The Crossing

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1994

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Pages 3-64

Part 1, Pages 64-127

Part 2

Part 3, Pages 215-274

Part 3, Pages 274-332

Part 4

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

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Background

Historical Context: The Mexican Revolution and a Looming World War

The Crossing takes place during a period of transition for the North American Southwest—it begins sometime in the 1930s and ends on July 16, 1945, the date of the Trinity nuclear test that signaled the beginning of the global nuclear age. For most of the people living along the borderlands of Texas and New Mexico, however, the wider world had little impact on their daily lives. Far more important were their relationships with the natural world, with Indigenous tribes that still occupied parts of the land, and with Mexicans with whom they regularly traded.

Tensions between America and Mexico were significant during this time, due to America’s sporadic role in the Mexican Revolution, which comprised a series of armed conflicts in the 1910s-20s. Often, the United States government would step in to support whoever held power. As a young man, protagonist Billy Parham would be little aware of this, but it’s an undercurrent in many of his exchanges with Mexican citizens throughout the novel, and several of the characters he meets are veterans of those wars with lingering feelings of resentment. It’s also an integral element of the society of the Northern states of Mexico during this era: The spirit of revolution influences Billy and Boyd’s fast achievement of folk hero status when they stand up to the powerful Hearst ranch.

While Billy travels through Mexico, he misses America’s entry into World War II—the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the resultant recruitment efforts are a shock to Billy when he returns home, but he immediately tries to enlist. His rejection from the Army was a common narrative of the time, and many young men felt deep shame at their inability to serve their country (though others felt relief). Setting the novel at this precise moment in history reinforces the idea that Billy has no place in the world: He’s no longer experiencing life as a typical American young man, he has no connection to Mexico except as the site of grief and loss, and the grim, violent march of history continues whether he wants it to or not.

Publishing Context: Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy

The Crossing is the follow up to 1992’s All the Pretty Horses, which brought McCarthy a National Book Award as well as much wider acclaim. The novel was billed as the second in a trilogy about young men in the borderlands. Some readers resented that The Crossing was billed as a sequel but takes place chronologically earlier and features no connection to the first novel’s protagonist, John Grady Cole. Billy and John would serve as joint protagonists of 1998’s Cities of the Plain, which tells the story of their young adulthood working together on a ranch near Alamogordo, New Mexico in the 1950s. Still, The Crossing was hailed as a thematic successor to All the Pretty Horses and is generally regarded as the most successful work of literature of the three books.

The three novels are thematically consistent: Each deals with young American men living on the borderlands during a time when the frontier is giving way to modern life; each features naïve protagonists whose idealism and sense of justice conflicts with the hostile world around them; and each contrasts the Romantic notions embodied in corridos and classic Westerns with the day-to-day life of the vaquero, which was uncomfortable, dangerous, and full of loss. Billy develops into a bitter realist who moves from job to job without a sense of belonging, while John Grady Cole is driven by his romantic notion of love. Cities of the Plain repeats many plot beats from The Crossing, with John Grady stepping into the role of Boyd Parham, Billy’s younger brother. Billy ends his journey in Cities on the Plain much as in The Crossing—as a wanderer overwhelmed by the events of his life—though he is ultimately taken in by a family who accept him for who he is.

As a trilogy, the novels present an elegiac portrait of the end of the frontier and serve as a bridge between the lush, Faulknerian style of McCarthy’s early work (culminating in 1985’s Blood Meridian) and the sparser prose of No Country for Old Men (2005) and The Road (2006).