Child of God
First edition cover
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| Author | Cormac McCarthy |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Gothic novel, philosophical novel, horror |
| Publisher | Random House |
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Publication date
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1973 |
| Media type | Print (hardback and paperback) |
| Pages | 208 |
Child of God (1973) is the third novel by American author Cormac McCarthy. It depicts the life of a violent young outcast in 1960s Appalachian Tennessee.
Though the novel received critical praise, it was not a financial success. Like its predecessor Outer Dark (1968), Child of God established McCarthy's interest in using extreme isolation, perversity, and violence to represent normal 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).
Set in mountainous Sevier County, Tennessee, 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's life is a disastrous attempt to exist outside the social order. Successively deprived of parents and homes and with few other ties, Ballard descends literally and figuratively to the level of a cave dweller as he falls deeper into crime and degradation.
The novel is structured in three segments, each segment describing the ever-growing isolation of the protagonist from society. In the first part of the novel, a group of unidentified narrators from Sevierville describe Lester to the audience and frame him within that community’s mythology and historical consciousness. The second and third parts of the novel increasingly leave culture and community behind as Lester goes from squatter to cave-dweller to serial killer and necrophile as he becomes increasingly associated with pre-modern and inanimate phenomena. The novel ends with the dehumanized and mutilated Ballard dying in incarceration, his remains eventually dissected by medical students and put on public display, while the long-hidden corpses of his victims are unearthed from his former subterranean haunt.
Overarching themes of the novel are cruelty, isolation, and moral degradation of human beings and the role of fate and society in it. One of the novel's main themes is sexual deviancy, specifically necrophilia. Ballard, who the novel makes clear is unable to have conventional romantic relationships, 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 women and 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 the real world pushes Ballard further and further into a corner, he degenerates into an almost barbaric survivalist, living rough, stealing food, and deviously escaping after he is captured by a group of vengeful men.
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