本論文嘗試另闢蹊徑，旨在回應戈馬克麥卡錫西部小說中的根本問題：身為人的自由意志及其可能與侷限。根據本文的研究，我主張麥卡錫小說中的遊戲描寫並非單純的調劑娛樂或作為情節的喜劇調解（comic relief），而是建構小說思維價值中關於自由意志、命運和偶然等重要命題的關鍵元素。

本論文分為四個章節。在第一章導論，我初步引介過去在遊戲主題上的哲學與理論思考，並著墨於思想、作者與作品之間的關聯。在第二章，我閱讀戈馬克麥卡錫的第一本西部小說《血色子午線》，探討機運遊戲在原則被破壞之後如何影響角色命運。在第三章，我探討邊境三部曲中《那些美麗駿馬》、《平原之城》當中以鬥競精神掛帥的遊戲。與過去多數宿命論的批評相背，我主張約翰葛雷迪科爾作為小說主角展現相當程度的自由意志。在第四章，我閱讀麥卡錫的最後一本西部小說《險路》，藉由獵人與賭徒的遊戲邏輯探討鬥競和機運遊戲如何在小說中同時呈現並互相牽扯。

This thesis is an attempt to provide an alternative path to answering the question concerning the possibility of human agency in McCarthy’s Western novels. In my research, I demonstrate that McCarthy’s representations of games in his novels are by no means insignificant episodes of light entertainment but an integral part to the constitution of his systems of values in which the notions of free will, fate and chance are centralized.

The thesis consists of four chapters. In the introductory chapter, I provide a basic overview of the philosophical discussions on the topics of games and play against the background of the author and his works. In the second chapter, I investigate the role of corrupted alea and its association with the characters’ fate in Blood Meridian. The third chapter discusses the principle of agon manifested in games of competition in the Border Trilogy. Countering most critics’ fatalistic view, I argue that the protagonist John Grady Cole does show considerable strength and skills in asserting his will power “to evoke the best possible game.” In the fourth and final chapter, I focus on McCarthy’s last Western No Country for Old Men, which is governed by both the principles of agon and alea as the characters embody the roles of the hunter and the gambler at the same time. In conclusion, I contend that there is a discernible line of evolution in thought on the questions of fate and will in McCarthy’s Western novels.

