Outer Dark
by Cormac McCarthy
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Book Summary Information
Author: Cormac McCarthyEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1993-07
ISBN: 0844667498
Number of pages: 142
Publisher: Vintage Books
Book Reviews of Outer Dark
Book Review: Brilliance in the dark...
Summary: 5 Stars
Cormac McCarthy caught a lot of mainstream attention with All the Pretty Horses, No Country for Old Men, and most recently, The Road. Those who venture back into McCarthy's earlier work will be enthralled and frustrated, invigorated and dismayed. McCarthy's more dated prose is, at times, more accessible than Faulkner's (a common comparison), and at others, equally as dense. Curious readers who are only familiar with more contemporary work will not be shocked to find graphic depictions of violence (Blood Meridian), anti-heroic protagonists (Child of God), or put-off by complex depictions of setting (Suttree). While these elements are expected (in certain measure), the reader may, at times, be overwhelmed by the volume / manifestation of these elements. So, reader beware: delving even further into McCarthy's work, one will find a taught, compact showcase of these hallmarks in his second novel, Outer Dark.
The tale is set in the early 1900 foothills / backwaters of Appalachia. A young girl (Rinthy) is giving birth to her brother's child. The brother (Culla) abandons the infant to the forest, and tries to convince her that it died from natural causes. In spite of the appalling circumstances of the child's birth, her maternal instincts are still strong-- she needs to see the body of the child if nothing more than for closure. Frustrated, Culla directs her to the spot in the woods where he left the baby, hoping that she will accept that it's where he buried the body. She needs more; she needs to actually see / hold the body, so she sets about trying to dig it up. Rinthy finds nothing, and Culla is forced to admit he left the baby to die in the forest. The best explanation they can surmise is that a passing "tinker" (traveling vendor) must have found and taken the child. This marks both the separation of the siblings and the beginning of their journeys: Rinthy's quest to find her baby, and Culla's "hunting" of his sister.
At the same time, there are three morbid, savage characters prowling the land, robbing, killing, and yes, even eating their prey. They are intermittently portrayed, and sparsely described, yet the image of Tolkien's wraiths in the Lord of the Ring trilogy keep coming to mind-- shadowy, terrifying creatures sweeping the landscape like a scourge. McCarthy's trio is translucently depicted-- although they feast on flesh and blood, they are not necessarily OF flesh and blood. Like the product of Culla and Rinthy's unnatural pairing, these marauders are abominations, but oddly enough, creatures with an other-worldly power / authority, like one of the Old Testament plagues sent to punish, correct, and stabilize the land. I am certainly not the first to draw a biblical allusion referencing McCarthy's work, and Outer Dark is certainly one of the strongest examples of the connection in theme, tone, and rhetoric.
Ultimately, the path of the wandering siblings and the three horsemen must cross. Without ruining the outcome for those who are interested, it should come as no surprise that it's a dismal, grotesque, and deeply unsettling fate. The reader will not be able to shake the image of what Culla encounters at the end of the novel. For those who believe in a sense of natural order, perhaps it is a deserved outcome; for those who believe in romantic notions of nobility and an innate sense of goodness within humanity, well, maybe a Nicholas Sparks novel would be more suitable. This is a brutal, almost fable-like tale that flouts notions of morality while ironically supporting such concepts through their omission. There is only one character that seems to do anything "honorable," and he is certainly not rewarded for it. This character is not Culla--he seems to be tracking Rinthy less out of any sense of genuine concern and more out of a sense of entitlement / ownership. Rinthy, while trying to locate her baby, is not doing so under the guidance of moral obligation-- it is simply a primal, biological drive pushing her along. She lacks any sort of cognition in the decision making process-- she has no idea where to find her child, or any real reason to believe that the man who she believes has possession of him actually does. The siblings are depicted as feral creatures given to impulse / instinct. If at times, they seem innocent, and at others, contemptible, it is because they are. It is with these same sorts of conflicted constructs that we consider animals-- some are wild and beyond the perimeters or "civility," and others might be promising pets if only given the benefits of "domesticity" and a sound breaking of their creature spirit.
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