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Cameron Talley CHS English IV AP (2) August 28, 2000
In McCarthy's novel The Crossing, the author's vivid imagery and varied sentence structure reveals the strong psychological impact that a dead wolf has on his main character. To begin with, McCarthy's imagery exhibits the powerful visions the wolf conjures in the main character's mind. For example, as the man examines the wolf's cold body, he visualizes her "running in the starlight where the grass was wet and the sun's coming as yet had not undone the rich matrix of creatures passed in the night before her" (l. 44-47). Simply by looking at the wolf, he sees her alive and well, running as if she had never stopped; she is one with mother nature. The man realizes how important yet insignificant the wolf was. He realized that the stars will still shine; the "matrix of creatures" will still walk in the cold night. For the wolf, the world has stopped, but for others, it turns ever on like a treadmill in the night. In another instance, the author describes his character's make-shift tent as a sheet that "steamed in the firelight like a burning scrim standing in a wilderness where celebrants of some sacred passion had been carried off by rival sects or perhaps had simply fled in the night at the fear of their own doing" (l. 20-24). The man sees his "sheet" as a barrier from reality, a fiery wall between the mental and the physical. Behind it, he is alone, blocked from all minds but his own; now he can be at peace with himself. Clearly, the wolf's passing has left him in a state that is too connected to the real world; he cannot think clearly and understand the events that have transpired. So, he cowers behind the scrim; this allows him to block the physical images and focus only on emotional and psychological understanding. It is only behind the sheet that he is able to link the physical and the mental together, acting in harmony. In further analysis, McCarthy's varied syntax displays how the character's simple thoughts grow to become complex with understanding. For example, in lines 34-40, McCarthy begins in a simple fashion: "He squatted over the wolf and touched her fur. He touched the cold and perfect teeth." Suddenly, these two simple thoughts explode in the character's mind, as if a rush of pure emotion and understanding suddenly overcame him. His sentences grow long and complex: "He took up her stiff head out of the leaves and held it or he reached to hold what cannot be held, what already ran among the mountains at once terrible and of great beauty. . ."(l. 53-56). As his thoughts increase in complexity, he shifts from the physical to the mental world, until both come to terms and accept each other. By increasing the intricate design of his syntax, McCarthy has shown the maturing of his character from a simple, physical life form into a new kind of life that coexists within the material and spiritual worlds. Only through McCarthy's clever syntax do we see the full impact of wolf's death on the main character. In conclusion, by way of the author's flowing imagery and ingenious syntax, the reader is able to perceive the incredible psychological change the death of the wolf engenders within the main character. Man is composed of two things: a physical body and a spiritual mind; without one, the other will perish. |