Dreams and Dreamers in Cormac McCarthy: Toward a Moral Vision

In a career that spanned nearly six decades, Cormac McCarthy consistently wrote about dreams and dreamers. Characters dream of dead family members, animals, the apocalypse, monstrous creatures, Judgment Day, God, and more. They also have long philosophical conversations about dreaming, wherein dreams come freighted with special access to the real.

Scholars have long recognized dreams as a common artistic tool of McCarthy’s craft. But the 2017 appearance of his article “The Kekulé Problem” in...