and the
ignorant survive by either not paying attention, or by believing in
make believe. For Black,
once you accept that God loves you, then it’s OK.
I dislike both positions, and found them both easy to knock
down. Yet the dialog was
interesting, and often compelling.
I wanted to see what would be said next.
I even thought closely about the cases being made on both
sides. McCarthy’s
masterful writing and unique construction of the back and forth was
worth much more than the less-than-stimulating “dialectic of the
homily” found in the arguments themselves.
And then
I realized one more thing.
McCarthy had slipped in the answer, the true point to be
made. Or maybe I had.
In either case, it was there.
The other people on the platform.
Community. The
professor resolutely rejected community, longed for death as a way
to cement this lack of community.
Black, in his empty apartment with the many locks on the
door, had none as well, his family all dead, junkies as strawmen
companions, and just God to talk to.
The other people on the platform.
For me, I don’t need God’s love, but I do need love, to give
and to receive. This is
what the professor needed as well.
It is
the same answer I found in McCarthy’s play The Stonemason, in
just one line, said in a dream, and the pivot for that play.
After spending most of his adult life learning the art and
philosophy of stone masonry, intent on preserving the lessons of the
past, Ben finds himself facing God at the preverbal pearly gates.
God gazes into Ben’s soul and asks a single question: “Where
are the others?” Indeed.
Where are the others.
Chris Mack is a writer in Austin, Texas.
© Copyright 2020, Chris Mack.
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