A Vulnerable Predator: The Wolf as a Symbol of the Natural Environment in the Works of McCarthy, Seton, and London
Abstract
In his seventh novel, The Crossing, Cormac McCarthy describes a tragic story of a female wolf and her human counterpart who undergo a fascinating journey from American Southwest to Mexico. This paper argues that McCarthy's wolf character is rather unique in American literature since the shewolf is characterized particularly by her vulnerability, which is also connected to the vulnerability of the natural environment surrounding both protagonists, a topic present in all McCarthy's fiction.
Employing the topic of vulnerability as well as ecocritical principles of presenting natural environment as a process and human accountability to it, I intend to point out the environmental and ethical orientation of the novel. The aim of this paper is also to compare The Crossing to wolf stories by Ernest Thompson Seton and Jack London and demonstrate the shift from perceiving wolf as a mythical creature towards seeing it as a part of its environment.