Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West
Encyclopedia
Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West is a 1985
Western
novel
by American
author Cormac McCarthy
. McCarthy's fifth book, it was published by Random House
.
The narrative follows a teenage runaway referred to only as "the kid", with the bulk of the text devoted to his experiences with the Glanton gang
, a historical group of scalp hunters
who massacred Indians
and others in the United States–Mexico border
lands in 1849 and 1850. The role of antagonist
is gradually filled by Judge Holden
, a large, intelligent man depicted as entirely devoid of body hair and emblematic of violence and conflict.
Although the novel initially generated only lukewarm critical and commercial reception, it has since become highly acclaimed and is widely recognized as McCarthy's masterpiece.
Time
magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.
grant. It is his first novel set in the American Southwest
, a change from the Appalachia
n settings of his earlier work.
Describing events of extreme violence, McCarthy's prose is sparse, yet expansive, with an often biblical
quality and frequent religious references. McCarthy's unusual writing style involves many unusual or archaic words, no quotation mark
s for dialogue
, and no apostrophe
s to signal most contractions. McCarthy has not granted interviews regarding the novel, leaving the work open to interpretation.
McCarthy conducted considerable research to write the book. Critics have repeatedly demonstrated that even brief and seemingly inconsequential passages of Blood Meridian rely on historical evidence. The Glanton gang segments are based on Samuel Chamberlain
's account of the group in his memoir My Confession: The Recollections of a Rogue, which he wrote during the later part of his life. Chamberlain rode with John Joel Glanton
and his company between 1849 and 1850. His book has been criticized as embellished and historically unreliable. The novel's antagonist
Judge Holden appeared in Chamberlain's account, but his true identity remains a mystery. Chamberlain does not appear in the novel. Some critics have suggested that "the kid" is a fictional stand-in for Chamberlain.
Elements of the novel are also widely believed to be at least partially inspired by the writing of T. R. Fehrenbach
, specifically his authoritative and highly original histories of Texas, Mexico, and the Comanche.
s open the book: quotes from French writer Paul Valéry
, from German Christian mystic Jacob Boehme, and a 1982 news clipping from the Yuma Sun reporting the claim of members of an Ethiopia
n archeological excavation that a 300,000-year-old human skull had been scalped.
The novel tells the story of a teenage runaway named only "the kid", who was born in Tennessee
during the famously active Leonids
meteor shower
of 1833. He first meets the enormous and hairless Judge Holden at a religious revival
in Nacogdoches, Texas
. There Holden accuses a preacher of having sex with an 11-year-old girl and with a goat, inciting a mob to kill him. In fact, the judge had concocted the accusation.
Traveling alone on his mule through the plains of East Texas, the kid spends a night in the shelter of a recluse before arriving in "Bexar" (modern day San Antonio). After a violent encounter with a bartender which establishes the kid as a formidable fighter, he joins a party of ill-armed U.S. Army
irregulars on a filibustering
mission led by a Captain White. Shortly after entering Mexico
, they are attacked by a band of Comanche
warriors. Few survive. Arrested as a filibuster in Chihuahua, the kid is set free when his cell neighbor, Toadvine, tells the authorities that they will make useful Indian hunters for the state's newly hired scalphunting operation.
Toadvine and the kid consequently join Glanton and his gang of scalphunters. The bulk of the novel is devoted to detailing their activities and conversations. The gang encounters a traveling carnival, and, in untranslated Spanish, each of their fortunes is told with Tarot cards. The gang originally contracts with various regional leaders to protect locals from marauding Apache
s, and are given a bounty
for each scalp they recover. Before long, however, they devolve into the murderers of innocent Indians, unprotected Mexican villagers, and eventually Mexican national guardsmen and anyone else who crosses their path.
Judge Holden, who re-enters the story as a fellow scalphunter, is presented as a profoundly mysterious and awe-inspiring figure; the others seem to regard him as not quite human. Like the historical Holden of Chamberlain's autobiography, he is a child-killer, though almost no one in the gang expresses much distress at his committing such acts. According to the kid's new companion Ben Tobin, an ex-priest
, the Glanton gang first met the judge while they were fleeing for their lives from a much larger Apache group. In the middle of a desert, the gang found Holden sitting on an enormous boulder, where he seemed to be waiting for them. He took them to an extinct volcano
, and told them how to manufacture gunpowder
, enough to give them the advantage against their Apache pursuers. When the kid remembers seeing Holden in Nacogdoches, Tobin explains that each man in the gang claims to have met the judge at some point before joining Glanton's gang. However Tobin ends his tale by saying that this episode was his first time seeing the judge.
After months of marauding, the gang crosses into U.S. territory
, where they set up a systematic and brutal robbery operation at a ferry on the Gila River
at Yuma, Arizona
. Local Yuma
(Quechan) Indians are approached to help the gang wrest control of the ferry from its original owner, but Glanton's gang betrays them, using their presence and previously coordinated attack on the ferry as an excuse to seize the ferry's munitions and slaughter the Yuma. Because of the new operators' brutal ways, a group of U.S. Army soldiers sets up a second ferry at a ford upriver to cross--which the Yuma briefly appropriate until their ferryman Callahan is decapitated and thrown in the river. Eventually, after the gang had amassed a fortune by robbing the settlers using the ferry, the Yumas attack and kill most of them, including Glanton. The kid, Toadvine and Tobin are among the survivors who flee into the desert, though the kid takes an arrow in the leg. Heading west, the kid and Tobin encounter Holden, who first negotiates, then threatens them for their gun and possessions. Leaving Holden behind, the wounded pair hide among bones by a desert creek. Tracking them down, Holden shoots Tobin in the neck and delivers a speech advising the kid to reveal himself. The survivors continue their travels independently, passing each other on the way. Although the kid has several opportunities to shoot the judge, he declines to do so.
