4. Q: Is the complexity of Cormack McCarthy’s
style of writing in Outer Dark unique or
pretentious?
Q:Why are so many characters introduced
nameless?
Q: Is there redemption in the story?
5. Q:What does the baby symbolize?
What are some of the religious allusions in the
story?
Q:What are some Biblical parallels that
emphasizes the idea of “the outer dark” in this
story?
Q:Why is incest so taboo and how is that
made evident in the story?
6. What does Rinthy represent?
What does Culla represent?
Q:Why doesn’t Culla want a midnight woman
when Rinthy wants one?
Q: How deeply do the characters lie to each
other and themselves? Is this lying necessary?
7. Q:Who are the three marauders?What is
their function in the story?
8. Chickens had so scratched the soil from the yard that knobs and
knees of treeroots stood everywhere in grotesque conguration up
out of the earth like some gathering of the mad laid suddenly bare
in all their writhen attitudes of pain. She waited. It was an old
woman spoke to her:
I’ve not been a-hoein.This here is just to kill snakes with.
She nodded.
I don’t ast nobody’s say so for what all I do but I’d not have ye to
think I’d been a-hoein.
Yes, she said.
I don’t hold with breakin the sabbath and don’t care to associate
with them that does.
It ain’t sunday, she said.
It’s what?
It ain’t sunday today, she said.
9. “Nightfall found him crouched in a thicket,
waiting.With full dark he came forth, a
solitary traveler going south. He walked all
night. Not even a dog spoke him down that
harsh road” (90).
10. “I ain’t runnin from nowheres.
No?You ain’t?Where you from? I never ast
you that did I?
I come from down on the Chicken River …
Before that then?Where did you live before?
I come from downstate,” (73).
11. “To drink here? Just outside.You lack two
pennies, the clerk said with a small malignant
smile. … Course if you ain’t got it you could
drink it in here.” (pg 58-59)
“I wonder could I get a drink of water from ye,
she said. … Get all ye want, he said. Just set it
back when you’re done.” (pg 85)
