Refashioning The Hero

Cormac McCarthy (1933-) is a famous novelist in the contemporary American literary arena. He is called "one of the greatest American novelists" and "the only inheritor of Hemingway and Faulkner". Besides, he is regarded as a leading candidate of the Nobel Prize in literature. McCarthy’s works are always attached to the theme "On the Road", which also applies to his remarkable The Border Trilogy. McCarthy is good at utilizing the journey narrative to sublimate the works’ themes. The journey narrative is one of the ancient ways to narrate stories and has unique forms and characteristics. In McCarthy’s works he makes the most of the long tradition of journey narrative to consummate his writing. The cowboys in The Border Trilogy succeed the heroic qualities of the traditional western fiction. They are refashioning as "mortal heroes" who are insisting on fighting against frustrations by the depictions of their adventurous journey under McCarthy’s pen.This thesis has analyzed The Border Trilogy from the view of journey narrative, trying to find McCarthy’s improvement of western fiction and his refashioning of the cowboys as "mortal heroes" by depicting the adventurous journey of cowboys.The introduction part is McCarthy’s personal and literary biography. Then the literature review respectively discusses the research abroad and at home. The American studies on Cormac McCarthy began with D·Bell’s The Achievement of Cormac McCarthy which was published in1988. The Cormac McCarthy Society was founded in1995. During the last two decades, the research efforts on McCarthy’s works are productive. By contrast, the research at home is relatively lagging. This is also the reason why this thesis is written, whose aim is to enrich the present research on McCarthy’s works at home.In the first chapter, the thesis introduces the theoretic bases of journey narrative and hero motif. The journey narrative part analyzes its characteristics, origins and Stout’s The Journey Narrative in American Literature that published in1983. As for the hero motif part, it shows the different definitions of "Hero" and the qualitative change of hero motif in the history of literature.The second chapter mainly analyzes the new images of cowboys in The Border Trilogy which are different from the traditional ones by comparison with the protagonists appeared in the former American western fictions. They are "mortal heroes" in the background of the new era. The second chapter is composed of three parts:McCarthy’s innovations in The Border Trilogy, traditional hero and mortal hero.The third chapter respectively analyzes McCarthy’s refashioning of heroes in All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing and Cities of the Plain. During the life-long journey, the cowboys are flesh-and-blood mortal heroes who insist on the pursuit in spite of limited ability.