preview

The Crossing Cormac Mccarthy

Better Essays

The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy takes the reader on a journey through Mexico and South Western United States through the eyes of the protagonist Billy Parham, a young cowboy who began the story as young and naive, wishing for an adventure. He finds it when Billy captures the wolf that he and his father were hunting and, instead of killing the animal, he instead decides to take her back to the Mexican Mountains. Along the way, he began to deeply care for it and believe that it’s a “being of great order” that knew “what men do not,” willing to risk his own life to guarantee her safety (McCarthy 59-60). However, on his trip, Billy and the wolf get caught by Mexican authorities who decide to give the wolf to a circus. When Billy is released, …show more content…

From the literary criticism “Borders and Boundaries of Religion and the Mind in Cormac McCarthy’s The Crossing” by Susan Rojas, the “ex-priest” was seen to exemplify characteristics that made him both “a foundation of the novel’s spiritual core” and an example of how crossing a border of the mind can lead to negative effects. While Billy crossing one of his mental boundaries made him harsher, it allowed him to survive in the harsh environments he was in. However, for the ex-priest, the mental boundaries was what kept him sane and with purpose. Rojas states how the ex-priest illustrates “the paradox of the boundaries and borders of the mind” as these mental boundaries are “necessary evils” because they “provide the rigidity needed for a seeking mind” and can “liberate” and “free” the mind through “containment” (Rojas 2). The ex-priest continuously crosses these “borders and boundaries” which allow him to become more and more aware of his own life and the actions he takes (7). The ex-priest realized that he had conflicts over which religion he belonged to, Catholic or Mormonism, as he states that “I am a Mormon. Or I was,” showing that he was not sure where he belonged, and continuously phasing from a religion to another, crossing mental borders continuously (Rojas 8, McCarthy 140). These continuous mental crosses between two boundaries made him lose sanity as his religious life “was boundless, unmanaged,” making it hard for him to understand his true purpose, as seen in the literary criticism by Peter Mundik, “The Illusion of Proximity: The Ex:Priest and the Heretic in Cormac McCarthy's THE CROSSING: Book II” (Mundik). This proves the idea that crossing mental boundaries leads to unchangeable mental alterations that may benefit or hurt a person. While Billy’s crossing of his mental boundary was only temporary

Get Access