(SHAFT recently presented Cormac McCarthy’s The Sunset Limited, now a film on HBO. Movie nights are usually Thursdays at 6:30PM in Old Main 006. Join our Facebook page for event info!)
“Must not all things at the last be swallowed up in death?” Plato, Phaedo
One night, in the dark of the tunnels, a learned old Professor leaps in front of a speeding train. The Sunset Limited is right on time. Before the train sends him to his sweet oblivion, a protective and good-hearted Christian man grabs him – saves him, and takes him under his wing, back to his clean, well-lighted place for coffee and discussion, in an act of mercy.
The Sunset Limited is a deep and mesmerizing work of literature that delivers a final harrowing thrust to the heart of the religious debate, spilling its bleeding guts, revealing its shady inner diamond eye that stares back at us out of the Abyss of death. Cormac McCarthy uses these characters with erudite metaphor and symbolism to send light into some terrifying black corners of philosophy, like the morning sunrise that spills into the Christian’s home.
I imagine Camus’ ghost was hovering above McCarthy while he wrote the Sunset Limited, whispering:
“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.” – Albert Camus
It’s true. Whether we like it or not, you and I are helplessly entangled in this conversation about Salvation and Death, about religion and non-religion, about God and nothing. Whether we have time to spare from carving our tunnels in the human anthill or not, whether we care to worry about it, we must choose if we prefer the Afterlife or the Abyss, the Eagle or the Serpent. They will enlist and enthrall us in their battle eventually.
“A blast of muttering thunder, burst in far peals along the waveless deep… Around, around, in ceaseless circles wheeling With clang of wings and scream, the Eagle sailed, Incessantly—sometimes on high concealing Its lessening orbs, sometimes as if it failed, Drooped through the air; and still it shrieked and wailed, And casting back its eager head, with beak And talon unremittingly assailed, The wreathed Serpent, who did ever seek Upon his enemy’s heart a mortal wound to wreak.” – Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Revolt of Islam
The sound of the battle between abyss and afterlife crashes against the bricked church-house with its high cross. Religion’s so-called sweet purpose is to provide shelter from the black lightning of the Void. But McCarthy is prodding us toward a strange question: Is shelter what we really want?
Those who do not believe in immortality must stand outside, and face the troubles that come with a true death. Is there any reason to live? Is there such a thing as goodness? Is life any more than a biological prison? The biggest question, above all the flutter of angels and flapping of jaws, resonates and rumbles our bones. What are we going to do with DEATH?
To answer this question, we have to consult the ancients. Once upon a time, thousands of years before McCarthy wrote the Sunset Limited, a learned man without wife or child struggled against wretched kidney stones until he finally passed away. He collapsed in the shady green of his well-kept garden. The pain of this disease, we are told, is one of the most excruciating things a man can experience, especially before modern medicine He was a man who held no belief in an afterlife, but you won’t believe what happened…
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