Both parties end up in San Diego
. The kid gets separated from Tobin and is imprisoned. Holden visits him in jail, stating that he told the jailers "the truth": that the kid alone was responsible for the end of the Glanton gang. The kid declares that the judge was responsible for the gang's evil, but the judge denies it. Holden leaves the kid in jail, stating that he "has errands". After the kid tells the authorities the truth about the Glanton gang and where their fortune can be found, he is released and seeks a doctor to treat his wound. While recovering from the "spirits of ether
", he hallucinates that the judge is visiting him, along with a curious man who forges coins. The kid recovers and seeks out Tobin, with no luck. He makes his way to Los Angeles, where he witnesses Toadvine and David Brown, another member of the Glanton gang, being hanged for their crimes.
The kid again wanders across the American West, and decades are compressed into a few pages. In 1878 he makes his way to Fort Griffin
, Texas, and is now referred to by the author as "the man." The lawless city is a center for processing the remains of the American bison
, which have been hunted nearly to extinction. At a saloon the man meets the judge. Holden calls the man "the last of the true," and the pair talk. Holden describes the man as a disappointment, stating that he held in his heart "clemency for the heathen." Holden declares that the man has arrived at the saloon for "the dance" – the dance of violence, war, and bloodshed that the judge had so often praised. The man seems to deny all of these ideas, telling the judge "You aint nothin," and noting a trained bear at the saloon, performing a dance, states, "even a dumb animal can dance."
The man hires a prostitute, then afterwards goes to an outhouse under another meteor shower. In the outhouse, he is surprised to see the judge, naked, who "gathered him in his arms against his immense and terrible flesh." This is the last mention of the man, though in the next scene, two men come from the saloon and encounter a third man urinating near the outhouse. The unnamed third man advises the pair not to go into the outhouse. They ignore his suggestion, open the door, and can only gaze in awed horror at what they see, stating only "Good God almighty." The last paragraph finds the judge back in the saloon, dancing and playing fiddle wildly among the drunkards and the whores, claiming that he will never die.
The ambiguous fate of the kid/man is followed by an ambiguous epilogue, featuring a possibly allegorical person augering lines of holes across the prairie, perhaps for fence posts. This unidentified man sparks a fire in each of the holes, and an assortment of wanderers trails behind him.
praised Blood Meridian as one of the best 20th century American novels, describing it as "worthy of Herman Melville
's Moby-Dick
," but admitted that he found the book's pervasive violence so distasteful that he had several false starts before reading the book entirely. Caryn James argued that the novel's violence was a "slap in the face" to modern readers cut off from the brutality of life, while Terrence Morgan thought that, though initially shocking, the effect of the violence gradually waned until the reader was bored. Lilley argues that many critics struggle with the fact that McCarthy does not use violence for "jury-rigged, symbolic plot resolutions… In McCarthy's work, violence tends to be just that; it is not a sign or symbol of something else."
Patrick W. Shaw argues that Holden has sexually violated the protagonist. As Shaw writes, the novel had several times earlier established "a sequence of events that gives us ample information to visualize how Holden molests a child, then silences him with aggression." According to Shaw's argument, Holden's actions in the Fort Griffin outhouse are the culmination of what he desired decades earlier: to rape the kid, then perhaps kill him to silence the only survivor of the Glanton gang. If the judge wanted only to kill the kid, there would be no need for him to undress as he waited in the outhouse. Shaw writes,
Yet Shaw’s effort to penetrate the mystery in the jakes has not managed to satisfy other critics, who have rejected his thesis as more sensational than textual:
elements present in Blood Meridian, but they disagree on the precise meaning and implication of those elements. One of the most detailed of these arguments is made by Leo Daugherty in his 1992 article, "Blood Meridian as Gnostic Tragedy." Daugherty argues "gnostic thought is central to Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian" (Daugherty, 122); specifically, the Persian/Zoroastrian
/Manichean
branch of Gnosticism. He describes the novel as a "rare coupling of Gnostic 'ideology' with the 'affect' of Hellenic tragedy by means of depicting how power works in the making and erasing of culture, and of what the human condition amounts to when a person opposes that power and thence gets introduced to fate
."
Daugherty sees Holden as an archon, and the kid as a "failed pneuma
." The novel's narrator explicitly states that the kid feels a "spark of the alien divine". Furthermore, the kid rarely initiates violence, usually doing so only when urged by others or in self-defense. Holden, however, speaks of his desire to dominate the earth and all who dwell on it, by any means: from outright violence to deception and trickery. He expresses his wish to become a "suzerain", one who "rules even when there are other rulers" and whose power overrides all others'.
Daugherty contends that the staggering violence of the novel can best be understood through a Gnostic lens. "Evil
" as defined by the Gnostics was a far larger, more pervasive presence in human life than the rather tame and "domesticated" Satan
most Christians believe in. As Daugherty writes, "For [Gnostics], evil was simply everything that is, with the exception of bits of spirit imprisoned here. And what they saw is what we see in the world of Blood Meridian." Barcley Owens argues that, while there are undoubtedly Gnostic qualities to the novel, Daugherty's arguments are "ultimately unsuccessful," because Daugherty fails to adequately address the novel's pervasive violence and because he overstates the kid's goodness.
's four novels about Rabbit Angstrom and Don DeLillo
's Underworld
while Toni Morrison
's Beloved
topped the list.
