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The Rational Professor and Christian Ex-Convict: Enlightenment and Faith in Cormac McCarthy’s The Sunset Limited

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Abstract

In The Sunset Limited (2006), a recreation of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, McCarthy treats theological faith and faith in reason as two strong intellectual forces. This article casts light on how religious faith and reason are debated and examined in the text by exploring how the characters of Black and White adhere to their own perception of reason and faith. White and Black respectively represent secular reason and Christian faith in a metamodern age. White, a suicidal academician, is saved by the hand of the religious Black, an ex-con caretaker of the subway and astute reader of the Bible. Ironically, the distinction between these concepts is not as clear-cut as the opposition between the names Black and White when considered as consequences of Metamodernism. In its dialectic discourse, faith might interfere and challenge reason’s claim over its own emancipating power through communion with God or God’s words. McCarthy seeks to address the instability of religious faith and secular reason by offering a new kind of liberating force that blurs the traditional distinctions between faith and reason within microhistory and metamodern interpretations and ultimately none of them is preferred or privileged over the other in the text. Instead, the play offers a critical perception that disrupts the traditional forces of reason and faith.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of English Language and Literature, II.C., Islamic Azad University, Ilam, Iran

    Ali Jamali

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Correspondence to Ali Jamali.

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Jamali, A. The Rational Professor and Christian Ex-Convict: Enlightenment and Faith in Cormac McCarthy’s The Sunset Limited. Neophilologus 109, 263–281 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-025-09839-x

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  • DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-025-09839-x

Keywords

  • Metamodernism
  • Microhistory
  • McCarthy
  • Faith
  • Subjectivity
  • Reason
  • Christianity
  • Nietzsche

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