Explorations in Ecocriticism: Reading the Select Novels of Cormac McCarthy in the Light of Anthropocentrism and Cartesian Thinking

This study highlights the subtle and complex environmental ethic in Cormac McCarthy‘s select novels. By delineating the relationships McCarthy‘s characters have with non-human nature, an ecocritical analysis views their alienation as the result of their separation from nature. At the root of this alienation is an anthropocentric and mechanistic mode of thinking that is dominant in Western philosophy and that this study defines as Cartesian. While McCarthy‘s environmentalist heroes are persecuted by Cartesian institutions and displaced from the land on which they have defined themselves and made meaning, his Cartesian anti-heroes represent extreme manifestations of Cartesian thinking. McCarthy‘s SMART MOVES JOURNAL IJELLH ONLINE ISSN: 2582-3574 PRINT ISSN: 2582-4406 VOL. 8, ISSUE 2, FEBRUARY 2020 DOI: https://doi.org/10.24113/ijellh.v8i1.10380 www.ijellh.com 38 environmentalism is as much a critique and indictment of Cartesian thinking as it is a portrayal of the value of a life lived in close contact with nonhuman nature. McCarthy uses human treatment of non-human animals to evidence man's absolute desire to control the natural world and the beasts within the natural world. Animals often figure prominently in Cormac McCarthy‘s fiction, taking on mystical significance or even mirroring human nature. At other times, McCarthy portrays astriking intimacy between animals and men. The animals in McCarthy‘s novels also represent a link to an older, natural order and a vanishing (or vanished) way of life. The representations are clearly myriad and diverse, but the one thing that can be asserted for certain is that the overarching tendency is to elevate animals to positions of great significance; they inhabit a space that, while often overlapping with the human realm, is distinctive and important. In All the Pretty Horses John Grady Cole is virtually defined by his relationship to horses, and there are moments of striking intimacy between him and horses in the novel. Wolves assume a similar place of significance in The Crossing. The ranchers discus show the cattle, in their domestication and defenselessness, ―puzzle‖ the wolves, who kill the cattle in a much more savage manner than they do wild quarry, ―as if they were offended by some violation of an old order. Billy also experiences moments of intimacy with the pregnant she-wolf that echo John Grady Cole‘s relationship to horses, and this happens at the same two levels: in both the dream world and the tangible world. In McCarthy‘s borderlands novels there is always the looming awareness that civilizations will rise and civilizations will fall, but what is constant is war, brutality, and death. This is why his books, particularly his works concerning the Southwest and Mexico, are littered with apocalyptic themes and images—until, of course, he delivers the death of all civilizations in the post-apocalyptic rendering The Road (2006). SMART MOVES JOURNAL IJELLH ONLINE ISSN: 2582-3574 PRINT ISSN: 2582-4406 VOL. 8, ISSUE 2, FEBRUARY 2020 DOI: https://doi.org/10.24113/ijellh.v8i1.10380 www.ijellh.com 39

diverse, but the one thing that can be asserted for certain is that the overarching tendency is to elevate animals to positions of great significance; they inhabit a space that, while often overlapping with the human realm, is distinctive and important. In All the Pretty Horses John Grady Cole is virtually defined by his relationship to horses, and there are moments of striking intimacy between him and horses in the novel. Wolves assume a similar place of significance in The Crossing. The ranchers discus show the cattle, in their domestication and defenselessness, -puzzle‖ the wolves, who kill the cattle in a much more savage manner than they do wild quarry, -as if they were offended by some violation of an old order. Billy also experiences moments of intimacy with the pregnant she-wolf that echo John Grady Cole's relationship to horses, and this happens at the same two levels: in both the dream world and the tangible world. In McCarthy's borderlands novels there is always the looming awareness that civilizations will rise and civilizations will fall, but what is constant is war, brutality, and death. This is why his books, particularly his works concerning the Southwest and Mexico, are littered with apocalyptic themes and images-until, of course, he delivers the death of all civilizations in the post-apocalyptic rendering The Road (2006). As Ecocritics seek to offer a truly transformative discourse, enabling us to analyze and criticize the world in which we live, attention is increasingly given to the broad range of cultural processes and products in which, the complex negotiations of nature and culture take place. Indeed, the widest definition of the subject of ecocriticism is the study of the relationship of the human and the non-human, throughout human cultural history and entailing critical analysis of the term ‗human' itself.