Academics and critics have variously suggested that Blood Meridian is nihilistic
or strongly moral
; a satire
of the western genre, a savage indictment of Manifest Destiny
. Harold Bloom
called it "the ultimate western;" J. Douglas Canfield described it as "a grotesque
Bildungsroman
in which we are denied access to the protagonist's consciousness almost entirely." Comparisons have been made to the work of Hieronymus Bosch and Sam Peckinpah
, and of Dante Alighieri
and Louis L'Amour
. However, there is no consensus interpretation; James D. Lilley writes that the work "seems designed to elude interpretation." After reading Blood Meridian, Richard Selzer declared that McCarthy "is a genius--also probably somewhat insane." Critic Steven Shaviro
wrote:
American literary critic Harold Bloom praised Blood Meridian as one of the 20th century's finest novels. Time
magazine included the novel in its "TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005".
had been working on a film adaptation but left the project. Soon after Scott's departure it was announced that director Todd Field
had taken over. The film's production has stalled for as yet unknown reasons. Since Field's departure, actor James Franco
has expressed an interest in taking over the project. So far, there are no official plans for a film adaptation.
1985 in literature
The year 1985 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-New books:*Isaac Asimov - Robots and Empire*Margaret Atwood - The Handmaid's Tale*Jean M. Auel - The Mammoth Hunters*Iain Banks - Walking on Glass...
Western
Western (genre)
The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...
novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
by American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
author Cormac McCarthy
Cormac McCarthy
Cormac McCarthy is an American novelist and playwright. He has written ten novels, spanning the Southern Gothic, Western, and modernist genres. He received the Pulitzer Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction for The Road...
. McCarthy's fifth book, it was published by Random House
Random House
Random House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...
.
The narrative follows a teenage runaway referred to only as "the kid", with the bulk of the text devoted to his experiences with the Glanton gang
John Joel Glanton
John Joel Glanton was an American member of the U.S. Army during the mid-19th century, a soldier of fortune and mercenary, and later led the Glanton Gang of scalp hunters in the Southwest.-Early life and education:...
, a historical group of scalp hunters
Scalping
Scalping is the act of removing another person's scalp or a portion of their scalp, either from a dead body or from a living person. The initial purpose of scalping was to provide a trophy of battle or portable proof of a combatant's prowess in war...
who massacred Indians
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
and others in the United States–Mexico border
United States–Mexico border
The United States–Mexico border is the international border between the United States and Mexico. It runs from Imperial Beach, California, and Tijuana, Baja California, in the west to Matamoros, Tamaulipas, and Brownsville, Texas, in the east, and traverses a variety of terrains, ranging from major...
lands in 1849 and 1850. The role of antagonist
Antagonist
An antagonist is a character, group of characters, or institution, that represents the opposition against which the protagonist must contend...
is gradually filled by Judge Holden
Judge Holden
Judge Holden is purportedly a historical person, a murderer who partnered with John Joel Glanton as a professional scalphunter in the mid-19th century. To date, the only source for Holden's existence is Samuel Chamberlain's My Confession, an autobiographical account which has been criticized as...
, a large, intelligent man depicted as entirely devoid of body hair and emblematic of violence and conflict.
Although the novel initially generated only lukewarm critical and commercial reception, it has since become highly acclaimed and is widely recognized as McCarthy's masterpiece.
Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.
Background and writing
McCarthy wrote Blood Meridian while living on the money from his 1981 MacArthur FellowsMacArthur Fellows Program
The MacArthur Fellows Program or MacArthur Fellowship is an award given by the John D. and Catherine T...
grant. It is his first novel set in the American Southwest
Southwestern United States
The Southwestern United States is a region defined in different ways by different sources. Broad definitions include nearly a quarter of the United States, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah...
, a change from the Appalachia
Appalachia
Appalachia is a term used to describe a cultural region in the eastern United States that stretches from the Southern Tier of New York state to northern Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia. While the Appalachian Mountains stretch from Belle Isle in Canada to Cheaha Mountain in the U.S...
n settings of his earlier work.
Describing events of extreme violence, McCarthy's prose is sparse, yet expansive, with an often biblical
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
quality and frequent religious references. McCarthy's unusual writing style involves many unusual or archaic words, no quotation mark
Quotation mark
Quotation marks or inverted commas are punctuation marks at the beginning and end of a quotation, direct speech, literal title or name. Quotation marks can also be used to indicate a different meaning of a word or phrase than the one typically associated with it and are often used to express irony...
s for dialogue
Dialogue
Dialogue is a literary and theatrical form consisting of a written or spoken conversational exchange between two or more people....
, and no apostrophe
Apostrophe
The apostrophe is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritic mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet or certain other alphabets...
s to signal most contractions. McCarthy has not granted interviews regarding the novel, leaving the work open to interpretation.
McCarthy conducted considerable research to write the book. Critics have repeatedly demonstrated that even brief and seemingly inconsequential passages of Blood Meridian rely on historical evidence. The Glanton gang segments are based on Samuel Chamberlain
Samuel Chamberlain
Samuel E. Chamberlain was a soldier, painter, and author who travelled throughout the American Southwest and Mexico. He and his wife, Mary, had three children.-Early life:...
's account of the group in his memoir My Confession: The Recollections of a Rogue, which he wrote during the later part of his life. Chamberlain rode with John Joel Glanton
John Joel Glanton
John Joel Glanton was an American member of the U.S. Army during the mid-19th century, a soldier of fortune and mercenary, and later led the Glanton Gang of scalp hunters in the Southwest.-Early life and education:...
and his company between 1849 and 1850. His book has been criticized as embellished and historically unreliable. The novel's antagonist
Antagonist
An antagonist is a character, group of characters, or institution, that represents the opposition against which the protagonist must contend...
