Outer Dark (1968) is Cormac McCarthy’s second novel. The setting resembles Appalachia circa 1900; however, in this fabulist story, the setting transcends one particular location. A postmodern take on Southern gothic, the novel centers on two siblings, Culla and Rinthy Holme, who have a child together. After the child is born, Culla flees and wanders the earth like Cain. He is shadowed by a murderous trio, who act as both his punishers and his guardians. Meanwhile, Rinthy searches for her baby, whom Culla leaves to die in the woods. Like many of McCarthy’s works, Outer Dark probes the extremes of good and evil in a world forsaken by God.

This guide uses the ebook version of the 1993 Vintage International edition.

Content Warning: The source material features depictions of slavery, racism, incest, and infanticide.

Plot Summary

The story starts with a shadowy trio of men traveling west along a river. Their movements appear in six italicized vignettes interspersed throughout the main narrative.

The main narrative starts in the spring. A man named Culla Holme dreams that he has lost his chance for salvation. His sister, Rinthy, wakes him from this nightmare. She is nine months pregnant with their child, the product of incest. A few days later, Rinthy births a baby boy. While she sleeps, Culla leaves the child in the woods to die, but he tells her the baby died after the delivery. A passing tinker rescues the baby. After Rinthy recovers, she visits the grave and finds it empty. Culla flees, beginning his Cain-like journey as a fugitive and a vagabond. Meanwhile, Rinthy sets out in search of her child, whom she believes Culla sold to the tinker. The unnumbered chapters alternate between Culla’s and Rinthy’s perspectives.

Death and disaster follow Culla everywhere. He takes work with a squire named Salter, who lectures Culla on the importance of hard work and the sanctity of family while underpaying him. Meanwhile, in an italicized vignette, the trio steals tools from Salter’s barn. Culla flees early the following morning with Salter’s veal-skin boots. The trio intercepts Salter in pursuit of Culla and murders him.

In the next town, Culla comes to and sees the trio has desecrated three graves. The town accuses Culla of the crime, forcing him to flee the deputies who are pursuing him. Having escaped the deputies, Culla takes work painting a barn. Days later, the deputies find him, forcing Culla to flee them again. In an italicized vignette, the head of the trio leads a mob to lynch two millhands for Salter’s murder.

Meanwhile, Rinthy finds good will and hospitality in her search for the tinker. A family lets her stay with them, feeding her a luxurious meal. Afterward, she continues on her search. A farmer named Bud confronts her for stealing turnips out of his field, but after hearing her story, he invites her in for lunch with his wife; the couple lost their five children to cholera. Before the meal starts, Bud and his wife start fighting, forcing Rinthy to flee.

Next, Rinthy stays with an old woman in her shack. Noticing that Rinthy is lactating, the woman accuses her of drowning her baby, but softens when she hears Rinthy’s guileless response. She advises Rinthy to grease her nipples so that the chafing won’t cause her to bleed. Rinthy doesn’t follow her advice, and her nipples start bleeding. She sees a doctor, who tells her that no woman produces milk for six months after losing a baby. Rinthy thinks this means her child is still alive.

After fleeing the deputies, Culla finds a retired snake hunter living in the woods. The man is lonely and offers to apprentice Culla, who, annoyed by the man’s overbearing demeanor, declines. The following night, the trio knocks on the snake hunter’s door. The leader wears a black suit robbed from one of the graves, making him look like a minister. He then disembowels the snake hunter.

Culla arrives in the town of Clark, where he encounters Bud. Bud accuses him of having cholera and threatens to shoot him. Culla gets work digging graves for the lynched millhands from Clark himself. Like Squire Salter, Clark condescends to Culla. The following day, Culla finds the town abandoned and Clark hanged next to the millhands: the work of the trio.

After leaving Clark, Culla comes to a ferry crossing on a river. During the crossing, the raging river snaps the ferry cable, killing the ferryman and setting Culla adrift down the river. After a night of floating, Culla spots a fire onshore. When he shouts for help, the trio appears and drags him to shore. Around the fire, they taunt Culla, accusing him of murdering the ferryman, taking his veal-skin boots, and feeding him meat hinted to be human flesh.

Finally, Rinthy finds the tinker. He refuses to return her child, accusing her of being an unfit mother. Really, he wants the child—a symbol of innocence—for himself as a charm against the bad luck that plagues his life. When he learns that the child is born of incest, he flees in a rage, threatening to kill Rinthy if she follows him.

Time passes, and the next time Rinthy appears, she is destroyed by grief, living with an unnamed farmer in an empty relationship. She absconds in the night to resume her search. On the road, she sees an omen of death—a giant black horse. In an italicized vignette, the tinker reclaims the child, whom he entrusted to a wet nurse. The trio finds him and the baby and kills the tinker.

In the winter, Culla shelters in an abandoned house, and owner charges him with trespassing. Culla works off the fine; he wants to stay and work for room and board, but the man refuses. In the spring, Culla encounters a group of drovers with their herd of hogs. Shortly after Culla’s arrival, the hogs stampede off a cliff, killing Vernon, one of the drovers. The remaining drovers accuse Culla of running off their stock and threaten to throw him over the cliff. An unkempt preacher suddenly appears, begging them not to throw Culla over. He does agree to let the drovers hang Culla, and they head toward camp for a rope. Finding a place where the cliff is low enough, Culla jumps into the river below to escape.

After floating some distance, Culla again finds the trio along the river. His child is alive but is burned along one side of its body and is missing an eye. The tinker’s body hangs in a nearby tree. The leader of the trio challenges Culla to accept responsibility for his child, but Culla refuses. The leader slaughters the child and feeds it to his mute companion. They burn the glade but leave Culla alive.

Rinthy stumbles upon the glade sometime later. She doesn’t understand the meaning of the tiny ribcage in the burned wreckage. She waits into the night for someone to return, but no one does.

Time passes, and Culla continues his futile wandering. He meets a blind man on the road, who tells him a story about a distressed man suffering from an unknown illness. The blind man offers to pray for Culla’s salvation, but Culla sneers that he doesn’t need anything. Culla continues along the road, which ends in a desolate marsh. He turns around, and when he again passes the blind man, he hides and doesn’t warn him of the danger ahead. Culla tries to escape his guilt, personified by the demonic trio, but in doing so, he remains blind to the fact that this very attempt to flee is the cause of his suffering.