Sextant of the Upright

1
Sextant of the Upright

• The Stars (Frames), 1
• Pilgrims in a fable
• pilgrimage long journey of spiritual development
• Chaucers The Canterbury Tales (14th C)
• Dantes Inferno (14th C ) Abandon all hope, ye
  who enter here
• Upright to what?
• Book of Proverbs
• About uprightness/path of righteous/the
  upbringing of sons
• What is the correct relation to the word of God?
  gtgt How is McCarthy revising this formulation of
  the problem?

2
Allusion in The Road

• McCarthy Books are made out of books
• McCarthy's style owes much to Faulkner's -- in
  its recondite vocabulary, punctuation, portentous
  rhetoric, use of dialect and concrete sense of
  the world -- a debt McCarthy doesn't dispute.
  "The ugly fact is books are made out of books,"
  he says. "The novel depends for its life on the
  novels that have been written." His list of those
  whom he calls the "good writers" -- Melville,
  Dostoyevsky, Faulkner -- precludes anyone who
  doesn't "deal with issues of life and death."
  Proust and Henry James don't make the cut. "I
  don't understand them," he says. "To me, that's
  not literature. A lot of writers who are
  considered good I consider strange."
• -NYT

3
Sextant of the Upright

• The Stars (Frames), 2
• The child was his warrant
• wandered in a cave where the child led him by
  the hand (3)
• If he is not the word of God God never spoke
  (5)
• Double use of warrant protector evidence of
  authorization
• each the others world entire (6)
• Barren, silent, godless (4) gtgtgt boy word of
  God (5)
• Light/Seeing-Blindness/Darkness
• Repetition of light (3-4)
• Sustained 18,

4
Sextant of the Upright

• The Frailty of Everything Revealed at Last
• The child was his warrant
• wandered in a cave where the child led him by
  the hand (3)
• If he is not the word of God God never spoke
  (5)
• Double use of warrant protector evidence of
  authorization
• each the others world entire (6)
• Barren, silent, godless (4) gtgtgt boy word of
  God (5)
• Light/Seeing-Blindness/Darkness
• Repetition of light (3-4)
• Recurrence of light, figures of the lamp,
  firelight, etc.
• Blackness, sightless, impenetrable (15)

5
Sextant of the Upright

• Against the Philosophy of Death, 1
• The day providential to itself
• No lists of things to be done (55)
• You will not face the truth. You will not (68)
  also (75)vs.
• Sooner or later they will catch us (56)
• You have no argument because there is none (57)
• The woman is an exemplar of a philosophy of death
  a calculation of the probable and the certain,
  letting the future (which is, at last, always a
  thought of death/ends) color her orientation in
  the world as it is. The man cannot answer an
  argument based in this philosophy of death. Why
  not?

6
Sextant of the Upright

• Against the Philosophy of Death, 2
• The Zero Sum An Ethics of Death
• Suicide, Cannibalism , walks the path of death
  its reasoning is based on a calculation of death,
  of positioning self in relation to an horizon of
  death
• Ex. the woman, bloodcults/cannibals, thief?
• The Road of the Upright?
• Ex. the man and the boy
• McCarthys reversal of Proverbs the FEAR of the
  LORD is the path of wisdom gtgtgt refusal to submit
  to the ethics of death, which acts on fear of the
  imposition of a death certain, but unknown
• Where youve nothing else construct ceremonies
  (74)

7
Sextant of the Upright

• The Path of the Upright The Fire
• The Bearers of the Fire
• Yes. Because were carrying the fire (83)
• Proverbs the path of the righteous as guarantee
  viz. if you are good God will protect you.
• Is this what McCarthy is after? No. Because he is
  also showing that you must also ceaselessly
  consider your relation to the earth and to
  others.
• Is the statement in its immediate context of the
  good actually TRUE in an of itself? Not a
  chance. They survive as much by the mans
  knowledge of the natural world and human nature
  as they are sustained by their sense of ethics
  as issued by the boy.

8
Sextant of the Upright

• The Path of the Upright The Fire
• The Bearers of the Fire
• Yes. Because were carrying the fire (83)
• Proverbs the path of the righteous as guarantee
  viz. if you are good God will protect you.
• Is this what McCarthy is after? No. Because he is
  also showing that you must also ceaselessly
  consider your relation to the earth and to
  others.
• Is the statement in its immediate context of the
  good actually TRUE in an of itself? Not a
  chance. They survive as much by the mans
  knowledge of the natural world and human nature
  as they are sustained by their sense of ethics
  as issued by the boy.

9
Sextant of the Upright

• The Upbringing of Sons
• Upright to What?, Revisted
• Where does the boy get his morality?
• Three key repeated contexts of upbringing
  stories about courage and justice use of maps,
  observations of the land