2. INTRODUCTION =In the following presentation, Cormac McCarthy’s novel ‘Child of God’ is briefly discussed from an ecocritical perspective, unveiling the symbolic and metaphorical level of the narrative, on which the main character Lester Ballard’s relationship with the nonhuman world is conveyed. = Attention is also paid to the relation of narrative ethics to ecocriticism – how they can be united into a single activity. Certain examples are given that manifest overlap of narrative ethics and ecocriticism in the novel ‘Child of God’. Approaches: =ecocritical approach to literary text interpretation: ecocritiocal reading of representation of human and nature in «Child of God» =narrative approach to ethics and ecocritical approach combined

3. = The setting of Cormac McCarthy’s novel «Child of God» (1973) includes a specific geographical location - Appalachian Sevier County, Tennessee and historical moment - almost a ten-year span from the 1930’s to 40’s (included time period of the Great Depression). = At the time not only the effect of the Great Depression, but also the whole industrial, economical and political system stimulated eviction of thousands of yeomen from their local farms for tax noncompliance (the estate tax was doubled and corporate taxes were raised by almost 15 percent), largely due to the unjust rule of the Tennessee Valley Authority (T.V.A.) (under the order of USA president Franklin Delano Roosevelt). The governmental institution acquired large numbers of these land properties, later sold at auctions. = Readers of the novel «Child of God» become direct witnesses of the main character Lester Ballard’s eviction from his rural real estate in Sevier County due to unpaid taxes on the land, his conscious gradual flight from civilization and disengagement from the borders of the social environment (becoming a murderer and necrophiliac, a homesteading squatter, a cave-dweller ), and at last his surrender to the state institutions.

4. Sevier County was formed in 1794 from part of neighboring Jefferson County, and has retained its original boundaries ever since. Sevier County takes its name from the first governor of Tennessee - John Sevier.

5. The Tennessee Valley Authority, de facto monopoly, insulated by federal law and surged by industrialization, supported different unpopular decisions. These were not only the raise of tax rates, but also delivery of cheap hydropower to the rural South, by damming the Tennessee river (see the map) at the expense of beauty and safety of local nature.

6. =The novel describes the degradation of the Southern landscape, farms and people’s lives, in its count Lester Ballard’s, mainly through the intrusion of governmental institutions =As Gabe Rikard has pointed out, “although self-promoting commercialism has not yet encroached upon life in the novel “Child of God”, the industrialization has made its mark on the world of Lester Ballard” (Rikard, 132:2013).. Due to the effect of industrialization, many farmers in the region of Appalachia had to migrate from their local farms.

7. ECOCRITICISM

8. =One of the earliest definitions: «Simply put, ecocriticism is the study of relationship between literature and the physical environment» (Glotfelty, 1996:xix). =The widest definition of the subject of ecocriticism is «the study of the relationship of the human and non-human» (Garrard, 5:2012). =At present literary ecocriticism has grown into a broad and mature field, and has become more diversified (Buell 2005, Mayer 2006, Fromm 2009, Witschi 2011), besides Greg Garrard in his most recent book “The Oxford Handbook of Ecocriticism” (2014) has pronounced ecocriticism to have come of-age as the movement, taking measure of massive proliferation of anthologies on the subject.

9. =Teresa Buriss and Patricia Gantt are among those ecocriticists, who have turned their attention to the description of Southern Appalachia in novels, suggesting that ecocritical discussions of Appalachian novels necessarily need to include the following questions: =«In what symbolic ways the environment is described? How does the writer help the reader to make sense of the relationships humans have with the physical world? How does the book add to our understanding of the natural world?» (Burris, Gantt, 2013:180).

10. ECOCRITICISM AND NARRATIVE ETHICS

11. Cross-Pollinating Ecocriticism and Narrative Theory = Narratalogy has in recent years become a context-oriented, functional, interpretive, evaluative, and dynamic mode of inquiry into narratives. Ecocritical perspective can broaden the scope of narrative inquiry (Lehtimäki, 120:2013). = «Amid current efforts to bring ecocriticism and narrative scholarship together, narrative ethics is emerging as a promising area of potential overlap» (Garrard, 2015). = Greg Garrard has advised (2015) to follow James Phelan and to reflect on the ethical dimensions of relationships between, characters, narrators and readers at various textual levels. Ecocriticism is said to be enriched by closer attention to what Phelan calls ‘the ethical dimensions of the narrative’s techniques’ (Garrard, 2015).

