(Carrying the Fire on) No Road for Old Horses: Cormac McCarthy's Untold Biblical Stories

Three "major" movies have been based on the novels of Cormac McCarthy: All the Pretty Horses, No Country for Old Men, and The Road. In a landscape of loss, these fictions realize strange, new biblical stories about those who are neither chosen nor special and thus those who do not find the promise, are the prey of demons, and live after a secular apocalypse. These fictions are strange, new versions of Job in which no whirlwind answers, Job's adversary roams unbound, and Job's self-curse has become a luxury. Amidst an implacable fate, the fictions' call to "carry the fire" differs from biblical faith in election and providence and from popular assumptions about US exceptionalism.