Child of God is the third novel by American author Cormac McCarthy. It depicts the life of a violent young outcast and serial killer in 1960s AppalachianTennessee. Though the novel received critical praise, it was not a financial success. Like its predecessor Outer Dark, Child of God established McCarthy's interest in using extreme isolation, perversity, and violence to represent human experience. McCarthy ignores literary conventions – for example, he does not use quotation marks – and switches between several styles of writing such as matter-of-fact descriptions, almost poetic prose, and colloquial first-person narration.
Plot summary
Set in mountainous Sevier County, Tennessee, in the 1960s, Child of God tells the story of Lester Ballard, a dispossessed, violent man whom the narrator describes as "a child of God much like yourself perhaps." Ballard's life is a disastrous attempt to exist outside the social order. Successively deprived of parents and homes and with few other ties, Ballard descends literally and figuratively to the level of a cave-dweller as he falls into crime and degradation. The novel is structured in three segments, each segment describing the advancing isolation of the protagonist from society. In the first part of the novel, a group of unidentified narrators from Sevierville describe Lester to the audience and frame him within that community's mythology and historical consciousness. The second and third parts of the novel increasingly leave culture and community behind as Lester goes from squatter to cave-dweller to serial killer and necrophile as he becomes increasingly associated with premodern and inanimate phenomena. The novel ends with the dehumanized and mutilated Ballard dying in incarceration, his remains eventually dissected by medical students and then interred outside the city, while the long-hidden corpses of his victims are unearthed from his former subterranean haunt.
Themes
Overarching themes of the novel are cruelty, isolation, and moral degradation of humans and the role of fate and society in it. One of the novel's main themes is sexual deviancy, specifically necrophilia. Ballard, who the novel makes clear is unable to have conventional romantic relationships, eventually descends into necrophilia after finding a dead couple in a car. After this "first love" is destroyed in a fire, he becomes proactive, creating dead female partners by shooting them with his rifle. Ballard also makes no distinction between adult women and young girls, at one point killing a girl whom he had previously asked "How come you wear them britches? You cain't see nothin". Another theme examined by the novel is survival. As society pushes Ballard further and further into a corner, he degenerates into an almost barbaric survivalist, living in a cave, stealing food, and deviously escaping after he is captured by a group of vengeful men.
Reception
In 2014, Jason Diamond of Flavorwire ranked Child of God as McCarthy's third best book.
Historical references
In a 1992 interview, McCarthy stated that the character Ballard was based on an unnamed historical figure. Despite its surreal focus, Child of God contains much unobtrusive historical detail about Sevier County, Tennessee, including references to local Ku Klux Klan-like groups of the 1890s known as White Caps and Bluebills. Ballard's grandfather is said to have been a White Cap.
In October 2007, Child of God found itself at the center of a teaching controversy at Jim Ned High School in Tuscola, Texas. Kaleb Tierce, the Advanced Placement English teacher and coach at Jim Ned, assigned a book report for which a fourteen-year-old student selected this title. Tierce was placed on paid administrative leave when the mother of the student complained. The case was investigated, and Tierce was not charged, but his teaching contract was not renewed.
