Witches, Camus, Shakespeare, and Incest Pt. 1

Exploring the darkness in McCarthy's Southern Works

This series of essays explores McCarthy’s themes of darkness in his Southern novels. Most McCarthy novels are violent and dark, but after moving to Tucson in 1974, McCarthy had a massive perspective shift, dramatically changing how he wrote characters and plots. While studying the early drafts of Suttree in the archive, I noticed a small shift into more extroverted, spiritual, optimistic, and purpose-orientated characters/plots, which continued until the end of his career.

Below are two small explorations into Gnosticism, Existentialism, and McCarthy’s sadness while living in Knoxville.