Child of God by Cormac Mcarthy Writing Assignment

Reading response blog - Child of God; Cormac McCarthy
You should not summarize or talk about “plot,” but rather highlight a particular aspect of craft as it pertains to character development, that interests you as a writer, or that as a reader enriches your reading experience and understanding of the story.
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Here is an example from one of my classmates - do not copy it the professor has read theirs!
With the prior knowledge I had of this novel through classroom discussion, I was aware that Lester Ballard would be an uncomfortable character to read about. Though in the first section, we do not get into the nitty-gritty details of his necrophilia, we get a few sneak peaks into his abnormal behaviors. One scene stands out specifically, when he watches the couple having sex in the car (pgs. 19-20). His open and somewhat public sexual nature is expressed in this scene vividly, yet readers can anticipate worse situations occurring in the later sections of the novel.
What intrigued me about the Ballard is the situations that led him to this disturbing lifestyle. On page 53, Ballard says, “All the trouble I ever was in was caused by whiskey or women or both.” This got me thinking of his mother leaving him and his father behind when he was an infant. This then led to his father's suicide. His mother, a woman, leaving was the starting point of his dismal life. Knowing that the future of the story will consist of the murder and manipulation of women, it makes me wonder if these actions are due to the fact that he has never had a positive encounter with a woman in his life, not even his mother. Is he committing such heinous acts to get back at women as a whole for never giving him a fair chance?
While this is my interpretation, maybe others think that Ballard's actions against women is his desire to find a redeeming quality about a woman instead of him fighting back against women for treating him so poorly. Though he goes about it in a despicable way, maybe his actions are used to help him build a relationship (though it is a twisted relationship in our eyes) with a woman because he was never able to in any other circumstance.
As a writer, this strengthens the idea that the backstories of characters can be used as a tool for readers to come to conclusions about characters. By including Ballard's background story in a few short sentences, it makes his outcome more believable. While still obviously completely unacceptable, the crimes he commits has an underlying meaning, whether he is conscious of that reason or not. Reading this story without the knowledge of his mother or father, the reader may question how he got this way and the story may not be as well received.
n the second part of “Child of God”, I was able to see the childlike immaturity of Ballard. In this section, we learn that Ballard is 27 years old. At this age, it would be uncommon for someone to be exasperated when interacting with women. However, Ballard consistently is.
When Ballard goes shopping for clothes that the dead woman can wear, his reaction to socializing with the saleswoman is as if someone had said something appalling. The description of his actions, “His eyes slightly wild as if in terror of the flimsy pastel garments there,” expresses his lack of comfortableness in a setting that surrounds woman. Further in the scene, when the saleswoman asks what the woman's size is, he continues to panic. The word choice of “blurt” on page 98 hints that him saying, “She needs some drawers” embarrasses him. The line on the same page, “his face afire,” solidifies this idea. I am still questioning if he is uncomfortable speaking to the saleswoman or if he is uncomfortable buying clothes for a woman when he has no experience doing so. In either situation, the lack of concealing his nerves shows a level of immaturity that contradicts what one may assume to be the common behavior of a 27-year-old man. The embarrassment he endures when talking about sexual garments is almost childish.
Even earlier in the section, we see Ballard save his large stuffed animals from the fire. The childlike act of saving a toy from danger furthers his immaturity as a 27-year-old man.
Being childish at his age isolates him from others in his environment. Throughout his life, he has been acting in anti-societal ways. He is an outcast and this may be why he turns to such violent and disturbing methods of seeking togetherness.
As a writer, I am intrigued by the notion of playing around with characters acting in obscure ways. I would automatically assume a 27-year-old would be considered an adult and he would act as such. However, McCarthy battles that by making him childish creating a more complex and interesting character. In my writing, I would like to challenge myself to create a more complex character than I have been writing so far this semester.