From Symptoms to Values: Aging and Old Age Represented in Cormac McCarthy’s Novels

Arguably, the fact that Cormac McCarthy continues to renew his last/late fiction can be seen as a literary event. McCarthy published Cities of the Plain at age 64, No Country for Old Men at age 71, and The Road at age 73. His eleventh fiction entitled The Passenger appears to be approaching in 2016. Fiction writing is a relentlessly time-consuming and brain-consuming job. But like other older writers such as Toni Morrison, Philip Roth, J. M. Coetzee, and the late Doris Lessing, McCarthy would not stop writing fiction simply because he has aged. To use some key terms from age studies, McCarthy does not seem to accept decline at midlife as natural. Regarding the relationship between aging and creativity, we need to take a look at what is at issue in literary gerontology. Over the last quarter of the twentieth century, much attention was paid to issues of diversity. At a consequence, “age,” along with the three major analytical categories of race, class, and gender, has similarly obtained minor status as a social classifying device and a determinant of subjectivities. Among scholars of age studies is Kathleen Woodward, whose primary purpose is to present psychoanalytic interpretations of aging. Margaret Gullette is well known for her critical position, which views age studies as cultural studies. In this context, focusing on McCarthy’s three novels—All the Pretty Horses, Cities of the Plain, and No Country for Old Men, this essay shows the ways in which McCarthy’s aged characters cope with the symptoms of negative feelings such as anxiety, fear, denial, and repression. Then, it explores how those old characters attempt to get over such age-related symptoms and how they succeed in creating a set of values for old people. In All the Pretty Horses, I discuss the condition that the old local judge as a good listener embodies wisdom value which also serves for his grandson-like John Grady. In Cities of the Plain, investigating how the 78-year-old Billy Parham comes to terms with his old age and how he is welcomed as a much-delayed neighbor in a family, I explain why consolation value matters. And in No Country for Old Men, I argue that the retiring sheriff Ed Tom Bell is not an old timer who is fated to fail, but an aged hero who is able to create fantasy value which can function as a magic shield against evil powers.