Judge Holden appeared in Chamberlain's account, but his true identity remains a mystery. Chamberlain does not appear in the novel. Some critics have suggested that "the kid" is a fictional stand-in for Chamberlain.
Elements of the novel are also widely believed to be at least partially inspired by the writing of T. R. Fehrenbach
T. R. Fehrenbach
T. R. Fehrenbach is an American author and former head of the Texas Historical Commission. He graduated from Princeton University in 1947, and has published at least 18 non-fiction books, including best seller Lonestar: A History of Texas and Texans and This Kind of War, about the Korean War...
, specifically his authoritative and highly original histories of Texas, Mexico, and the Comanche.
Plot summary
Three epigraphEpigraph (literature)
In literature, an epigraph is a phrase, quotation, or poem that is set at the beginning of a document or component. The epigraph may serve as a preface, as a summary, as a counter-example, or to link the work to a wider literary canon, either to invite comparison or to enlist a conventional...
s open the book: quotes from French writer Paul Valéry
Paul Valéry
Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry was a French poet, essayist, and philosopher. His interests were sufficiently broad that he can be classified as a polymath...
, from German Christian mystic Jacob Boehme, and a 1982 news clipping from the Yuma Sun reporting the claim of members of an Ethiopia
Ethiopia
Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...
n archeological excavation that a 300,000-year-old human skull had been scalped.
The novel tells the story of a teenage runaway named only "the kid", who was born in Tennessee
Tennessee
Tennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area...
during the famously active Leonids
Leonids
The Leonids is a prolific meteor shower associated with the comet Tempel-Tuttle. The Leonids get their name from the location of their radiant in the constellation Leo: the meteors appear to radiate from that point in the sky. They tend to peak in November.Earth moves through the meteoroid...
meteor shower
Meteor shower
A meteor shower is a celestial event in which a number of meteors are observed to radiate from one point in the night sky. These meteors are caused by streams of cosmic debris called meteoroids entering Earth's atmosphere at extremely high speeds on parallel trajectories. Most meteors are smaller...
of 1833. He first meets the enormous and hairless Judge Holden at a religious revival
Revival meeting
A revival meeting is a series of Christian religious services held in order to inspire active members of a church body, to raise funds and to gain new converts...
in Nacogdoches, Texas
Nacogdoches, Texas
Nacogdoches is a city in Nacogdoches County, Texas, in the United States. The 2010 census recorded the city's population to be 32,996. It is the county seat of Nacogdoches County and is situated in East Texas. Nacogdoches is a sister city of Natchitoches, Louisiana.Nacogdoches is the home of...
. There Holden accuses a preacher of having sex with an 11-year-old girl and with a goat, inciting a mob to kill him. In fact, the judge had concocted the accusation.
Traveling alone on his mule through the plains of East Texas, the kid spends a night in the shelter of a recluse before arriving in "Bexar" (modern day San Antonio). After a violent encounter with a bartender which establishes the kid as a formidable fighter, he joins a party of ill-armed U.S. Army
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
irregulars on a filibustering
Filibuster (military)
A filibuster, or freebooter, is someone who engages in an unauthorized military expedition into a foreign country to foment or support a revolution...
mission led by a Captain White. Shortly after entering Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
, they are attacked by a band of Comanche
Comanche
The Comanche are a Native American ethnic group whose historic range consisted of present-day eastern New Mexico, southern Colorado, northeastern Arizona, southern Kansas, all of Oklahoma, and most of northwest Texas. Historically, the Comanches were hunter-gatherers, with a typical Plains Indian...
warriors. Few survive. Arrested as a filibuster in Chihuahua, the kid is set free when his cell neighbor, Toadvine, tells the authorities that they will make useful Indian hunters for the state's newly hired scalphunting operation.
Toadvine and the kid consequently join Glanton and his gang of scalphunters. The bulk of the novel is devoted to detailing their activities and conversations. The gang encounters a traveling carnival, and, in untranslated Spanish, each of their fortunes is told with Tarot cards. The gang originally contracts with various regional leaders to protect locals from marauding Apache
Apache
Apache is the collective term for several culturally related groups of Native Americans in the United States originally from the Southwest United States. These indigenous peoples of North America speak a Southern Athabaskan language, which is related linguistically to the languages of Athabaskan...
s, and are given a bounty
Bounty (reward)
A bounty is a payment or reward often offered by a group as an incentive for the accomplishment of a task by someone usually not associated with the group. Bounties are most commonly issued for the capture or retrieval of a person or object. They are typically in the form of money...
for each scalp they recover. Before long, however, they devolve into the murderers of innocent Indians, unprotected Mexican villagers, and eventually Mexican national guardsmen and anyone else who crosses their path.
Judge Holden, who re-enters the story as a fellow scalphunter, is presented as a profoundly mysterious and awe-inspiring figure; the others seem to regard him as not quite human. Like the historical Holden of Chamberlain's autobiography, he is a child-killer, though almost no one in the gang expresses much distress at his committing such acts. According to the kid's new companion Ben Tobin, an ex-priest
Priest
A priest is a person authorized to perform the sacred rites of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in particular, rites of sacrifice to, and propitiation of, a deity or deities...
, the Glanton gang first met the judge while they were fleeing for their lives from a much larger Apache group. In the middle of a desert, the gang found Holden sitting on an enormous boulder, where he seemed to be waiting for them. He took them to an extinct volcano
Volcano
2. Bedrock3. Conduit 4. Base5. Sill6. Dike7. Layers of ash emitted by the volcano8. Flank| 9. Layers of lava emitted by the volcano10. Throat11. Parasitic cone12. Lava flow13. Vent14. Crater15...
