Animals in the Fiction of Cormac McCarthy

McCarthy's animals exist within the framework of a fictional natural world driven by biological determinism: Wild animals prey upon feral and domestic animals, horses exist as warriors, and the hunt is a ballet between man and hunting hound. Proximity to humans results in mistreatment and death, while distance results in survival and fitness. McCarthy also utilizes animals as harbingers of specific events; for example, hogs are so frequently a precursor of human death that McCarthy's narrators and characters wonder whether hogs are joined to the devil for evil purposes. The first chapter here examines animal presentations in and two short stories, "Bounty" and "The Dark Waters." The following nine chapters focus on one text, one type of animal—feline, swine, bovine, bird and bat, canine, equine, lupine, and hound—and one particular thesis. Each chapter also briefly examines the specific animal as it exists in other McCarthy works.