(1974) Child of God

They ain't the thing. Old papers or pitchers. Once you copy something down you don't have it any more. You just have the record. Times past are fugitive. They caint be kept in no box.

Plot Summary

Child of God chronicles the story of Lester Ballard, a community outcast who loses his one claim to societal normality: his land. After his displacement, Ballard’s dejection moves him to become a “peeping tom.” He seeks social contact, but continues to feel the sting of social rejection throughout the novel. His solace comes in the form of copulation with corpses. He comes across a couple in a car who are dead because they have succumbed to hypoxia in the throws of passion. Ballard whisks the young girl off to a secluded cabin, where he proceeds to make love to her, pose her, and buy her new garments. Unfortunately his honeymoon is interrupted as the cabin is enveloped in a fiery blaze Ballard accidentally starts. Still a reject, he continues his quest for affection along alternate avenues. Ballard has escalated from collector of dead to purveyor of death. He populates a small cavern with accepting, but silent company. Eventually, Ballard (disguised as a woman) shoots the current resident of his repossessed home, John Greer. The bullet narrowly avoids Greer, but, unfortunately for Ballard, his own arm and rifle are blasted away by Greer’s return fire. This injury lands him in the hospital from which nearby hunters form a mob and kidnap him. Faced with being tossed into a bonfire, Ballard confesses to the dead bodies and leads the men to the caves. Ballard is let loose to guide the men, but tactfully loses them in the caverns. He later turns himself in at the county hospital desk and his body is used for science after he dies around 1965.

Critical Analysis

Child of God is centered on the guilty pleasures of voyeurism. The reader becomes part of Lester Ballard’s guilty pleasures simply by reading the text. Ballard’s voyeuristic tendencies bud “innocently” at first; he secretly views the sexual entwines of “parked” young lovers. Yet, they become more dramatic as he becomes a necrophiliac. Ballard’s conflict with his own humanity as well that of others, acts as a central topic in Child of God. As the story progresses, the audience becomes an extension to Ballard’s voyeuristic game, much like his rifle is a symbolic extension of himself. The inanimate substitutions for typical literary characters and even appendages are consistent aspects of the novel. These lifeless extensions ironically breathe life into Ballard’s being. His rifle, a personified instrument with power over the meek, could be viewed as his only friend. Ballard’s deliberate actions end the lives of others, grotesquely connecting him with those who would not accept him in life. The cave is another inanimate character to be accounted for, serving as a “womb-like” getaway. Ballard surrounds himself with likeable companions; these women are more acceptable as husks after death.

Initially, it is important to discuss Ballard’s role as a hunter and the inanimate rifle he grows attached to. He views life through the eye viewer of his rifle. So, Ballard’s necrophilia is encouraged, calculated, and amplified through this working device. Vision is one of his tools; his power of observation has been honed to the taste of a natural predator. Critic Andrew Bartlett has supported the claim that Ballard can easily see death in the living: “The recurrent image of the voyeur in Child of God is that of a hunter who focuses on a presence or a scene of actual or potential death” (2).
Additionally, the manner in which Lester Ballard interprets violence in his environment parallels that of a sadistic stalker. In the text, the narrator details Ballard’s sight of a boar being mauled by hounds: “Ballard watched this ballet tile and swirl and churn mud up through the snow and watched the lovely blood welter there in its holograph of battle, spray burst from a ruptured lung the dark heart’s blood, pinwheel and pirouette, until shots rang and all was done” (69). The images stoke a sense of tranquility in Ballard. The scene may translate into savage slaughter, but it is interpreted as divine serenity in Ballard. At the end of the passage, Ballard takes up his rifle, inviting himself into the scene. The reader is left with a plethora of possibilities since this occurs at the end of the chapter. His response lingers in the imagination of the audience as an invitation to consider further endeavors to be added to his demented resume. In becoming accustomed to abnormal behavior and preconceiving Ballard’s actions, the audience has become a continuation of Ballard’s madness.

With this in mind, one must consider Lester Ballard’s skewed sense of humanity. Ballard leaves a very tainted impression on the reader, forcing us to initially see him as less than human. There is no doubt that Ballard is a despicable being, but his revolting actions shock the reader into divorcing the idea of his humanity from his person within our collective conscious. Bartlett goes so far as to state he is “a walking threat and insult to human innocence, a grievous case against the gods,” (4). McCarthy labels him a ghoul, troll, and a monster, among other things. This encourages Ballard’s sub-human label. But by shadowing him as voyeurs, we are connected to his atrocities, and become stalkers by perusing line after line of the story. However, McCarthy even interjects statements that seal his human existence as being like our own.

Yet, how is the reader related to Ballard? Has the reader unknowingly become his accomplice? Near the beginning of the novel, McCarthy writes that Ballard is, “A child of God, much like yourself perhaps” (4). This sentence entices one to believe that Ballard may be a valid character, a hero, perhaps. When the reader finds out who he is, we automatically deny his humanity. The audience becomes conflicted, as we allow his cruelty to escalate. And yet, we continue to follow him, posing as a silent cohort. Why does this attraction entice us? Writer John Ditsky responds, “By combining elaborate diction with terrible deeds, he creates a tension of attraction-repulsion. Evil fascinates with its lurid beauty” (6). 
From the beginning to the end of the novel, normal society persecutes Lester Ballard. One may even ask if he is human enough to be pitied or excused. After all, in the first few pages, Ballard loses his land, the mark of all men. Once his land is repossessed, the pages are littered with community reactions to Lester Ballad. Most portray him negatively as an outcast, which furthers his social isolation. John Greer narrates sections of their childhood: “I never liked Lester Ballard from that day. I never liked him much before that” (18). Ballard observes others with a sense of longing. The first woman in his life is a woman’s corpse and this interaction affects Ballard’s future interactions with all people: “Moreover, his terrible loneliness and alienation from normal human existence are established when he first mounts a female corpse and ‘pours into that waxen ear everything he’d ever thought of saying to a woman’ (Child 88)” (Carr 12-13). As Ballard populates his little cave community, he creates his own form of acceptance.  Ballard is starved enough for affection to remorselessly kill, thus, the reader may allow him some humanity.

