Cormac McCarthy – Stella Maris – Comment

 

Stella Maris is McCarthy's coda to The Passenger. The title is the name of the mental institution that the protagonist of The Passenger, Bobby Western's sister, Alicia Western admitted herself into with only a toothbrush and grocery bag containing $40,000. We are introduced to Alicia Western in the first novel, visited by a character called the Kid: a hallucination of an individual who is deformed with flippers for hands and a childish, sarcastic sense of humor. The Kid's comments, though idiotic at times, reveal the source of madness in Alicia's mind. We soon discover that Alicia Western has been in this institution twice before, diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.

Stella Maris reads more like a screenplay because the entire novel is the recorded therapy session between Alicia and her psychiatrist.

One should read The Passenger before embarking on this novel. An astute reader aware of high mathematics, physics, and philosophy would find these discussions fascinating. Anyone with little knowledge of these subjects will have difficulty reading this slim volume.

Alicia Western is a genius whose intelligence borders on the otherworldly. She was accepted to the University of Chicago at the age of 14. However, because of her groundbreaking work in mathematics, she flies to Paris to study with another genius in the field.

The Western family carries a "curse" of sorts, as Bobby and Alicia's father, another physicist, worked with Oppenheimer on the Atomic bomb. Re-reading the text, I don't believe this to be true, but a product of Bobby and Alicia's own minds. Both children are brilliant, and I believe they carry their own guilt regarding the bomb and its diabolical use on Japan in 1945.

The loneliness of genius is well expressed in Alicia and Bobby's behavior in both novels. Particularly Alicia, who writes 3 drafts of her thesis, that only her brother has read. She escapes the academic world, working in some mid-western bar and a grungy hotel. All the while, she continues to work on the mathematics in her mind. At this point, she stops writing anything down because she believes that doing so prevents the ideas from expanding and growing toward any solution or conclusion. Through this time, the Kid and his collection of vaudevillian characters continue to visit Alicia.

In The Passenger, Bobby and Alicia's close and unusual relationship are explored at some length. We see that this deep love between siblings is nonsexual from Bobby's perspective. Although in Stella Maris, the feeling Alicia has for her brother transcends spiritual love, bordering on the physical, that is never consummated.

This relationship and the love these two people have for each other reaches the very core of their being. These two ultra-intelligent people are incredibly lonely, finding a rare solace in each other. A disturbing relationship, certainly not run of the mill, though understandable, and ultimately a genuine tragedy.

If you have read The Passenger, reading Stella Maris is necessary; however one of the saddest tales one can read.