Earlier in the semester, I wrote on Franz Kafka’s In the Penal Colony. In that paper I
talked about the idea that reality is only a matter of perspective. A person’s
circumstances determine what their reality is, which then affects how they view
certain ideas. I think it’s interesting that McCarthy’s The Sunset Limited seems to display this same idea.
Both of these stories seem to illustrate what happens when
two opposing “realities” collide. When two strong forces come head-to-head, one
must submit or else they’ll destroy each other. In Kafka’s tale, the Officer
realized he was alone in his ideals of justice, and he decided to die alongside
his beliefs. In Sunset Limited, however,
Black and White continued to throw their beliefs at each other until they were
both desperate and confused. In both stories, neither party could possibly fathom
the ideas of the other. What seemed to be an absolute truth to one was complete
nonsense to the other. Both sides seem to view the world as black and white,
even while insisting that it isn't.
