Symbolism and Allegory in the Works of Cormac McCarthy

ABSTRACT Cormac McCarthy’s ecocentric style has received continuous critical attention at least since Vereen Bell’s pioneering work in the early 1980s, and ultimately, critics seem to have settled on the term “optical democracy” as a shorthand for this style’s main feature: its ontological leveling, as in the oft-quoted passage in Blood Meridian, of all the world’s things. Labelling optical democracy a literary symbolism, and drawing on Charles Feidelson’s and Paul de Man’s theorizations of this form of writing, this article argues that McCarthy’s allegorical understanding of literature eventually comes to challenge his penchant for symbolism. To call attention to this development in McCarthy’s writing, the article discusses examples from his debut novel, considers unpublished material from the Wittliff archives, and finally shows how The Road serves as an autoreferential evaluation of the author’s own style.