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= __Child of God__ = = By Cormac McCarthy =

// Child of God // tells the story of Lester Ballard, a dispossessed and violent man who struggles to survive as an outsider to the social order of the world. The story is set in Sevier County, Tennessee. The book begins with an auction of Lester Ballard’s land. "They [the buyers] came like a caravan of carnival folk up through swales of broomstraw and across the hill in the morning sun, the truck rocking and pitching in the ruts and the musicians on chairs in the truckbed teetering and tuning their instruments...(pg. 1)". As the auctioneer (CB) tells the buyers the details of the estate, Lester loses control and threatens to kill some of the buyers. After Lester was taken away, his land was sold and he is forced to live in a bug infested, two room shack. His neighbor, the dumpkeeper, was his only friend. He often went over his house to look at his nine developing daughters. When he was not at the dumpkeeper's house, he shot rats and squirrels for his own amusement. He would go up Frog Mountain every morning and come back down with many squirrels. One day Lester, as he was walking down the mountain, came across a car with a man and a woman inside. He looked in through the window and realized that they were both dead. He also realized that the woman was half-naked. He stood there looking in through the window, thinking about what he should do. He decided to walk away. After he was half way down the mountain, he turned back. He turned back because he realized he could take their money and belongings. After he got their wallet and purse, he began to walk again. Then, he decided to turn back again. He opened the car door and decided to move the man off of the woman. He stood there looking at the half-naked woman, thinking about what he was going to do. He touched her for a while, and then left. Lester however, came back to the car many times after he left that day. Later on in the story, the car with the couple had been set on fire and burned. After Lester lost his "first love", he became proactive, killing and raping women. Lester committed crime after crime. He began to stalk, kill, and rape young women more and more. The sheriff in the story is trying to catch the murderer, (Lester). He however did not know it was Lester who was committing the crimes. At the end of the story, the sheriff fails to charge him with any crimes. Lester is however placed in a keeping cell at the state hospital in Knoxville next to a demented gentleman who used to open folk’s skulls and eat the brains inside with a spoon. At the end of the story, Lester comes down with pneumonia and dies in his cell a few days later. The hospital takes out his brain and heart, and later buries him with the other deceased members of the hospital.

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