Wars and Rumors of Wars In the Border Trilogy

Evenin Mr Johnson, he said.
Evenin son.
What's the news?
The old man shook his head. He leaned across the table to the windowsill where the radio sat and turned it off. It aint news no more, he said. Wars and rumors of wars.

–Cities of the Plain, 61.

Commenting on this scene, John Wegner argues that "War is the central thesis to McCarthy's southwestern works" (73).

He follows this assertion with a survey of the wars that frame the Border Trilogy:

The Crossing begins between World War I and World War II with American on the verge of the Depression, and Cities of the Plain essentially ends in 1952 as America's presence in Korea grows. John Grady Cole's father returns from a World War II p.o.w. camp sick and dying; The Crossing ends with Billy's witness of the 'strange false sunrise . . . of the Trinity Test'; and Cities of the Plain begins with John Grady's drinking with Troy, a war veteran. 

After pointing out the prominent role of the Mexican Revolution on the one hand, and America's involvement in World War II on the other, Wegner notes that "these two wars act as historical frames for the [Border Trilogy], defining and mapping the world in which these characters must live and survive" (74).

–John Wegner, "Wars and Rumors of Wars in Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy," in A Cormac McCarthy Companion: The Border Trilogy, 73-74. (Kindle)

A Few Thoughts on the Epilogue of Cities of the Plain

One of my friends sent me a note, saying, "I finished the trilogy almost a week ago and I can't stop thinking about the ending. I would love your take on the epilogue since it is all about the nature of dreams. What'd you think of the conclusion of the Trilogy?"

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."

McCarthy commenting on the first leg of the Border Trilogy storyline

From an interview in 1992, shortly before the release of All the Pretty Horses:

"You haven't come to the end yet . . . This may be nothing but a snare and a delusion to draw you in, thinking that all will be well."

Boyd's Death in The Crossing, "A Simple Transposition of Letters"

Late in The Crossing, McCarthy narrates a dream where Billy speaks to his brother Boyd who had just awoken from a nightmare (a dream within a dream). Billy tells him to speak quieter, and then we are told "But in the dream Boyd only said softly that they would not wake" (296).

Edwin Arnold comments that Boyd's whisper is "a sad reminder of both the wolf's and his parents' fates, and a premonition of Boyd's forthcoming abandonment of his brother and of his own death." He makes a further textual observation on this important sequence:

It also reflects Billy's later determination to recover Boyd's body and bring it home (such a simple transposition of letters--body/Boyd--marks Boyd's passage from life to death and memory).

—Edwin T. Arnold, "Go to sleep: Dreams and Visions in the Border Trilogy," in A Cormac McCarthy Companion: The Border Trilogy (GBks, 61). 

English Translations of the Spanish Dialogue in McCarthy's Western Novels

One of the distinctive (and idiosyncratic) elements of McCarthy's style is his untranslated Spanish discourse. This feature is especially pronounced in his western novels (i.e., Blood Meridian and the Border Trilogy).

In some cases, the dialogue is simple and easily contextualized by readers with minimal familiarity with the language. Many times, though, the Spanish dialogue is extensive and integral to the meaning of the narrative.

Nadie sabe lo que espera en este mundo.
De veras. 

—The Crossing, p. 332.

Thus, the translations provided by the Cormac McCarthy Society are a great help to readers of these works. They have made PDFs of translated dialogue for the following novels:

1. Blood Meridian (pdf)
2. All the Pretty Horses (pdf)
3. The Crossing (pdf)
4. Cities of the Plains (pdf)