12. Narrative Ethics Regarding the unity of ecocriticism and narrative ethics, ecocriticist Greg Garrard (2015) has advised to focus on James Phelan (2014), who has highlighted the importance of four ethical positions occupied by the main agents involved in stories and storytelling: «(1) characters in relation to each other and to the situations they face; CHARACTER - CHARACTER (2) narrator(s) in relation to the characters and to the narratee(s); NARRATOR - CHARCTER (3) author in relation to the characters, the narrator(s), and the implied and actual audiences; AUTHOR (IMPLIED AUTHOR) - CHARACTER (4) actual audience members in response to the first three ethical positions» (Phelan, 2014) READER (IMPLIED REARER) – ALL POSITIONS Phelan, James. "Narrative Ethics." The Living Handbook of Narratology (2014).

13. ECOCRITICAL PERSPECTIVES IN CORMAC MCCARTHY’S «CHILD OF GOD» = Cormac McCarthy’s novel “Child of God” from an ecocritical perspective raises the issue of nature degradation in Appalachian region, following the fate of the victim of the time - Lester Ballard, who seeks his place and space in the borders of life territory – bioregion that has lost its earlier aesthetic beauty, due to industrialization. = Lester Ballard’s life, having lost his property, slowly begins to crumble, until he reaches the utmost point of insanity. Environment and nature along with Lester Ballard is portrayed as degraded due to the domination of unjust rule and political order. Ballard and the ruined nature need new paths to heal and to recover from the unjust oppression. “Coming up the mountain through the blue twilight among great boulders and the ruins of giant trees prone in the forest he wondered at such upheaval. Disorder in the woods, trees down, new paths needed. Given charge Ballard would have made things more orderly in the woods and in men’s souls” (McCarthy, 1993:78). LESTER BALLARD / NATURE = DISORDER/NEED NEW PATHS TO HEAL

14. = Lester Ballard is as much victim of the politics of culture as nature itself. The emphasis in the novel is symbolically placed on the age of the landscape, that once was untouched and free from the constraints of ownership, which appears a mere mythic tale now with vanished once beautiful seas and woods. The constraints of landscape mimic Lester Ballard’s constraints in his inability to find peace in the surrounding environment. “Old woods and deep. At one time in the world there were woods that no one owned and these were like them. He passed a windfelled tulip poplar on the mountainside that held aloft in the grip of its roots two stones the size of fieldwagons, great tablets on which was writ only a tale of vanished seas with ancient shells in cameo and fishes etched in lime” (McCarthy, 74:1993). =Not only the social and cultural order has been violated in the Appalachian region, but natural order as well, where «the green world reclaims what humans have set apart» (Ciuba, 181:2007). It is essential to see the narrative on Lester’s quest as a continuous strive to be at one with nature and defeat over already unattainable harmony of human and nature.

15. =Lester Ballard could not even find reconciliation with nature in his dreams of the past. His dreams, in which «he could see deer in a meadow, where the sun fell on the grass» (McCarthy, 93:1993), promised no consolation: “each leaf that brushed his face deepened his sadness and dread. Each leaf he passed h’d never pass again” (McCarthy, 93:1993). =Leaves of the trees symbolically stand for the earlier clean and pure nature. The sadness stemmed from the awareness that no one can give back the time, when the mark of industrialization had not left its print on the beauty of nature. The apprehension of once lost beauty of the earlier state of nature gave only bitter taste of extinction.

16. = After a continuous quest for freedom and his place in the surrounding environment, Lester Ballard becomes aware of necessity to succumb to the social order, to present himself at the local Sevier County hospital and to acknowledge that there is no other way of escape to freedom. = The walls of his hiding place - a cave extrudes him out like a new-born to come to meet his fate: “it with hours past dark and a black night when he finally emerged from the earth” (McCarthy, 104:1993).

17. =The end of the novel symbolically and metaphorically promises Lester Ballard rebirth and reconciliation with nature. The walls of the cave assimilates mother’s womb. = The cavern that was his last hiding place from those, who sought to arrest him, was with “the walls with softlooking convolutions, slavered over as they were with wet and bloodred mud, had an organic look to them” (McCarthy, 77:1993). =Lester Ballard symbolically returns to the place that once was his mother’s womb with the promise of soon rebirth or return to innocence. Nature itself has given a promise of return in case he succumbs and admits that there is no possible further existence without reconciliation with the damaged nature.