Andersen, Elizabeth. The Mythos of Cormac McCarthy. Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag Dr. Mueller, 2008. Print.
Arnold, Edwin T. Foreword. Notes on Blood Meridian: Revised and Expanded Edition. By John Sepich. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008. xi-xvi. Print.
---. “The Mosaic of McCarthy’s Fiction.” Sacred Violence: A Reader’s Companion to Cormac McCarthy. Ed. Wade Hall and Rick Wallach. El Paso: University of Texas at El Paso, 1995. 17-23. Print.
Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. London: Vintage Publishing, 2009. Print.
Bell, Vereen M. The Achievement of Cormac McCarthy. Ed. Louis D. Rubin. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1988. Print.
---. “The Ambiguous Nihilism of Cormac McCarthy.” Southern Literary Journal 15.2 (Spring 1983): 31-41. JSTOR. Web. 24 Dec 2014.
Bernstein, J. A. “‘What manner of heretic?’: Demons in McCarthy and the Question of Agency.” Western American Literature 47.4 (2013): 386-401. Project MUSE. Web. 22 Feb. 2015.
Bewersdorff, Jörg. Luck, Logic, and White Lies: The Mathematics of Games. Trans. David Kramer. Wellesley, Mass.: A.K. Peters, 2005. Print.
Cagle, Jeremey. “‘I Hope It Has a Nice Endin’: Rewriting Postmodern Play in Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men.” The Cormac McCarthy Journal 12 (2014): 1-19. JTOR. Web. 22 Feb. 2015.
Caillois, Roger. Man, Play, and Games. Trans. Meyer Barash. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001. Print.
Campbell, Neil. “‘Beyond Reckoning’: Cormac McCarthy’s Version of the West in Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West.” Critique 39.1 (Fall 1997): 55-64. EBSCOhost. Web. 28 July 2015.
Cooper, Lydia R. “He's a Psychopathic Killer, but so What?”: Folklore and Morality in Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men. Papers on Language & Literature 45.1 (Winter 2009): 37-59. EBSCOhost. Web. 24 May 2016.
Deleuze, Gilles. Nietzsche and Philosophy. Trans. Hugh Tomlinson. London: Continuum, 2006. Print.
Donoghue, Denis. “Dream Work.” The New York Review of Books 24 June 1993: 5-10. Print.
Draper, Robert. “The Invisible Man.” Texas Monthly. Texas Monthly, July 1992. Web. 24 May 2016. <http://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/the-invisible-man/>.
Eigen, Manfred, and Ruthild Winkler. Laws of the Game: How the Principles of Nature Govern Chance. Trans. Robert and Rita Kimber. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 1993. Print.
Epstein, Richard A. The Theory of Gambling and Statistical Logic. Burlington, MA: Academic Press, 2009. Print.
Frye, Steven. Understanding Cormac McCarthy. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 2009. Print.
Hodge, Roger D. “Blood and Time.” Harper's Magazine 312.1869 (2006): 65-72. Academic Search Premier. Web. 19 Feb. 2016.
Huizinga, J. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. London: Routledge, 1998. Print.
James, Caryn. “Is Everybody Dead Around Here?” Rev. of Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy. The New York Times 28 Apr. 1985. Web. 2 Apr 2016. <http://www.nytimes.com/1985/04/28/books/is-everybody-dead-around-here.html>.
Josyph, Peter. Adventures in Reading Cormac McCarthy. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 2010. Print.
Kushner, David. “Cormac McCarthy’s Apocalypse.” Rolling Stone 1042/1043 (2007): 43-53. Print.
Leonard, Robert. Von Neumann, Morgenstern, and the Creation of Game Theory: From Chess to Social Science, 1900-1960. New York: Cambridge UP, 2010. Print.
Lilley, James D. Introduction. Cormac McCarthy: New Directions. Ed. James D. Lilley. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2002. 1-15. Print.
Limerick, Patricia Nelson. The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West. New York: Norton, 1988. Print.
Lincoln, Kenneth. Cormac McCarthy: American Canticles. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Print.
Mallarmé, Stephane. Collected Poems of Mallarmé. Trans. Henry Weinfield. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central. Web. 2 Apr 2016.
McCarthy, Cormac. All the Pretty Horses. London: Picador, 2010. Print.
---. Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West. London: Picador, 2010. Print.
---. Cities of the Plain. London: Picador. 2011. Print.
---. The Crossing. London: Picador. 2010. Print.
---. No Country for Old Men. New York: Vintage. 2006. Print.
Messenger, Christian K. Sport and the Spirit of Play in American Fiction: Hawthorne to Faulkner. New York: Columbia UP, 1981. Print.
---. Sport and the Spirit of Play in Contemporary American Fiction. New York: Columbia UP, 1990. Print.
Nelson, Walter. The Merry Gamester, Or, Games Through the Ages. Reseda: Merchant Adventures Press, 2007. Web Edition.
Nott, Robert. Last of the Cowboy Heroes: the Westerns of Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea, and Audie Murphy. Jefferson: Mcfarland & Company, 2005. Print.
Owens, Barcley. Cormac McCarthy’s Western Novels. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2000. Print.
Pasal, Blaise. Pensées. Trans. A. J. Krailsheimer. Harmondsworth: Penguin books, 1966. Print.
Pilkington, Tom. “Fate and Free Will on the American Frontier: Cormac McCarthy’s Western Fiction.” Western American Literature 27.4 (1993) 311-322. Print.
Plato. Laws. Trans. Thomas L. Pangle. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. Print.
Priola, Marty. “Games in the Border Trilogy.” Myth, Legend, Dust: Critical Responses to Cormac McCarthy. Ed. Rick Wallach. New York: Manchester UP, 2000. 269-271. Print.
Rescher, Nicholas. Luck: The Brilliant Randomness of Everyday Life. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995. Print.
Schiller, Friedrich. On the Aesthetic Education of Man, In a Series of Letters. Ed. Trans. Elizabeth M. Wilkinson and L. A. Willoughby. Oxford: Clarendon P., 1985. Print.
Sepich, John. Notes on Blood Meridian: Revised and Expanded Edition. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008. Print.
Slotkin, Richard. Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan UP, 1973. Print.
Spurgeon, Sara. L. Exploding the Western: Myths of Empire on the Postmodern Frontier. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2005. Print.
---. “‘Pledged in Blood’: Truth and Redemption in Cormac McCarthy’s All The Pretty Horses.” Western American Literature 34.1 (Spring 1999) 24-44. Print.
Suits, Bernard. The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia. Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2014. Print.
Tompkins, Jane. West of Everything: The Inner Life of Westerns. New York: Oxford UP, 1992. Print.
Wallach, Richard. “Cormac McCarthy: A Scientific Bent.” Cormac McCarthy. Ed. David N. Cremean. Ipswich, Mass.: Salem Press, 2013. 218-233. Print.
---. Foreword. Intertextual and Interdisciplinary Approaches to Cormac McCarthy: Borders and Crossings. Ed. Nicholas Monk. New York: Routledge, 2012. xi-xiii. Print.
Wilks, S. Foreword. The Book on Games of Chance: (Liber de Ludo Aleae). By Girolamo Cardano. Trans. Sydney Henry Gould. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961. iii-iv. Print.
Williamson, G. R. Frontier Gambling: The Games, The Gamblers & The Great Gambling Halls of The Old West. Indian Head Publications, 2012. Kindle Edition.
Wood, James. “Red Planet: The Sanguinary Sublime of Cormac McCarthy.” New Yorker. July 25, 2005. Web. Feb 10, 2016. <http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/07/25/red-planet>.
Woodson, Linda. “‘... you are the battleground’: Materiality, Moral Responsibility, and Determinism in No Country for Old Men.” The Cormac McCarthy Journal 5.1 (Spring 2005): 4-13. JTOR. Web. 22 Feb. 2015.
Woodward, Richard B. “Cormac Country.” Vanity Fair August 2005: 98-104. Print.
---. “Cormac McCarthy’s Venomous Fiction.” New York Times Magazine 19 Apr. 1992: 28-31+. Print.