, and told them how to manufacture gunpowder
Gunpowder
Gunpowder, also known since in the late 19th century as black powder, was the first chemical explosive and the only one known until the mid 1800s. It is a mixture of sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate - with the sulfur and charcoal acting as fuels, while the saltpeter works as an oxidizer...
, enough to give them the advantage against their Apache pursuers. When the kid remembers seeing Holden in Nacogdoches, Tobin explains that each man in the gang claims to have met the judge at some point before joining Glanton's gang. However Tobin ends his tale by saying that this episode was his first time seeing the judge.
After months of marauding, the gang crosses into U.S. territory
Mexican Cession
The Mexican Cession of 1848 is a historical name in the United States for the region of the present day southwestern United States that Mexico ceded to the U.S...
, where they set up a systematic and brutal robbery operation at a ferry on the Gila River
Gila River
The Gila River is a tributary of the Colorado River, 650 miles long, in the southwestern states of New Mexico and Arizona.-Description:...
at Yuma, Arizona
Yuma, Arizona
Yuma is a city in and the county seat of Yuma County, Arizona, United States. It is located in the southwestern corner of the state, and the population of the city was 77,515 at the 2000 census, with a 2008 Census Bureau estimated population of 90,041....
. Local Yuma
Quechan
The Quechan are a Native American tribe who live on the Fort Yuma Indian Reservation on the lower Colorado River in Arizona and California just north of the border with Mexico...
(Quechan) Indians are approached to help the gang wrest control of the ferry from its original owner, but Glanton's gang betrays them, using their presence and previously coordinated attack on the ferry as an excuse to seize the ferry's munitions and slaughter the Yuma. Because of the new operators' brutal ways, a group of U.S. Army soldiers sets up a second ferry at a ford upriver to cross--which the Yuma briefly appropriate until their ferryman Callahan is decapitated and thrown in the river. Eventually, after the gang had amassed a fortune by robbing the settlers using the ferry, the Yumas attack and kill most of them, including Glanton. The kid, Toadvine and Tobin are among the survivors who flee into the desert, though the kid takes an arrow in the leg. Heading west, the kid and Tobin encounter Holden, who first negotiates, then threatens them for their gun and possessions. Leaving Holden behind, the wounded pair hide among bones by a desert creek. Tracking them down, Holden shoots Tobin in the neck and delivers a speech advising the kid to reveal himself. The survivors continue their travels independently, passing each other on the way. Although the kid has several opportunities to shoot the judge, he declines to do so.
Both parties end up in San Diego
San Diego, California
San Diego is the eighth-largest city in the United States and second-largest city in California. The city is located on the coast of the Pacific Ocean in Southern California, immediately adjacent to the Mexican border. The birthplace of California, San Diego is known for its mild year-round...
. The kid gets separated from Tobin and is imprisoned. Holden visits him in jail, stating that he told the jailers "the truth": that the kid alone was responsible for the end of the Glanton gang. The kid declares that the judge was responsible for the gang's evil, but the judge denies it. Holden leaves the kid in jail, stating that he "has errands". After the kid tells the authorities the truth about the Glanton gang and where their fortune can be found, he is released and seeks a doctor to treat his wound. While recovering from the "spirits of ether
Ether
Ethers are a class of organic compounds that contain an ether group — an oxygen atom connected to two alkyl or aryl groups — of general formula R–O–R'. A typical example is the solvent and anesthetic diethyl ether, commonly referred to simply as "ether"...
", he hallucinates that the judge is visiting him, along with a curious man who forges coins. The kid recovers and seeks out Tobin, with no luck. He makes his way to Los Angeles, where he witnesses Toadvine and David Brown, another member of the Glanton gang, being hanged for their crimes.
The kid again wanders across the American West, and decades are compressed into a few pages. In 1878 he makes his way to Fort Griffin
Fort Griffin
Fort Griffin was a Cavalry fort established in the late 1860s in the northern part of West Texas, specifically northwestern Shackelford County, to give settlers protection from early Comanche and Kiowa raids...
, Texas, and is now referred to by the author as "the man." The lawless city is a center for processing the remains of the American bison
American Bison
The American bison , also commonly known as the American buffalo, is a North American species of bison that once roamed the grasslands of North America in massive herds...
, which have been hunted nearly to extinction. At a saloon the man meets the judge. Holden calls the man "the last of the true," and the pair talk. Holden describes the man as a disappointment, stating that he held in his heart "clemency for the heathen." Holden declares that the man has arrived at the saloon for "the dance" – the dance of violence, war, and bloodshed that the judge had so often praised. The man seems to deny all of these ideas, telling the judge "You aint nothin," and noting a trained bear at the saloon, performing a dance, states, "even a dumb animal can dance."
The man hires a prostitute, then afterwards goes to an outhouse under another meteor shower. In the outhouse, he is surprised to see the judge, naked, who "gathered him in his arms against his immense and terrible flesh." This is the last mention of the man, though in the next scene, two men come from the saloon and encounter a third man urinating near the outhouse. The unnamed third man advises the pair not to go into the outhouse. They ignore his suggestion, open the door, and can only gaze in awed horror at what they see, stating only "Good God almighty." The last paragraph finds the judge back in the saloon, dancing and playing fiddle wildly among the drunkards and the whores, claiming that he will never die.
The ambiguous fate of the kid/man is followed by an ambiguous epilogue, featuring a possibly allegorical person augering lines of holes across the prairie, perhaps for fence posts. This unidentified man sparks a fire in each of the holes, and an assortment of wanderers trails behind him.
