Child of God
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''Child of God'' (1973) is the third
novel A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itsel ...
by American author
Cormac McCarthy Cormac McCarthy (born Charles Joseph McCarthy Jr., July 20, 1933) is an American writer who has written twelve novels, two plays, five screenplays and three short stories, spanning the Western and post-apocalyptic genres. He is known for his gr ...
. It depicts the life of a violent young outcast and
serial killer A serial killer is typically a person who murders three or more persons,A * * * * with the murders taking place over more than a month and including a significant period of time between them. While most authorities set a threshold of three ...
in 1960s Appalachian
Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to th ...
. Though the novel received critical praise, it was not a financial success. Like its predecessor ''
Outer Dark ''Outer Dark'' is the second novel by American writer Cormac McCarthy, published in 1968. The time and setting are nebulous, but can be assumed to be somewhere in Appalachia, sometime around the turn of the twentieth century. The novel tells o ...
'' (1968), ''Child of God'' established McCarthy's interest in using extreme isolation, perversity, and violence to represent human experience. McCarthy ignores literary conventions – for example, he does not use quotation marks – and switches between several styles of writing such as matter-of-fact descriptions, almost poetic prose, and colloquial first-person narration (with the speaker remaining unidentified).


Plot summary

Set in mountainous
Sevier County, Tennessee Sevier County ( ) is a county of the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2020 census, the population was 98,380. Its county seat and largest city is Sevierville. Sevier County comprises the Sevierville, TN Micropolitan Statistical Area, which i ...
, in the 1960s, ''Child of God'' tells the story of Lester Ballard, a dispossessed, violent man whom the narrator describes as "a child of God much like yourself perhaps". Ballard is violently evicted from his home, which is sold at auction to another Sevier County resident, John Greer. Now homeless, Ballard begins squatting in an abandoned two-room cabin and voyeuristically spying on young couples in their cars near the Frog Mountain turnaround. Ballard is falsely accused of rape by a woman he finds sleeping along the roadside, and is jailed for nine days. Interspersed among the narrator's story are townspeople's accounts of Ballard's early life, revealing his early violent behavior and the suicide of his father. While out squirrel hunting, Ballard comes across a dead couple in an idling car. He steals the couple's money, rapes the woman's corpse, and stores her body in the attic of his cabin. Ballard's cabin burns down with the corpse inside, and he moves his remaining possessions into a nearby cave. Ballard visits his friend's home, finding only the friend's daughter and a disabled child. When the daughter rejects his sexual advances, he kills her and sets the house ablaze, storing her body in the cave. Later, Ballard shoots a couple in their car. As he flees the scene with the woman's corpse, he sees that the man survived and drove away. Prompted by the string of murders, the county sheriff begins investigating Ballard. The county floods, and the sheriff recalls the county's history of vigilantism with the Whitecaps and Bluebills. Ballard unsuccessfully attempts to kill John Greer, the current owner of his former home, and is shot in the process. He wakes handcuffed to a guarded hospital bed. One night, a group of men appear in his hospital room demanding to know where he stored his victims' bodies. Ballard initially feigns innocence, but offers to lead the men to the bodies when they threaten to hang him. Ballard brings them to the cave, where he escapes through a crevice too small for the other men to fit through. For three days, Ballard deliriously roams the cave searching for an exit. He eventually chips through a small crack to the surface and returns himself to the hospital. Instead of facing trial, Ballard is sent to a mental hospital where he contracts pneumonia and dies soon after. His remains are dissected by medical students in Memphis for three months before he is buried. In the spring of the same year, a farmer's plow falls into a sinkhole in Sevier county, revealing a cavernous chamber containing the bodies of seven of Ballard's victims.


Themes

Overarching themes of the novel are cruelty, isolation, and
moral A moral (from Latin ''morālis'') is a message that is conveyed or a lesson to be learned from a story or event. The moral may be left to the hearer, reader, or viewer to determine for themselves, or may be explicitly encapsulated in a maxim. A ...
degradation of humans and the role of fate and society in it. In an interview with James Franco, director of the novel's
movie adaptation A film adaptation is the transfer of a work or story, in whole or in part, to a feature film. Although often considered a type of derivative work, film adaptation has been conceptualized recently by academic scholars such as Robert Stam as a dia ...
, McCarthy remarked that "there are people like him allardall around us". One of the novel's main themes is
sexual deviancy Paraphilia (previously known as sexual perversion and sexual deviation) is the experience of intense sexual arousal to atypical objects, situations, fantasies, behaviors, or individuals. It has also been defined as sexual interest in anything ot ...
, specifically
necrophilia Necrophilia, also known as necrophilism, necrolagnia, necrocoitus, necrochlesis, and thanatophilia, is sexual attraction towards or a sexual act involving Cadaver, corpses. It is classified as a paraphilia by the World Health Organization (WHO) ...
. Ballard, who the novel makes clear is unable to have conventional
romantic relationship Romance or romantic love is a feeling of love for, or a strong attraction towards another person, and the courtship behaviors undertaken by an individual to express those overall feelings and resultant emotions. The ''Wiley Blackwell Encycl ...
s, eventually descends into necrophilia after finding a dead couple in a car. After this "first love" is destroyed in a fire, he becomes proactive, creating dead female partners by shooting them with his rifle. Ballard also makes no distinction between adult women and young girls, at one point killing a girl whom he had previously asked "How come you wear them britches? You cain't see nothin." Another theme examined by the novel is survival. As society pushes Ballard further and further into a corner, he degenerates into a barbaric survivalist, living in a cave, stealing food, and deviously escaping after he is captured by a group of vengeful men. Much like McCarthy's later novel ''
Blood Meridian ''Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West'' is a 1985 epic novel by American author Cormac McCarthy, classified under the Western, or sometimes the anti-Western, genre. McCarthy's fifth book, it was published by Random House. In a l ...
'', the novel explores the nature of cruelty, depicting violence as an eternal driving force of humanity:
He came up flailing and sputtering and began to thrash his way toward the line of willows that marked the submerged creek bank. He could not swim, but how would you drown him? His wrath seemed to buoy him up. Some halt in the way of things seems to work here. See him. You could say that he's sustained by his fellow men, like you. Has peopled the shore with them calling to him. A race that gives suck to the maimed and the crazed, that wants their wrong blood in its history and will have it. But they want this man's life. He has heard them in the night seeking him with lanterns and cries of execration. How then is he borne up? Or rather, why will not these waters take him?
This passage bears a striking resemblance to the closing pages of ''Blood Meridian'', wherein Judge Holden declares that war is beautiful, comparing it to dance. That novel's main text ends with the judge in the center of a barroom, rallying the raucous men around him with a performance: "He dances in light and in shadow and he is a great favorite. He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die."


