So Many Ways to Die

William Quirk in his essay "Minimalist Tragedy": Nietzschean Thought in McCarthy's The Sunset Limited makes connections and draws conclusions from many examples in

the play alluding to Nietzche and the characters Apollo and Dionysus.

What I found most interesting in the article, was Quirk's explanation of White's longing for death and Black's quest to stop White from following through- through tactics like creating a community for White, distracting him through conversation, and sharing a meal with White.

Quirk goes on to explain that White is so desperate for death because of "an excess of knowledge." White believes he has lost "all illusions" (or in Nietzche terms: "the essence of things") and because of this- he has no reason to  go on.

Black, on the other hand, is trying desperately to keep White

in his apartment building and not following through with his plan of suicide. By telling his jailhouse stories, he is appealing to White's curiosity and distracting him from his plan, Quirk writes. 

As I was driving home from work, listening to my iPod, a song by a band called Bombadil came on.  The song is "So Many Ways to Die" and it's one of my favorites.  While I was singing along, the lyrics suddenly hit me and I started to connect every lyric to The Sunset Limited with the help of Quirk's article.

Halfway through the song, singer Stuart Robinson ponders the line between wanting to live and deciding it's not worth it:

"So many ways to think

How differently we interpret the brink

Between the side of life worth living 

and the point at which we're better off to sink"

White has clearly been wrestling with the question: is life really worth it?

The chorus continues:

"You tell me all that you cherished is through

well that's not true, it isn't true, it isn't true"

White thinks that anything in life worth cherishing is gone and therefore death is the best option.

En-dark-enment

The Sunset Limited, a dramatic novel by Cormack McCarthy takes place some time after the character Black saves the other character White from throwing himself in front of a subway train in an attempt to kill himself.  The two men, back at Black's house, then discuss philosophical ideas like death, Heaven, religion, (T)truth, and forgiveness.

What stuck out the me was the constant juxtaposition between light and dark, black and white, maybe even good and evil (although neither of the characters are purely evil or purely good- so that may be a bit of a stretch), death and life.  These conflicts are personified by White and Black's existence in the story.

What I was really drawn to was White's mention of Enlightenment, and how when he felt like he had reached enlightenment he realized there was only darkness.  Enlightenment lead to darkness.  McCarthy took these typical allusions and flipped them upside down.  Only when we have realize the truth do we realize that there is nothing: darkness.

In the cinematic adaptation of the novel, White, played by Tommy Lee Jones says that he is the "professor of darkness." Let me break that down for ya...

Professor: keeper of knowledge, provides knowledge to others, expert in their field perhaps, leader

Darkness: (in traditional literature) ignorance, evil, wrong, etc.

Knowledge is supposed to lead to enlightenment and better understanding- but when the readers see that White is using this paradox of the professor of darkness we begin to question what we know as fact and truth.

This thought then lead me to Plato's "Allegory of the Cave"

So this brief explanation basically sums up the idea that darkness is only our biggest hope or best guess that what we know as truth is right.  Only once we pursue lightness do we find the truth.  But what if, like the professor said, the truth is simply darkness.