Major characters
- The kid: The protagonist; a Tennessean in his mid-teens whose mother died in childbirthChildbirthChildbirth is the culmination of a human pregnancy or gestation period with the birth of one or more newborn infants from a woman's uterus...
and who flees from his father to Texas; he is said to have a disposition for bloodshed and is involved in many vicious actions early on; he takes up inherently violent professions, specifically being recruited by murderers including Captain White, and later, by Glanton and his gang, to secure release from a prison in Chihuahua, MexicoChihuahua, MexicoChihuahua, Mexico, may refer to:* The State of Chihuahua in Mexico* The City of Chihuahua, Chihuahua, its capital...
; he takes part in many of the Glanton gang's scalphunting rampages; "the kid" is later, as an adult, referred to as "the man", when he encounters the judge again after nearly three decades. - Judge HoldenJudge HoldenJudge Holden is purportedly a historical person, a murderer who partnered with John Joel Glanton as a professional scalphunter in the mid-19th century. To date, the only source for Holden's existence is Samuel Chamberlain's My Confession, an autobiographical account which has been criticized as...
, or "the judge": An enormous pale and hairless man; he is an examiner and recorder of the natural world and a violent character; he rides with the Glanton gang after they find him sitting on a rock in the middle of the desert and he saves them from an Apache attack; he is the most philosophical of the group and remarkably well-educated; he perceives the world as fatalisticFatalismFatalism is a philosophical doctrine emphasizing the subjugation of all events or actions to fate.Fatalism generally refers to several of the following ideas:...
and conquerable, and believes that violence is the foundation of human natureHuman natureHuman nature refers to the distinguishing characteristics, including ways of thinking, feeling and acting, that humans tend to have naturally....
and that "War is god". - Louis Toadvine: a seasoned outlaw the kid originally encounters in a vicious brawl and who then burns down a hotel; he is distinguished by his head which has no ears and his forehead branded with the letters H, T, (standing for "horse thief") and F; he later reappears unexpectedly as a cellmate of the kid in the Chihuahua prison; he somewhat befriends the kid, negotiating his and the kid's release in return for joining Glanton's gang to whom Toadvine lies, claiming that he and the kid are experienced scalphunters. He is not as depraved as the rest of the gang, but is violent. Overall, he opposes the judge's methods ineffectually. He is hanged in Los Angeles alongside David Brown.
- Captain White, or "the captain": an ex-professional soldier and American supremacist who believes that Mexico is a lawless nation that should be a conquest of the United States; he leads a group of militant supporters into Mexico, and is later decapitated by his enemies.
- John Joel GlantonJohn Joel GlantonJohn Joel Glanton was an American member of the U.S. Army during the mid-19th century, a soldier of fortune and mercenary, and later led the Glanton Gang of scalp hunters in the Southwest.-Early life and education:...
: the American leader (sometimes deemed "captain") of a band of scalphunterScalphunterScalphunter, in comics, may refer to:*Scalphunter , a Marvel Comics supervillain who is a member of the Marauders*Scalphunter , a DC Comics hero of the Wild West...
s who murder Indians and Mexican civilians and militants alike. His history and appearance are ambiguous, except that he has a wife and child in Texas, though he has been banned from returning there because of his criminal record. A clever strategist, his last major action is to seize control of a profitable Gila River ferry, which leads him and his gang to be ambushed by Yuma Indians. - Benjamin Tobin, or "the ex-priest": a former noviceNoviceA novice is a person or creature who is new to a field or activity. The term is most commonly applied in religion and sports.-Buddhism:In many Buddhist orders, a man or woman who intends to take ordination must first become a novice, adopting part of the monastic code indicated in the vinaya and...
to the priesthood, he instead turns to a life of crime in Glanton's gang, though still remains deeply religious; he feels an apparently friend-like bond with the kid, and abhors the judge and his philosophy. He and the judge gradually become enemies; he is shot by the judge and survives, seeking medical attention in San Diego; his ultimate fate, however, is unknown. - David Brown: an especially radical member of the Glanton band known for his dramatic displays of violence and his wearing of a scapularScapularThe term scapular as used today refers to two specific, yet related, Christian Sacramentals, namely the monastic and devotional scapulars, although both forms may simply be referred to as "scapular"....
decorated with severed human ears (which he seems to have acquired from Bathcat after his death); he is arrested in San Diego and sought out by Glanton personally, who seems concerned to see him freed (though Brown ends up securing his own release); though he survives the Yuma massacre, he is captured with Toadvine in Los Angeles. He and Toadvine are hanged. - John Jackson: a name shared by two men in Glanton's gang—one black, one white—who detest one another and whose tensions rise frequently when in each other's presence; after trying to drive the black Jackson away from a campfire with a racist remark, the white one is decapitated by the black one; the black Jackson later becomes the first person murdered in the Yuma massacre.
Minor characters
- Reverend Green: a Christian preacher who the judge accuses of debauchery and thus besets an angry mob upon for his own amusement
- Trias: the governor of the city of Chihuahua
- Sergeant Aguilar
- Speyer: an outlaw described as a Prussian Jew
- The jugglers: a family of Mexican entertainers
- General Elias
- Colonel García
- Governor of Yuma ("el alcalde")
- Members of White's gang: Sergeant Trammel, the Corporal, the Texan (the "second corporal"), Earl (the Missourian), Clark, Candelario, Sproule, the Georgian
- Members of Glanton's gang: Doctor Irving, Juan "McGill" Miguel, the "Delawares", Grannyrat, Chambers (the veteran; Chambers is thought to have been a sobriquet for Samuel Chamberlain who, according to his narrative, escaped the scalping party; his death is ambiguous in the novel, for although his death is implied, his body is never seen), Samuel Tate (the Kentuckian), Bathcat (the "Vandiemenlander"), Shelby (a Kentuckian who attended Transylvania University), Marcus "Long" Webster (another Tennessean), Carroll, Sanford, Sloat
- The Idiot: James Robert, a mentally retarded individual who is kept in a cage by his brother, the showman Cloyce Bell. Later in the book he is kept by the judge as a kind of pet. His final fate is unknown.
