Ive seen the meanness of humans till I dont know why God aint put out the sun and gone away.
Interpretation
The quote reflects deep disappointment with humanity's cruelty, questioning the purpose of existence.
Cormac McCarthy's quote expresses a profound disillusionment with the inherent meanness and cruelty observed in humanity. The speaker, overwhelmed by this darkness, wonders why a benevolent deity has not chosen to end it all by extinguishing the sun, symbolizing hope and life. This contemplation touches on themes of despair and the struggle to find meaning in a world filled with suffering and malice.
In practice
In a debate about the nature of humanity, one can use this quote to illustrate the darker side of human behavior.
Yet it is the narrative that is the life of the dream while the events themselves are often interchangeable. The events of the waking world on the other hand are forced upon us and the narrative is the unguessed axis along which they must be strung.
See the hand that nursed the serpent. The fine hasped pipes of her fingerbones. The skin bewenned and speckled. The veins are milkblue and bulby. A thin gold ring set with diamonds. That raised the once child's heart of her to agonies of passion before I was. Here is the anguish of mortality. Hopes wrecked, love sundered. See the mother sorrowing. How everything that I was warned of's come to pass.
What he could bear in the waking world he could not by night and he sat awake for fear the dream would return.
The judge placed his hands on the ground. He looked at his inquisitor. This is my claim, he said. And yet everywhere upon it are pockets of autonomous life. Autonomous. In order for it to be mine nothing must be permitted to occur upon it save by my dispensation.
Only now is the child finally divested of all that he has been. His origins are become remote as is his destiny and not again in all the world's turning will there be terrains so wild and barbarous to try whether the stuff of creation may be shaped to man's will or whether his own heart is not another kind of clay.
He knew only that his child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.
We've all been brought up with the view that religion has some kind of special privileged status. You're not allowed to criticise it.
A liberal is a man or a woman or a child who looks forward to a better day, a more tranquil night, and a bright, infinite future.
I have a photograph of myself when I was 2 years of age, and I don't recognize the person in the photograph. She doesn't look anything like me, and I can't find any trace of her in me physically. And yet I remember her very, very well - even her anxiety.
Vivisection is a social evil because if it advances human knowledge, it does so at the expense of human character.
Society is just a structure with no soul. The soul is of the individual. One individual outweighs all societies. And, one individual's revolution outweighs all revolutions in the whole of history, because one man can become the womb for God to be reborn.
You bring me the deepest joy that can be felt by a man whose invincible belief is that Science and Peace will triumph over Ignorance and War, that nations will unite, not to destroy, but to build, and that the future will belong to those who will have done most for suffering humanity.
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