Cormac McCarthy Was No Nihilist

Cormac McCarthy passed away on June 13, just shy of his ninetieth birthday. Accolades in the press have rapidly followed, nearly all of them informing readers that McCarthy’s novels are violent and dark. That McCarthy is a macabre nihilist has been a persistent cliché throughout his career, but like most clichés, despite its kernel of truth, it oversimplifies and therefore distorts our view. McCarthy’s novels—from his first book, The Orchard Keeper, to his final duology, The Passenger and Stella Maris—have centered on the problem of evil. It is this focus that makes the novels so dark and bloody, but also what gives them the moral and spiritual gravity that is their primary appeal. McCarthy’s meditations on the darkness in the world give rise to reflections on the light within the human heart.