Abstract:In the Border Trilogy,Cormac McCarthy adopts the figure of American Adam which was first proposed by R.W.B.Lewis.However,he criticizes and deconstructs those figures fundamentally and thoroughly.In the myth,Adamic protagonists are regarded as supermen with extraordinary skills,gracious characters and noble minds.They are free and independent,breaking from all constraint,living without any limits.While in the Border Trilogy,McCarthy describes the powerlessness and frustrations of Adamic protagonists in commercialized modern American west by exploring and criticizing their paradoxical individualism,the ambivalent sense of history and the imperialistic ideology.McCarthy criticizes and renovates cowboy codes which structure the behavior patterns of his protagonists.Those cowboy codes embody ideals which signify well beyond western borders,reflecting national notions of a fundamental American identity and revealing an essential American anxiety over the apparent instability of that identity.By criticizing Adamic heroes’ ideologies,McCarthy deconstructs the myth of American Adam.