Reception

In 2014, Jason Diamond of ''
Flavorwire ''Flavorwire'' is a New York City-based online culture magazine. The site includes original feature articles, interviews, reviews, as well as content recycled from other sources. ''Flavorwire'' describes themselves as "a network of culturally con ...
'' ranked ''Child of God'' as McCarthy's third best book.


Historical references

In a 1992 interview, McCarthy stated that the character Ballard was based on an unnamed historic figure. Despite its surreal focus, ''Child of God'' contains much unobtrusive historical detail about
Sevier County, Tennessee Sevier County ( ) is a county of the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2020 census, the population was 98,380. Its county seat and largest city is Sevierville. Sevier County comprises the Sevierville, TN Micropolitan Statistical Area, which i ...
, including references to local
Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and ...
-like vigilante groups of the 1890s known as White Caps and Bluebills. Ballard's grandfather is said to have been a White Cap.


Texas book report controversy

In October 2007, ''Child of God'' found itself at the center of a teaching controversy at Jim Ned High School in
Tuscola, Texas Tuscola is a city in Taylor County, Texas, United States. The population was 742 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Abilene, Texas Metropolitan Statistical Area. Geography Tuscola is located at (32.209060, –99.797126). According to the ...
. Kaleb Tierce, the
Advanced Placement Advanced Placement (AP) is a program in the United States and Canada created by the College Board which offers college-level curricula and examinations to high school students. American colleges and universities may grant placement and course ...
English teacher and coach at Jim Ned, assigned a book report for which a 14-year-old student selected this title. Tierce was placed on paid administrative leave when the mother of the student complained. The case was investigated, and Tierce was not charged, but his teaching contract was not renewed.


Film adaptation

In February 2012,
James Franco James Edward Franco (born April 19, 1978) is an American actor and filmmaker. For his role in '' 127 Hours'' (2010), he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor. Franco is known for his roles in films, such as Sam Raimi's ''Spider-Ma ...
began shooting a film adaptation of ''Child of God'' in
Hillsboro, West Virginia Hillsboro is a town in Pocahontas County, West Virginia, United States. The population was 232 at the 2020 census. History Hillsboro was named for pioneer John (Richard) Hill, from North Carolina, who built a log cabin near what is now Lobeli ...
. The film stars
Scott Haze Scott Haze (born June 28, 1983) is an American actor and filmmaker. Known for his role in the 2013 film, ''Child of God'', where he played the role of Lester Ballard, sleeping in a cave for months and losing 45 pounds for his role in the adaptat ...
as Lester Ballard and
Jim Parrack Jim Parrack (born February 8, 1981) is an American actor best known for his role as Hoyt Fortenberry in HBO series ''True Blood''. He has also appeared in the film '' Battle: Los Angeles'' and as "Slim" in the 2014 Broadway production of ''Of M ...
as the Sevier County lawman Deputy Cotton. The movie was selected to be screened in the official competition at the 70th Venice International Film Festival and was an official selection of the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival. The film received mixed to negative reviews, holding a rating of 42% on review aggregator
Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
, with an average score of 4.90/10. The website's critical consensus states: "An obviously reverent adaptation that fails to make a case for the source material being turned into a movie, ''Child of God'' finds director James Franco outmatched by Cormac McCarthy's novel."


References


External links


1974 ''The New York Times'' book reviewPhotos and description of James Franco shooting ''Child of God''
WeGotThisCovered.com.
"So, James Franco Is Already Filming Cormac McCarthy's 'Child Of God' With Tim Blake Nelson Starring"
Indiewire.com. {{DEFAULTSORT:Child Of God 1973 American novels Novels by Cormac McCarthy Novels about ephebophilia Novels about necrophilia American gothic novels Random House books Obscenity controversies in literature Novels set in East Tennessee Sevier County, Tennessee Novels set in Appalachia American novels adapted into films American philosophical novels Novels about serial killers Works about capital punishment