The Exemplification of Freudian Sexual Development in McCarthy’s Child of God Anonymous College

In Child of God, Cormac McCarthy presents readers with the story of Lester Ballard, a young man abandoned by and expelled from society. Ballard’s is a gothic tale overflowing with depravity, libidinal pressure, necrophilia, and psychopathy, yet it is also a testament to the ways in which a society can create monsters out of men. McCarthy creates an empathy for Lester Ballard via flashbacks and personal discussions between various residents of the fictional Sevier County, Tennessee. Readers are given Ballard’s life, as presented in the book, as an exemplar of the various stages of psychosexual development in Freudian theory, and there are numerous symbolic actions and images within the novel which prove this. While Ballard serves as a disenfranchised, quasi-Everyman with whom readers can identify and sympathize, his horrific actions set him apart as a psychological deviant. Thus, he simultaneously personifies the stages theorized by Freud and showcases the outcome of what occurs when those stages are not traversed completely and/or adequately. Furthermore, the novel proves that, rather than aiding human development, society sometimes makes it impossible for humans to advance psychosexually.

From McCarthy’s anonymous narrator and...