Outer Dark

E309667

Outer Dark is a bleak and haunting early novel by Cormac McCarthy that follows a woman and her brother through a nightmarish rural American landscape after the abandonment of their incestuous child.

All labels observed (1)

Label Occurrences
Outer Dark canonical 3

How this entity was disambiguated

Statements (47)

Predicate Object
instanceOf novel
author Cormac McCarthy
centralTheme alienation
existential despair
guilt
moral decay
religious imagery
retribution
sin
violence
containsBiblicalAllusions true
containsViolence true
countryOfOrigin United States of America
surface form: United States
criticalReception noted for its bleakness and moral intensity
exploresConcept cosmic indifference
damnation
fate
redemption
followedBy Child of God
genre Gothic fiction
Southern Gothic
dark fiction
hasAntagonistGroup mysterious trio of men
hasIncestTheme true
hasMainCharacter Culla Holme
Rinthy Holme
language English
literaryMovement Southern literature
mediaType print
motif blindness
darkness
journey
pursuit
the wilderness
narrativePerspective third-person narration
narrativeTone bleak
haunting
partOfAuthorEarlyWork true
plotSummary A woman and her brother wander a nightmarish rural landscape after the abandonment of their incestuous child.
precededBy The Orchard Keeper
publicationYear 1968
publisher Random House
setting rural American South
settingPeriod early 20th century American South
style biblical cadences
minimal punctuation
sparse prose

How these facts were elicited

Referenced by (3)

Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.

Cormac McCarthy notableWork Outer Dark
Child of God follows Outer Dark
Charles Joseph McCarthy Jr. notableWork Outer Dark
subject surface form: Cormac McCarthy