The idea of wilderness, signifying nature in a state uncontaminated by civilisation, is the most potent construction of nature available to New World environmentalism.
-Wilderness narratives share the motif of escape and return with the typical pastoral narrative, but the construction of nature they propose and reinforce is fundamentally different‖ (Garrard 39). If pastoral is the distinctive Old-World construction of nature, suited to long-settled and domesticated landscapes, wilderness fits the settler experience in the New Worldsparticularly the United States, Canada and Australiawith their apparently untamed landscapes and the sharp distinction between the forces of culture and nature.
The study of the relations between animals and humans in the Humanities is split between philosophical consideration of animal rights and cultural analysis of the representation of animals. A remarkably recent phenomenon, it derived impetus primarily from Peter Singer's revolutionary Animal Liberation (1975), which examined an issue until then discussed in passing by moral philosophers but seldom fully explored. The boundary between human and animal is arbitrary and, moreover, irrelevant, since we share with animals a capacity for suffering that only ‗the hand of tyranny' could ignore.
The relevance of ecocriticism The present day calls for a harmonious relationship with nature. Unfortunately, mananimal conflict has been on the rise. Likewise, destruction of forests, hunting of wildlife, In the present context, the relationship between man and nature is in jeopardy. Ecocriticism seeks to address this issue. We live in a world increasingly lost to pollution, contamination and industry sponsored ecological disaster. Ecocriticism originates in a bio social context of unrestrained and excessive exploitation of nature. Jean Jacques Rousseau argued that the state of nature was the purest and best form of human existence. His was one of the first critiques of the Enlightenment, arguing against the established notions of ‗progress'. Rousseau believed that the ‗natural' was innocent and that civilization was ‗artificial' and corrupt.
Ecocriticism also looks closely at the human culture-nature interaction intexts. It assumes that nature and human culture are mutually influential. Texts that explore this mutual influence are supposed to embody an ecological consciousness. The Crossing (1994), but animals are an important motif throughout most of his fiction. The representations are clearly myriad and diverse, but the one thing that can be asserted for certain is that the overarching tendency is to elevate animals to positions of great significance; they inhabit a space that, while often overlapping with the human realm, is distinctive and important.
In fact, since McCarthy takes the slant that human existence is corrupted and fleeting in the overall order of things, one could argue that animals occupy a higher hierarchical status in McCarthy's fictional worldview. In Cities of the Plain (1998), they certainly occupy a high moral and ethical ground. As John Grady puts it, a horse -won't do onething while you're watching him and another when you aren't.... A good horse has justice in his heart. I've seen it‖ (p. 53). It's also quite significant that in The Road (2006)-a dying world that is utterly devoid of natural life-the last image is of a -muscular and torsional‖ brook trout who lived in -deep glens where ... all things were older than manand they hummed of mystery‖ (p. 287). He suggests a natural world with infinite roots, before humankind.
In All the Pretty Horses John Grady Cole is virtually defined by his relationship tohorses, and there are moments of striking intimacy between him and horses in the novel. In one passage, McCarthy depicts John Grady breaking a green colt and sitting astride it as it lay on the ground, its muzzle pressed to his chest and its -hot sweet breath ...flooding up from the dark wells of its nostrils over his face and neck like news from another world‖ (p. 103). Here we witness not only the intimacy between man and horse,but the mystical-even esotericlight (-another world‖) in which McCarthy casts horses. They also show up in that hue in John Grady's dreams, where the young manhimself is running with the horses -and they moved all of them in a resonance that waslike a music among them ... that resonance which is the world itself and which cannotbe spoken but only praised‖ (  Sanborn points out, the vanishing wolves in The Crossing become -a negative metaphor for man's ceaseless appetite for control over the natural world‖ (p. 131). Since McCarthy is also frequently preoccupied with existences that are headed toward extinction, it must be noted that the vanishing wolf-as a threat to cattle-has been pushed toward extinction by the ranching enterprise, just as the ranching way of life is also giving way.
-In McCarthy's borderlands novels there is always the looming awareness that civilizations will rise and civilizations will fall, but what is constant is war, brutality, and death (Greenwood 66

Outer Dark
Outer Dark is a parable that addresses the timeless theme of the origin of evil.
