Carcosa and the endless gyre !!!

You're in Carcosa !!!

"Touch the darkness and the darkness touches you back" is the tagline of the highly acclaimed crime anthology of HBO- True Detective. It is not merely a woo-word, but it means every word literally. Though the series superficially seems to be a investigative thriller, for a first-time viewer on a closer look the series is a deep maze full of visual, verbal and symbolic references etched on to the lost expanse of Lousiana. More than an investigative story it is an insight into the lives of the detectives pursuing the case (Marty played by Woody Harrelson and Rustin Cohle played by Mathew McConaughey). Starting off with a weird homicide setting, the detectives never know they are on to something which is going to change their lives forever directly or indirectly. Nic Pizzolatto is the man of the show here. It is with clinical precision the series is executed as flawless as ever. 

The case unravels and the detectives toil to connect to the exact clue that fits in right in the wedge. Marty played by Woody Harrelson(One of the detectives in the story) describes the detective's curse, the answer to your question was under your nose all the time but you can't see it instead you topple the world around you upside down. "Rustin Cohle", played by Mathew McConaughey is the epicenter of the story. He is a secret prophet as much as an acid burnt, delusive junky. One of the culprits in he story claims that "Time is a flat circle". Yes, that's the main concept of the story told both figuratively and verbally. The things you have ever done, you'll keep on doing it again and again. A single mistake in their course of investigation costs them 17 long years after it has done considerable damage to both their personal as well as professional lives. Cohle - The pessimist as he claims speaks like an alien soul observing the world from outside exuding all his nihilism and odd ideas. He comments humanity as a whole and believes that his own existence is pointless. In a way he claims the humanity always tries to attach their pointless existence to a reason and the whole process of attachment is their life. A major part of the character "Rustin Cohle" evolves from Nic Pizzolatto's (Creator of the series) strong affinity towards Nietzchean philosophies.

 The gyre on the back of Dora Lange's (first victim) corpse in the first episode itself gives you a vague idea of how things are about to move which we learn only at the end of the season. It's an endless spiral. The more you know about it, the more you are consumed by it or the more you are pulled into it. In this series everything happens as though to meet in a circle. Every character in the story are later confronted by their own darker selves in the course of time. The one who interrogates becomes the person who's later interrogated. The case which they though to have been finished is the one they are made to narrate in detail by another couple of detectives after seventeen years. Even Marty's (played by Woody Harrelson) daughter becomes what is perceived to be an indirect cause of the depraved culture they are rooted in. The girl who at the beginning of the season is pitied by Marty for the kind of lifestyle she's in, later seduces the same person. In a way Marty represents the hypocrisies and malfunctions of a common family man while Cohle represents the obsessed and alienated person who validates his existence through the cause now he's engaged in,and that, of course is the investigation. Marty is also a picture of a common middle class man trying to figure out his existential crisis in midst of the conjugal pressures he has to yield into and his life is a perfect example of what Rust describes as what ageing does to people who refuses to bend accordingly.

While bringing on "Carcosa" and "The Yellow king" is yet another way of the creator's infliction of darkness into the plot. Inspired from Robert W Chambers' weird Fiction "The King in Yellow" these terms incites a deep mystery in the mind of the viewer but has the function of a third narrative or an overlay on the existing narrative. Carcosa stands for the lost city drowned in memories. Carcosa is a never ending black hole full of negativity which pulls you in once you hover by it. For Cohle, this case is an enclave where he can rest in with all his life having a meaningful existence in midst of all his personal plight. When in the fourth episode the detectives catches a culprit, he claims that he has seen Cohle in his dreams and also says the Cohle is in Carcosa. That is in a way to interpret that Carcosa is your inner swamp of negativity which you love to be stuck in or your personal escapade

 The disturbing reality is that some of the incidents portrayed in the series are incidents grounded on real incidents that involve high class families in loathsome acts in and around Lousiana in the same way as shown in the series.This is a sort of story which never leaves you from the moment you watch it closely and starts to seep into your daily consciousness. The entire series pulls you into the psycho sphere.