46 pages • 1 hour read
Cormac McCarthyCities of the Plain
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1998A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Epilogue Summary
Billy decides to leave Mac’s ranch. In a conversation with Mac, he learns that the military plans to buy up all of the land in the area. Mac assures Billy that there will always be a job for him on whatever ranch he runs. Mac leaves Texas and spends years wandering. In 2002, he is old and only finds sporadic work as a movie extra. He lives in a hotel until he has spent the last of his money. His boots are almost worn through.
Now homeless in Arizona and aged 78, Billy sleeps beneath an overpass. He is plagued by violent dreams. He spots a man across the street and catches the man’s eye. The man joins him, and they share a packet of saltine crackers. During their conversation, Billy admits to the man that—for a moment—he thought that the man might be “death” (180), coming to fetch Billy. The man assures Billy that he is not death, and they talk about the idea of death and an afterlife. The man discusses a time in the past when he sketched out his entire life on a map. They talk about dreams.
They discuss the difference between dreams and waking life, and the man describes his dream about a traveler. The traveler lays down and dreams about a procession of mysterious musicians who carry a young girl on a litter through the cold night. A chemist among the procession gives the traveler a draught that makes him forget “the pain of his life” (189). The newly-innocent traveler considers his surroundings and place in the world. The traveler is laid on an ancient sacrificial stone altar and beheaded. The traveler survives, having woken from a dream of his own. The man called out to the traveler to stay in his dream. Within the man’s dream, the traveler becomes aware of himself and his relationship to his dreams and the world. The man stands up and stretches, admitting there is no real end to the traveler’s story. Billy says that he must be going on. They wish each other well and part ways.
That night, Billy lays down by the side of a road. He cannot sleep, so he stares out over the desert. He sees radar stations and strange figures in the distance. Eventually, he sleeps, and when he wakes, he finds that the strange figures were “only rags of plastic wrapping hanging from a fence” (195). He travels east and searches for his sister’s grave in New Mexico, but he cannot find it. Billy wanders the desert, relying on the kindness of strangers. In the fall, he is taken in by a family and sleeps in a shed room in their home. He teaches the children how to train the family horse and tells them old stories about his past. He dreams about his dead brother.
Epilogue Analysis
The short epilogue of the novel describes the world after death. After John Grady dies, Billy becomes a wanderer. Death defines him to the extent that he even believes a random stranger might be the physical embodiment of death. Billy is haunted by the past. He has not only lost his friend; he has also lost one of the last remaining bonds to a lifestyle that is ending. The cowboys of the plains—their culture and their lifestyle—die not long after John Grady. Given his affinity for horses and his atypical personality, John Grady embodies the culture, and after his death, Billy no longer feels any connection to the only life he never truly understood. Wandering, Billy tries to find work where he can. His work as a movie extra symbolizes his role in society: He is an interchangeable background character, perpetually out of focus and whose words are never heard. Billy exists on the fringes of society in the same way that he exists on the periphery of other people’s filmed stories. When even his extra work dries up, he simply walks across the country where he no longer has a home.
The death of John Grady precipitates the death of the culture of which he was a part. With the culture dead, Billy is left alone. He endures the tragedy of a friend’s death and the tragedy of a loss of his culture. As such, Billy becomes a tragedy himself. His enduring existence prompts the question of whether the greater tragedy is to suffer and die (like John Grady) or to live long enough to experience the death of everything a person loves. Billy suffers the latter fate, losing everything that was ever important to him. At the end of his life, he has nothing to show for it except the memories that will gradually desert him, just as they deserted Mr Johnson. Billy’s long, rambling conversations about dreams with strangers are a desperate attempt to find meaning in the abstract, confusing dreams that haunt him. They reflect his desire to extract meaning from his confusing mess of memories. If not, he will be forced to confront the hideous meaningless of existence. Billy and the stranger both need their dreams and memories to mean something; the alternative is too horrific to contemplate.
However, in the book’s final passages, Billy is given a hint of optimism. He finds a family who gives him a temporary home, even though he is not related to them. He lives with them, and he has something resembling a family for the first time in years. The key to Billy’s future is his time with the children. The family has a horse, and Billy teaches the children how to care for the animal and ride it. In doing so, he passes on his knowledge and culture to the next generation. Billy’s friends are dead, and the only lifestyle he knew no longer has a place in modern society. However, Billy can keep something of himself alive by passing his knowledge on to the next generation. He can find meaning in educating the children and giving them the benefit of his knowledge. Rather than the dreams and memories, this tangible experience gives meaning to the final days of Billy’s life.
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