McCarthy employs violent taboos such as infanticide, incest, and cannibalism to probe human nature and sinfulness. The grotesque subject matter can be off-putting to readers and, in all likelihood, contributed to the author's relative obscurity into the early 1990s. Yet, the unswerving consideration of evil also earned him a loyal following. The picture of Ballard that emerges from the narrative as a whole is of a man who both rejects and has been rejected by contemporary society. As a youth, he was disliked by his peers for his unprovoked violence and aggression. As an adult, ‗‗he'd grown lean and bitter. Some said mad. A malign star kept him'' (Child of God, 41). He scrapes a meagre existence off the land. He peddles stolen property for petty cash. Helives alone in a rotting, abandoned house in the woods. The only person with whom he socializes is the drunken patriarch of a junkyard who lords over his brood of promiscuous, inebriated daughters.
As Lester is cast out of social forms and progresses deeper into nature-from living in a house, to an overgrown shack, to a cave-he becomes more -human,‖ but he also is driven deeper into the dark recesses of -human nature‖-that is, the sexual and violent drives that are, in McCarthy's worldview, inherent in the human condition (if often buried). We see this paralleling of nature and the human condition as Lester walks through the winter forest: The citizens lead lives that are mechanistic and almost wholly detached from nature. This contrast and the ensuing conflict, alienates Ballard from the rest of humanity. Ballard's loss of being is the result of his inability to connect with either human society and the society's failure to recognize his emotional and intellectual disability. Ballard is shunned despite his efforts to integrate socially and spiritually in the county. Because of the citizens' inability to recognize his emotional and intellectual disability, they drive him not only to retreat to the wilderness but also to commit the horrible acts of murder and necrophilia.
Despite reverting back to a primitive natural state Ballard fails to establish a meaningful relationship with nature and the environment. His violent and deviant actions are also perpetrated against the natural world. He shoots a cow dead for making the river muddy.
On another instance, he nearly decapitates a cow by tugging it with a rope and a tractor. It is a reflection of man's insatiable desire to control the natural world. But in his desire to control his non-human environment, Ballard merely alienates himself further. Lester is abandoned by a dog who chooses to face survival alone rather than with Lester. The society is primarily  characters, a middle-age father and his young son. The Road's central conflict is that an unnamed disaster-in all probability a nuclear holocaust-has created a nuclear winter on earth. The story is set in America where all traces of modern society have stopped functioning. There is no electricity; there is no gasoline; there are no factories or stores or automobiles. Anarchy reigns in this desolate ashcovered world where the sun has been blotted from the sky. The main characters are nameless. The boy calls his father ‗‗Papa. ‗In his thoughts, the father refers to his son as ‗‗the boy.'' Together, the two slowly plod south in search of warmer weather on the southern coast because the father is convinced that they will not survive the encroaching winter. They push their meagre belongings, which includes a well-worn and oft-consulted map, in a creaky shopping cart down the middle of barren roads coated with debris. The ensuing cold and lack of sunlight has killed everything except a small number of people. To survive, some people have resorted to cannibalism. Thus, a new social order has evolved, one segmented into the ‗‗good guys,'' who try to survive by scavenging, and the ‗‗bad guys,'' who kill humans for meat. This new social order creates for a harrowing journey through the wastes of America. The father knows the risks they will face by pursuing this journey, but he feels they have no choice.
Armed with a pistol and two bullets, the father is determined to protect his son from the gruesome realities of this brave new world. They face many obstacles together, and their search for hope in a world where there is none to be had is both heart rending and inspiring.
The story is told through a combination of omniscient third-person narration and the father's first-person perspective. McCarthy also uses flashback scenes to fill in some of the story's detail in the form of the father's dream sequences. From one of these sequences, readers learn that the son was born shortly after the global catastrophe occurred. Several years after her son's birth, the mother committed suicide. Her decision to end her life was driven by the psychological and physical exhaustion of struggling to survive in the post apocalyptic reality. The story suggests that the mother's decision to kill herself was one made in the name of love, not cowardice. She died to improve her son's and husband's odds of survival. She is physically and emotionally distraught when her husband is preparing for their departure and knows her weakness will make the trio vulnerable to attack from the bad guys. She also knows that after eight years of survivalist living, her husband has only two bullets left in his pistol. The family lives in constant fear of being captured, raped, killed, and eaten. The two remaining bullets are a last resort. The father can use them to kill the boy and then himself.