Major themes
Books and articles have examined McCarthy's sources for the novel.Violence
A major theme is the warlike nature of man. Critic Harold BloomHarold Bloom
Harold Bloom is an American writer and literary critic, and is Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. He is known for his defense of 19th-century Romantic poets, his unique and controversial theories of poetic influence, and his prodigious literary output, particularly for a literary...
praised Blood Meridian as one of the best 20th century American novels, describing it as "worthy of Herman Melville
Herman Melville
Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick and the posthumous novella Billy Budd....
's Moby-Dick
Moby-Dick
Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, was written by American author Herman Melville and first published in 1851. It is considered by some to be a Great American Novel and a treasure of world literature. The story tells the adventures of wandering sailor Ishmael, and his voyage on the whaleship Pequod,...
," but admitted that he found the book's pervasive violence so distasteful that he had several false starts before reading the book entirely. Caryn James argued that the novel's violence was a "slap in the face" to modern readers cut off from the brutality of life, while Terrence Morgan thought that, though initially shocking, the effect of the violence gradually waned until the reader was bored. Lilley argues that many critics struggle with the fact that McCarthy does not use violence for "jury-rigged, symbolic plot resolutions… In McCarthy's work, violence tends to be just that; it is not a sign or symbol of something else."
Ending
As noted above, the most common interpretation of the novel is that Holden kills the kid in a Fort Griffin, Texas outhouse. The fact that the kid's death is not depicted might be significant. Blood Meridian is a catalog of brutality, depicting, in sometimes explicit detail, all manner of violence, bloodshed, brutality and cruelty. For the dramatic climax to be left undepicted leaves something of a vacuum for the reader: knowing full well the horrors established in the past hundreds of pages, the kid's unstated fate might still be too awful to describe, and too much for the mind to fathom: the sight of the kid's fate leaves several witnesses stunned almost to silence; never in the book does any other character have this response to violence, again underlining the singularity of the kid's fate.Patrick W. Shaw argues that Holden has sexually violated the protagonist. As Shaw writes, the novel had several times earlier established "a sequence of events that gives us ample information to visualize how Holden molests a child, then silences him with aggression." According to Shaw's argument, Holden's actions in the Fort Griffin outhouse are the culmination of what he desired decades earlier: to rape the kid, then perhaps kill him to silence the only survivor of the Glanton gang. If the judge wanted only to kill the kid, there would be no need for him to undress as he waited in the outhouse. Shaw writes,
Yet Shaw’s effort to penetrate the mystery in the jakes has not managed to satisfy other critics, who have rejected his thesis as more sensational than textual:
Gnosticism
Many critics agree that there are GnosticGnosticism
Gnosticism is a scholarly term for a set of religious beliefs and spiritual practices common to early Christianity, Hellenistic Judaism, Greco-Roman mystery religions, Zoroastrianism , and Neoplatonism.A common characteristic of some of these groups was the teaching that the realisation of Gnosis...
elements present in Blood Meridian, but they disagree on the precise meaning and implication of those elements. One of the most detailed of these arguments is made by Leo Daugherty in his 1992 article, "Blood Meridian as Gnostic Tragedy." Daugherty argues "gnostic thought is central to Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian" (Daugherty, 122); specifically, the Persian/Zoroastrian
Zoroastrianism
Zoroastrianism is a religion and philosophy based on the teachings of prophet Zoroaster and was formerly among the world's largest religions. It was probably founded some time before the 6th century BCE in Greater Iran.In Zoroastrianism, the Creator Ahura Mazda is all good, and no evil...
/Manichean
Manichaeism
Manichaeism in Modern Persian Āyin e Māni; ) was one of the major Iranian Gnostic religions, originating in Sassanid Persia.Although most of the original writings of the founding prophet Mani have been lost, numerous translations and fragmentary texts have survived...
branch of Gnosticism. He describes the novel as a "rare coupling of Gnostic 'ideology' with the 'affect' of Hellenic tragedy by means of depicting how power works in the making and erasing of culture, and of what the human condition amounts to when a person opposes that power and thence gets introduced to fate
Destiny
Destiny or fate refers to a predetermined course of events. It may be conceived as a predetermined future, whether in general or of an individual...
."
Daugherty sees Holden as an archon, and the kid as a "failed pneuma
Pneumatic (Gnosticism)
The pneumatics were, in gnosticism, the highest order of humans, the other two orders being psychics and hylics. The pneumatic saw himself as escaping the doom of the material world via the secret knowledge. Outsiders could only know these secrets by joining a gnostic group...
." The novel's narrator explicitly states that the kid feels a "spark of the alien divine". Furthermore, the kid rarely initiates violence, usually doing so only when urged by others or in self-defense. Holden, however, speaks of his desire to dominate the earth and all who dwell on it, by any means: from outright violence to deception and trickery. He expresses his wish to become a "suzerain", one who "rules even when there are other rulers" and whose power overrides all others'.
