Here's part of my response:
Like you said, the epilogue to Cities of the Plain is really the epilogue to the entire Border Trilogy. There readers are justified in detecting the central importance of dreams in the three novels. I think Boyd's discussion with the vagabond articulates some of the elements that were present or under the surface during all three stories.
The epilogue is interesting because the reader is not entirely sure what is going on. The story being told, the dreams being dreamt, and the dialogue that is taking place all interconnect at various places. The result is that the lengthy sequence is a web of narrative threads. The dreamer starts recounting a dream that a person in his dream has. And, as Billy acknowledges, "A dream inside a dream might not be a dream" (273). We might even need to consider that Billy, an aged vagabond himself, might be dreaming the conversation he is having with the old man.
Billy is at the end of his life and from this vantage point he attempts to make sense of it. From his perspective, "in everything he'd ever thought about the world and about his life in it he'd been wrong" (266). It is in dreams where "two worlds touch," even though "there are no crossroads" and "decisions do not have some alternative." Billy's life is what it is, and that is one of the reasons he dreams.
The man tells Billy that dreams are "acts driven by a terrible hunger." Dreams are a mechanism that seeks to "meet a need which they can never satisfy." I think this is part of the human drive to make sense of the brutality of life. That seems to be a constant theme in all of McCarthy's work.
Though Billy is convinced that everything in his life has "been wrong," his "gnarled, ropescarred" hands tell a different story. His battered hands that have been through so much are bound by "ropy veins" to "his heart." And in this path "there was map enough for men to read," enough for God to "make a landscape. To make a world" (291). Though Billy thinks he "aint nothing" and doesn't know why a random kind woman would "put up with [him]," she assures him, "I know who you are. And I do know why."
Then, significantly, she bids him sleep. I think the interpersonal communication here is interesting. The epilogue is all about how dreams are the escape, and how dreams are the way one finds peace (by escaping the cruel reality of the world); however, it is the kindness of another human being that ultimately allows Billy to find rest at the end of his life. He can rest (and dream), for someone will see him in the morning.
Perhaps this is where Billy finally gets the redemption that he looked for in vain, as he sat at the end of The Crossing watching the Atomic Bomb blow up, waiting for the sun to rise.
On page one of the Border Trilogy, John Grady Cole looks at his grandfather and thinks, "That was not sleeping," and on the last page of the Trilogy, Billy is encouraged, "You go to sleep now." As Edwin Arnold notes, "The visionary experience that is the Border Trilogy comes between, and it offers us a different way of seeing the world(s), of finding our place therein."
Arnold also makes a helpful summary reflection, commenting that "it may be that all of Cormac McCarthy's writings constitute a prolonged dream. Reading McCarthy's works--any one of them--is an experience not quite real."
The bases of our consciousness and of life itself are not well understood. The Epilogue puts me in mind of Emily Dickinson's "the brain is just the weight of God'
ReplyDeleteI just finished Cities of the Plain earlier this afternoon. The Epilogue and dream sequence reminded me a lot of the works of Carlos Castaneda and his discussions of consciousness.
ReplyDeleteThe epilogue of left me thinking about the work of Jorge Luis Borges, particularly the story 'August 25, 1983' where (if Ii'm remembering it right) two versions of Borges (at two different ages) discuss the nature of dreams and who is dreaming who. Another story by Borges that came to mind (mainly because of the man's dream regarding the ancient stone altar) is 'The Circular Ruins' where a man travels to an old stone altar and attempts to dream a person and will him into existence. I am going to reread those stories and reread the epilogue.
ReplyDeleteThanks for pointing out the two Borges short stories. I'll check them out. If you make any interesting connections, let me know.
ReplyDeleteAfter finishing Cities of the Plain, and thinking about it for awhile, it occurred to me that the family that took him in, that Betty, could be maybe Billy's niece! His long dead sister's daughter and her family
ReplyDeleteIf Billy has dementia, the whole trilogy could be the demented dreams of a dying drifter.
DeleteIf Billy has dementia, Betty could be his daughter, and the whole trilogy could be the demented dreams and recollections of dying drifter.
DeleteI like that!
DeleteExcept that Billy’s sister (Boyd’s twin) died when she was five.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion the Epilogue encompasses everything the literature stands for, for McCarthy and for most of the outstanding writers: to rise questions about life, dead, why are we in this world for, why the world can be so cruel and kind at the same time. The confrontation between the old way of living and modernity.
ReplyDeleteThe question of love: why love can lead into an irrational and crazy behavior leading to abandon everything one thinks is the most important things in one’s life. A mystery: even the poorest bastard can find a woman to take care of him. And I’m not talking about JG Cole but of another man in the novel. And B Perham ask himself the same question at the very end. Again McCarthy confronts life with a violent world and somehow take various elements found in Blood Meridian, eg, Eduardo’s soliloquy during the knife fight reminds Judge Holden’s.
The language of the man Billy gives crackers to to eat under the highway bridge near the end reminds one of the fool in Lear. Here is another homeless old man and he speaking with the vocabulary of a PhD in philosophy, but I suppose its unfair to judge Cities as a realistic novel, despite all its careful descriptions. It is a fiction, a dream, and perhaps more like an ancient Greek play with its stark and ultimate questions. The setup, with the cowboys and ranchers all being laconic, stoic, and noble, and the Mexican men being murderous, sneaky, and immoral, seems a bit melodramatic and hollow. The novel may have symbolic aspects but the characters are not intended to represent all rancher men or all Juarez Mexican men. I wonder if there is a Mexican reading of the novel. I do know, as Eduardo speaks of, of being an American feeling something is lacking, and like John Grady, seeking what is missing in another culture. I've have been married for over 26 years to my Asian wife and we are happy. To reach across boundaries does not mean a tragedy. By the way, on Google images you can see a picture of the White Lake brothel in the novel. The building is now used for other purposes. I lived in El Paso and know of the towns the author writes of, Alpine, Fort Stockton, and others. It is a stark and beautiful world.
ReplyDeleteSo perhaps coincidental, if not prophetic, but I just finished reading Don Quixote 2 weeks ago . Last week I read All the Pretty Horses. This week I started re-reading Quixote and also started the City on the Plains. So this morning while reading Quixote I whip out my Freud book because so much of Quixote is making me think of Freud. I’m literally leafing thru a few sections of his Interpretation of dreams then 10 hrs later I finish City on the Plains and nearly the entire epilogue is about DREAMS! Or was it? And that is just one great reason why reading multiple books at once is often so very enriching.
ReplyDelete