2026/03/12 by Russell M. Hillier · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Modern American Literature Studies #Gothic Literature and Media Analysis #Crime and Detective Fiction Studies
paper · doi:10.1080/0013838x.2026.2635941
openalex publication_date 2026/03/12 · openalex created_date 2026/03/13 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/14
Cormac McCarthy’s The Gardener’s Son shows how miasma, or moral pollution, has seeped into the fabric of Graniteville society at every level: domestic, religious, educational, social, civil, and environmental. The mill founder William Gregg’s funeral eulogy, which is tantamount to a proclamation of his utopian vision of Graniteville and the benisons the Graniteville Manufacturing Company allegedly confers, is a façade of an upright society that conceals injustice, hypocrisy, and corruption. McCarthy’s drama conveys the extent of this miasma by drawing on images, themes, and ideas from Attic Greek tragedy, Medieval Arthurian Grail legends, Shakespearean tragedy, and the Hebraic scapegoating ritual of atonement to fashion a tragedy of injustice. Scholarly discussion frequently posits that Robert McEvoy’s shooting of James Gregg is ambiguously motivated, but McCarthy’s screenplay, supported by the historical record, sympathizes with McEvoy’s indignation against the inequalities within Graniteville society. The article closes by suggesting that McCarthy’s narrative works by negative example in evoking the “damned outrage” of an unjust world and asking, as the lawyer W.J. Whipper asks of his court, “Is there anybody here who believes in justice?”