Daugherty contends that the staggering violence of the novel can best be understood through a Gnostic lens. "Evil
Evil
Evil is the violation of, or intent to violate, some moral code. Evil is usually seen as the dualistic opposite of good. Definitions of evil vary along with analysis of its root motive causes, however general actions commonly considered evil include: conscious and deliberate wrongdoing,...
" as defined by the Gnostics was a far larger, more pervasive presence in human life than the rather tame and "domesticated" Satan
Satan
Satan , "the opposer", is the title of various entities, both human and divine, who challenge the faith of humans in the Hebrew Bible...
most Christians believe in. As Daugherty writes, "For [Gnostics], evil was simply everything that is, with the exception of bits of spirit imprisoned here. And what they saw is what we see in the world of Blood Meridian." Barcley Owens argues that, while there are undoubtedly Gnostic qualities to the novel, Daugherty's arguments are "ultimately unsuccessful," because Daugherty fails to adequately address the novel's pervasive violence and because he overstates the kid's goodness.
Literary significance and reception
In 2006, The New York Times conducted a poll of writers and critics regarding the most important works in American fiction from the previous 25 years; Blood Meridian was a runner-up, along with John UpdikeJohn Updike
John Hoyer Updike was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic....
's four novels about Rabbit Angstrom and Don DeLillo
Don DeLillo
Don DeLillo is an American author, playwright, and occasional essayist whose work paints a detailed portrait of American life in the late 20th and early 21st centuries...
's Underworld
Underworld (DeLillo novel)
Underworld is a postmodern novel published in 1997 by Don DeLillo. It was nominated for the National Book Award, was a best-seller, and is one of DeLillo's better-known novels....
while Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison is a Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, editor, and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed characters. Among her best known novels are The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and Beloved...
's Beloved
Beloved (novel)
Beloved is a novel by the American writer Toni Morrison, published in 1987. Set in 1873 just after the American Civil War , it is based on the story of the African-American slave, Margaret Garner, who escaped slavery in 1856 in Kentucky by fleeing to Ohio, a free state...
topped the list.
Academics and critics have variously suggested that Blood Meridian is nihilistic
Nihilism
Nihilism is the philosophical doctrine suggesting the negation of one or more putatively meaningful aspects of life. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value...
or strongly moral
Morality
Morality is the differentiation among intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good and bad . A moral code is a system of morality and a moral is any one practice or teaching within a moral code...
; a satire
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
of the western genre, a savage indictment of Manifest Destiny
Manifest Destiny
Manifest Destiny was the 19th century American belief that the United States was destined to expand across the continent. It was used by Democrat-Republicans in the 1840s to justify the war with Mexico; the concept was denounced by Whigs, and fell into disuse after the mid-19th century.Advocates of...
. Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom is an American writer and literary critic, and is Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. He is known for his defense of 19th-century Romantic poets, his unique and controversial theories of poetic influence, and his prodigious literary output, particularly for a literary...
called it "the ultimate western;" J. Douglas Canfield described it as "a grotesque
Grotesque
The word grotesque comes from the same Latin root as "Grotto", meaning a small cave or hollow. The original meaning was restricted to an extravagant style of Ancient Roman decorative art rediscovered and then copied in Rome at the end of the 15th century...
Bildungsroman
Bildungsroman
In literary criticism, bildungsroman or coming-of-age story is a literary genre which focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood , and in which character change is thus extremely important...
in which we are denied access to the protagonist's consciousness almost entirely." Comparisons have been made to the work of Hieronymus Bosch and Sam Peckinpah
Sam Peckinpah
David Samuel "Sam" Peckinpah was an American filmmaker and screenwriter who achieved prominence following the release of the Western epic The Wild Bunch...
, and of Dante Alighieri
Dante Alighieri
Durante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante , was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia ...
and Louis L'Amour
Louis L'Amour
Louis Dearborn L'Amour was an American author. His books consisted primarily of Western fiction novels , however he also wrote historical fiction , science fiction , nonfiction , as well as poetry and short-story collections. Many of his stories were made into movies...
. However, there is no consensus interpretation; James D. Lilley writes that the work "seems designed to elude interpretation." After reading Blood Meridian, Richard Selzer declared that McCarthy "is a genius--also probably somewhat insane." Critic Steven Shaviro
Steven Shaviro
Steven Shaviro is an American cultural critic. His most widely read book is Doom Patrols, a "theoretical fiction" that outlines the state of postmodernism during the early 1990s, using poetic language, personal anecdotes, and creative prose....
wrote:
American literary critic Harold Bloom praised Blood Meridian as one of the 20th century's finest novels. Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
magazine included the novel in its "TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005".
Film adaptation
Director Ridley ScottRidley Scott
Sir Ridley Scott is an English film director and producer. His most famous films include The Duellists , Alien , Blade Runner , Legend , Thelma & Louise , G. I...
had been working on a film adaptation but left the project. Soon after Scott's departure it was announced that director Todd Field
Todd Field
William Todd Field, known professionally as Todd Field is an American actor and writer/director. He has received three Academy Award nominations.-Background and personal life:...
had taken over. The film's production has stalled for as yet unknown reasons. Since Field's departure, actor James Franco
James Franco
James Edward Franco is an American actor, film director, producer, screenwriter, author, painter, performance artist and instructor at New York University. He left college in order to pursue acting and started off his career by making guest appearances on television series in the 1990s...
has expressed an interest in taking over the project. So far, there are no official plans for a film adaptation.
Further reading
- Notes on Blood Meridian: Revised and Expanded Edition by John Sepich. Foreword by Edwin T. Arnold. Southwestern Writers Collection Series, University of Texas Press, 2008. ISBN 9780292718210 . Publisher site for book