Redemption in Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy
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Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy is a complicated and violent group of novels. However, the central messaging of the trilogy is hopeful and redemptive. A brief overview of scholarly opinion of Cormac McCarthy’s Christianity is made to start the introduction. This is followed by an examination of the biblical sources of redemption through the Hebrew and Greek words, go’el, pada, and lutron which all refer to a form of redemption. Using these two understandings as a launching point, a study of redemption in All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, and Cities of the Plain follows with every novel being examined for one chapter. The conclusion of the thesis is that Cormac McCarthy is a Christian writer who uses grace to redeem the acts of violence found in the Border Trilogy.