Child of God Literary Elements

Gothic, horror

1960s in rural Sevier County, Tennessee

Written in first-person point of view with an omniscient and anonymous narrator. There are long periods without the use of first-person pronouns used, though, which makes it occasionally appear to be written in third-person point of view.

Bleak, grim, matter-of-fact, depressed

Lester Ballard is the main character of the book, but also the antagonist, as the book depicts his descent into increasingly more depraved, self-destructive, and dangerous acts.

The main conflicts are between Lester Ballard and society, as he engages in acts that are immoral and the community punishes him for it, and between Lester Ballard and himself, as he battles his own sinful desires.

The climax of this novel occurs on pages 187-192, when Lester finds his way out of the cave. The intensity is built by the panic, claustrophobia, and deliria that Lester feels as he is lost deep in the mountain for days. This intensity climaxes as Lester finally chips away enough at a crevice that he is able to emerge from the cave and escape.

“Behind him there is a rope hanging from the loft” (4) This quote from the beginning of the book uses the rope, and its connotation of suicide, to foreshadow the suicide of Lester’s father and the near-hanging of Lester. The quotes, “Lester, you don’t get a grip on yourself they goin to put you in the rubber room” (5) and “he looked half crazy” (15) foreshadow Lester’s eventual incarceration and descent into madness. On page 56, the Sheriff says “I guess murder is next on the list ain’t it?” when talking to Lester about his past crimes. This explicitly foreshadows Lester’s increasingly more heinous crimes.

On page four, Lester is described as "A child of God much like yourself perhaps." This is an understatement, when viewed in the context of the entire book. Lester ends up being a necrophile and serial killer, evils which would generally be considered much greater than the everyday sins that the reader and those they know would be used to. Saying that Lester is just a misguided, sinful, child, like the reader, is an understatement.

The book includes references to historical facts about Sevier County, Tennessee, most notably references to Ku Klux Klan-like groups of the 1890s. These groups, known as White Caps and Bluebills, are mentioned throughout the book, and Lester's grandfather is said to have one of them.

McCarthy uses vivid imagery to describe the cave scenes in the book. Sentences like "he came to a sheer drop and when he tried his failing beam it fell down a damp wall to terminate in nothingness and night" (188) create a dark and terrifying mental image for the reader. Words like "mausoleum" also contribute to the image of death that is commonly presented in the book.

After Lester escapes from the caves, he returns the the hospital where he was being held instead of fleeing the county. "I'm supposed to be here" (192), he says. This is contrary to what one would expect, and goes against what his motive for evading the men that took him appeared to be. It creates a paradox in that Lester's own actions contrast his desired outcome.

“He ate, he stared at the walls. He used the bedpan or chamberpot.” (177) The uses of parallelism in this passage highlights the monotony of Lester’s daily life when he was being held in the hospital. The repetition of he at the beginning of the sentence, and of the sentence structure, depicts the repetition of his routine.

Several times in the book, the word bone is used to mean skeleton in a form of synecdoche. In another example of synecdoche, McCarthy uses the word "drawers" to refer to all of women's undergarments when he is shopping for things to buy for the dead woman he brought home.

“By and by he came upon a house, silent in the silent landscape, a rough scarf of smoke unwinding upward from the chimney.” (128) This quote personifies the home by describing it as silent, and therefore implying it is capable of making noise. It also depicts its chimney as wearing a scarf of smoke, a decidedly human action.