The Dishonesty of Despair: Reflections on “The Sunset Limited”
I recently watched the HBO version of Cormac McCarthy’s play The Sunset Limited. Similar to Twelve Angry Men or Lifespan of a Fact,the play manages to convey both emotional intensity and philosophical depth through a long dialogue and minimal “action.” The only characters are an ex-convict named “Black” and a university professor named “White.” Black has just saved White from jumping in front of the Sunset Limited subway and brought him back to his ghetto apartment to try and persuade him not to commit suicide.
I appreciate that there is no “Grey” character –no lukewarm person content to be comfortable and never ask hard questions. The dialogue is raw and honest. Neither character pulls his punches. Whether they believe that life is headed for divine community (as Black believes) or void (as White hopes), they don’t sugarcoat their goals — White wants to die and Black wants him to want to live.
Black is honest that his perspective is one of faith– “I ain’t got an original thought in my head if it ain’t got the lingering scent of divinity to it.” White tries to understand how Black talks to Jesus, whom he can’t see. Black asks White whether he believes the Bible is true and significant. The professor admits that the Bible is not as true as The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, but it’s probably a better book–as good as War and Peace. White only believes in what he can see, but he acknowledges that fiction like War and Peace are more significant than history texts that only cover the facts. Just because something can’t be empirically proved doesn’t mean that it isn’t worth thinking about.
But the conversation shifts as it becomes clear that the philosophical questions on the nature of reality don’t get to the heart of the issue. White is a brilliant man and knows the typical arguments about faith and suffering — he’s read Job and Genesis and admits that he loathes people because he sees himself in them. But as Black points out, what good is knowledge if it doesn’t keep your feet on the platform when the Sunset Limited hurtles by? White knows the intellectual arguments, but his heart is unconvinced.
And so the dialogue pushes the characters to honesty as the viewer wrestles with two questions: Is life better than nonexistence? And, how does someone with faith convince someone in despair that life is worth living?
White says that “Suffering and human destiny are the same thing. Each is a description of the other.” As the play continues, White becomes more honest about the events in his life that led him to this point. He drops hints of an unloving family, his refusal to visit his father’s deathbed, and many failed attempts to cure chronic depression. White describes himself as an academic who fell in love with knowledge and art but who concluded that, “Western Civilization finally went up in smoke in the chimneys at Dachau but I was too infatuated to see it. I see it now.”
I don’t believe White is entirely honest here. My hunch is that the professor knew about the concentration camps all along — it wasn’t a disillusioning surprise, but an excuse for his cynicism. Black, an ex-convict living in a drug-ridden ghetto, has experienced as much of the world’s worst as the professor, but his faith remains. Both men know that life is hard. Both men have suffered. Black’s faith is not a blind ignorance of evil. He spent time in the jailhouse, beat a man to death in a brawl, and had to be stripped and laid out in a hospital bed before he listened to God.
Jordan Peterson said that, in the face of suffering, faith is a form of courage. Perhaps it’s the ultimate form of courage — the kind that leads Black reflect on his life and say, “I got what I needed instead of what I wanted and that’s just about the best kind of luck you can have.” It’s this courage that White lacks. If there’s hope, then there’s a reason to keep living. And White wants to give up.
Viktor Frankl survived the concentration camps that White uses as arguments and still wrote,
“…we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord’s Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.”
To say that the existence of Auschwitz means that life is all torment is just as wrong as to say that the existence of Disneyland means that life is all rides and games. A baby’s first laugh in a sunlit nursery is just as real as a prisoner’s last gasp in the gas chamber. To ignore either is to be dishonest about reality.
White mocks Black for believing in Jesus, who he can’t see. But White refuses to believe the evidence of goodness in front of him. His stumbling block isn’t science, but despair. White says that existence is fundamentally suffering. But Black easily counters this — -how would White know he was unhappy if happiness didn’t exist? Evil is evident, but so is goodness–even if it’s less overwhelming. When White says he doesn’t really have any friends, Black asks about him — the “not really” friend. He wants to acknowledge any bit of hope and goodness that exists. Black accepts all the data about life — he, not White, is the realist.
Why won’t White let himself see clearly? To have hope in a world tinted with suffering is to bear responsibility. The same God who gave us hope told us not to hide it. And so Black admits that he is his brother’s keeper and tries to live like it. White shoots back that even God gives up — there are no missionaries in Hell. Exactly. The present moment is our only chance to escape despair. White doesn’t try to hope because he doesn’t want to admit the possibility that he may need to forgive and be forgiven.
White’s last words as he runs out the door are “You tell me that I want God’s love. I don’t . . .There’s no setting things right. There’s only the hope of nothingness. And I cling to that hope.”
Left in the empty room, Black is now honest with God about his failure. “I don’t understand. If you wanted me to help him, then how come you didn’t give me the words? You give them to him. What about me? That’s all right… If you don’t never speak again, you know I’ll keep your word.”
What good is his conviction if he can’t communicate it to others? What good is being rescued from the pit of despair if he can’t bring others with him? Like McCarthy, God doesn’t always let us see the ends of other character’s stories. But perhaps all we need to do is look at the person standing in front of us and be honest with them. Yes, there are reasons to despair, but there are also reasons to hope. And when despair comes hurtling towards us like the Sunset Limited, it’s not enough to keep our own feet on the platform — we need to keep our arms open for the jumpers too.
