Child of God depicts Lester Ballard as a pathologized outcast tarnished by loss, neglect, and prolonged isolation within the stratified Appalachian community of Sevier County, Tennessee.

Cormac McCarthy's principle argument -- monsters do not emerge ex nihilo -- hinges on Sevier County's ostracization of Lester Ballard following the suicide of his father.  

The scant evidence put forth by McCarthy, however, fails to decisively establish Sevier County's complicity in Lester Ballard’s terminal corruption; McCarthy's thematic indictment of the subliminal machinery that binds “civilized” society is further complicated by the novel's garish and often misguided characterization of trauma as a necessary precondition for moral insolvency.