With textual progression, the tools of the novel take on symbolism. The most important of the tools is Ballard’s rifle, as previously noted. Arguably, Ballard could not exist without this device. The rifle enables Ballard to become the predator. It is his source of power over the unaware, and connects him to his fellow man by endowing him with omnipotence, a dictatorship over the fates of others. Ballard cares for his gun more than any of the things he manages to acquire. Even in the face of pursuit and discovery (an opposite role for Ballard) his concern rests on maintaining his weapon: “He splashed his way to high ground and began to unload and disassemble the rifle, putting the shells in his shirtpocket and wiping the water from the gun with his forefinger and blowing through the barrel, muttering to himself the while” (157). 
Following Ballard’s vulnerability to exposure, one gets curious for what Ballard would be without his one constant companion. Bartlett describes a desperate scenario, mentioning that, “the destruction or loss of the rifle could jeopardize Ballard’s sight as a voyeur, and therefore, the readers’ insight to his world,” (10). Without the rifle, Ballard is lost. There is a strong parallel between the rifle and his arm. He loses his superiority over others after his arm is blasted away by Greer, even being described as a woman when in his hospital gown: “Ballard in a thin white gown in a thin white room, false acolyte or antiseptic felon, a practitioner of ghastliness, a part-time ghoul” (174). He loses his master status as a hunter and it follows suit that the hunters kidnap him from the hospital for the sake of “justice.” He becomes as submissive as his former prey. How does one account for his trickery and ultimate escape from the hunters in the cave if he has lost his one form of resistance? In this case Ballard seems even more like prey, slipping through a small space in the cave and losing his pursuers. He ultimately turns himself in at the county hospital desk, a sign of defeat. It could be argued that without his gun, the man we know as Lester Ballard dies.

Another one of the tools available to our main character is the cave. One could identify this cave as a sanctuary for Ballard and his trophies. Ditsky describes the cave as something akin to Hell, with Ballard reigning over his soulless guests. Ballard builds his own society, one that finally finds him acceptable. He creates a kind of reciprocal affection for those he has graciously invited. Even after Ballard’s demise, his audience waits, ever so patiently for his return. The cave has also been alluded to as a womb in which Ballard finds comfort and eventually escapes from to be “born again” into a different Ballard than one we’ve known.

Unlike the rifle, the cave turns against Ballard after his escape. The cave serves to mislead the police in their pursuit of the felon, and unfortunately for Ballard, he is similarly betrayed by his former refuge. He wanders for days, suffering from distortions of time and place. His flight from this “womb” is made difficult. In this sense, Ballard becomes the victim of his own abyss, barely escaping with his life. He becomes a refugee; banished from his own kingdom and origins and forced to surrender to the outside world. His soul was suffocated the moment he lost his arm. Sadly, suffocation takes time. This accounts for his fumbled escape and belated self-surrender. There is no place in any world for a man like Lester Ballard.

Lastly, the corpses Ballard collects aid him in quest for normality. One is not entirely sure if Ballard considers his kills as humans or objects. He seems desperate for social connection, but only as long as it is met on his terms. Coincidentally, Ballard happens upon his first love interest. Having not committed her murder, one may come to view her as Ballard’s untouched Madonna. He spends money on her, dresses her up, and even keeps her on ice to slow her decomposition. He adores her lifeless body, taking time to pose her and observe his handy work. Tragically, she is consumed in the fire Ballard accidentally ignites. It seems that every woman after her fails to measure up to the unfinished romantic “business” he had with her.

Oddly, the living women of the story are more vile that the dead. Reubal’s nine daughters have promiscuous sex and the narrator describes a rape scene in which the father punishes his daughter. Though Ballard desecrates their bodies, the corpses that keep Ballard company have been cleansed of their previous lives. Ballard tries to replicate the immaculate nature of his first girlfriend. Ralph’s daughter illustrates this point well. She is a foul-mouthed teenager, mother to an imbecile child, and smart-mouthed ingrate. Ballard attempts to seduce her, fails, and becomes enraged at the rejection. The greatest aspect surrounding the dead women is their silence. They are incapable of dissention, and sublimely submit to his fragile ego.

In conclusion, the story of Lester Ballard produces the ultimate voyeurs out of the readers. He is the portal that allows for remote perversion. His sight directs the reader toward his guilty, if not deranged, pleasures. Ballard is comfortable with his role as a hunter; it grants him power over his victims and lends him the ability to create his own society. The audience views the world through Ballard’s sight, branding him with names like “monster,” “pervert,” and “fiend.” At some point, however, the reader must question Ballard’s humanity. He may be deemed less than human though the reader’s subjective perspective, but he is human—the Memphis medical students can prove it. What does that say about the rest of us? Ballard could be seen as the embodiment of darkness that every other person keeps locked away. But as the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said, “When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you.” Self-examination is demanded by Lester Ballard’s very existence.

by Jenna Stunkard