18. Narrative ethics and ecocriticism in «Child of God» = By referring to Lester Ballard as a child of God “much like yourself perhaps,” (McCarthy, 2:1993), McCarthy encourages the implied reader to identify with Lester and see within him “fundamental aspect[s] of ourselves – of our fear, of time, our programmed infatuation with death, our loneliness, our threatening appetites, our narcissistic isolation from the world and the reality of other people” (Bell, 55). = Cormac McCarthy allows joining the implied reader in further victimiztion of Lester Ballard, when he is almost subjected to drowning: «He could not swim but how would you drown him?» (McCarthy, 87:1993). The author and the omniscient narrator take a bold step – offering «the implied reader» a consent «to drown Lester», to become a part of the collective victimizers. AUTHOR – OMNISCIENT NARRATOR - IMPLIED READER (a presumed addressee) - ACTUAL READER ETHICAL DIMENSION = Would the implied reader allow to drown Lester Ballard in the Tennessee river, that itself is drowned, polluted by the left-overs of industrialization?

19. Narrative ethics and ecocriticism in «Child of God» = When Lester has reached the utmost point of his insanity, due to inability and incapacity to make healthy relationships with females, he replicates the commodification in the already entering capitalism in Sevier County – collecting the victimized females in the cave he inhabits, that resembles this cell-form of capitalism – commodification. Ballard, already the victim of the time like a plague, continues to victimize the rest of the society. =This again is an instance of ethical dimension: the implied reader is positioned in place of Lester Ballard: Would the reader explain away Lester’s behavior? Industrialization reflected in nature degradation has degraded Lester Ballard. Would the reader excuse his unethical behaviour? AUTHOR - OMNISCIENT NARRATOR - IMPLIED READER = ETHICAL DIMENSION

20. Narrative ethics and ecocriticism in «Child of God» = Behind the political and economical background, McCarthy asks the implied readers to interrogate how they as a culture construct rules of marginalization and exclusion, and how Lester Ballard’s tale allegorically represents an unacknowledged force within culture, even if they would not like to confront it. = But one has to agree with Vince Brewton’s postulation in his essay «The Changing Landscape of Violence in Cormac McCarthy’s Novels» (2004) that Lester Ballard, expelled from the community, recreates his own communal space from which he has been estranged. Ballard’s trophies – the corpses allow him to incorporate the community that has once unincorporated him.

21. CONCLUSION = The commanding theme of the narrative remains at stake: the struggle to preserve organic beauty of nature, pastoral mundane against the onslaught of modernity was traumatic and fatal to the whole Appalachia region. Ecocritical perspective conveys the tragic human (Lester Ballard) and non- human relationship. Ecocriticism and narrative ethics allow focusing on the ethical dimensions of relationships between the omniscient narrator, the author and readers. = Lester Ballard and other victims of the social and political order form a collective memory of the Appalachian region of the time, much to dismay of the generation that forms and structures the period of industrialization. =McCarthy’s novel serves as a good reminder that the beauty of nature has to be preserved and that any material gain or profit does not counterbalance the value of aesthetic beauty of nature.

22. SOURCES 1.Buell, Lawrence. The Future of Environmental Criticism. Malden: Blackwell, 2005. 2.Burriss, Theresa L., and Patricia M. Gantt, eds. Appalachia in the Classroom: Teaching the Region. Ohio University Press, 2013. 3.Cant, John. Cormac McCarthy and the Myth of American Exceptionalism. Routledge, 2013. 4.Ciuba, Gary M. Desire, Violence & Divinity in Modern Southern Fiction: Katherine Anne Porter, Flannery O'Connor, Cormac McCarthy, Walker Percy. LSU Press, 2007. 5.Dobie, Ann. Theory into Practice: an Introduction to Literary Criticism. Cengage Learning, 2011. 6.Garrard, Greg. The Oxford Handbook of Ecocriticism. Oxford University Press, USA, 2014. 7.Guillemin, Georg. The Pastoral Vision of Cormac McCarthy. Texas University Press, 2004. 8.Lehtimäki, Markku. "Natural Environments in Narrative Contexts: Cross-Pollinating Ecocriticism and Narrative Theory." Storyworlds: A Journal of Narrative Studies 5.1 (2013). 9.McCarthy. C. Child of God. New York: Vintage, 1993. 10.Phelan, James. "Narrative Ethics." The Living Handbook of Narratology (2014). 11.Rikard, Gabe. Authority and the Mountaineer in Cormac McCarthy's Appalachia. McFarland, 2013. 12.http://www.lhn.uni-hamburg.de/article/narrative-ethicshttp://www.lhn.uni-hamburg.de/article/narrative-ethics 13.http://www.aslebiennialconference.com/ecocriticism-and-narrative-ethics.htmlhttp://www.aslebiennialconference.com/ecocriticism-and-narrative-ethics.html