The Sunset Limited - Acting Edition
by Cormac McCarthy
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Book Summary Information
Author: Cormac McCarthyEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-01-02
ISBN: 0822222108
Number of pages: 72
Publisher: Dramatists Play Service, Inc.
Book Reviews of The Sunset Limited - Acting Edition
Book Review: A Brilliant Miniature
Summary: 5 Stars
Cormac McCarthy's opus is a truly impressive work, both in terms of the sheer number of works of fiction and the variety of topics and situations that are tackled in it. In this short play we are faced with two characters, unimaginatively called Black and White because of their skin color. These characters come across each other in the most dramatic of ways: Black saves White during a suicide attempt. The entire play is condensed in a single act that takes place after the dramatic rescue. The reader plays witness to the conversation between these two characters in Black's sparsely furnished Brooklyn apartment. As Black tries to prevent White from a repeated suicide attempt, the conversation quickly evolves in the direction of "big" questions: the meaning of life and the existence of God. Black is originally from the South, and has had many run-ins with the law. It is only while serving a prison sentence for one of his more violent crimes that he has an epiphany that rekindles his own religious spirit. White, on the other hand, is a well educated college professor and an atheist, who has very little sympathy not only for God but for most other human beings as well. He seems to espouse an extremely nihilistic view of the world that throughout the play Black tries to shake him out of. The struggle between White and Black proceeds through a lengthy dialogue that stretches across the entirety of the play. Despite the apparent vast disparity between their educational and intellectual levels, Black holds his own in this battle of wits with White. However, in the end (just like in real life) it is not clear whether these persuasive arguments are successful in converting each other.
The topics covered in this very short play are among the most difficult and contentious ones that writers and philosophers have grappled with since time immemorial. This very familiarity, however, is what makes these themes very difficult to deal with in a new and fresh way, but remarkably enough McCarthy manages to do just that. The allegories and symbolism that he uses could have easily been regarded as trite and cloying, yet he shows a lot of talent and intellectual finesse in preventing them from becoming cheap tricks. By using the most rudimentary and worn-out writing and dramatic devices, he manages to create something original and inspiring. This short play is a testament to his genius.
Summary of The Sunset Limited - Acting Edition
A startling encounter on a New York subway platform leads two strangers to a run-down tenement where a life or death decision must be made.In that small apartment, ?Black? and ?White,? as the two men are known, begin a conversation that leads each back through his own history, mining the origins of two fundamentally opposing world views. White is a professor whose seemingly enviable existence of relative ease has left him nonetheless in despair. Black, an ex-con and ex-addict, is the more hopeful of the men?though he is just as desperate to convince White of the power of faith as White is desperate to deny it.
Their aim is no less than this: to discover the meaning of life.
Deft, spare, and full of artful tension, The Sunset Limited is a beautifully crafted, consistently thought-provoking, and deceptively intimate work by one of the most insightful writers of our time.
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