Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness
of the West (1985)
Five Stars out of Five
Cormac McCarthy
Cormac McCarthy’s fifth book, a Western or neo-Western, “Blood Meridian” has been
named one of the best American works of fiction over the previous twenty-five
years in a 2006 NY Times poll of writers and critics. This book has been
compared to “Moby Dick” in terms of scope and language, and has been
extensively analyzed by a broad range of critics and academics for its
philosophical depths and ambiguities. It is definitely one of the best books I
have ever read. And yet for the casual reader, it is very easy to imagine
the initial reaction will be revulsion. The book is replete with violence, so
much so that by the book’s purposely confused ending, the violence has long
shed its shock value and assumes little more effect than a landscape that comes
with a particular character. This theme of violence in the character of Man is
clearly a central precept of the book: does Man act out violence in a benign
manner (i.e. out of an instinct for survival) or in some kind of malignant
manner, that is to say out of some twisted nature in his character.
The story spans the era of 1830’s Tennessee to the borderlands
between Mexico and the US in the 1840’s – 50’s. By far, the preponderance of
the book is focused on the historical scalp-hunting Glanton gang in 1849-1850.
The book follows the violent life of “The Kid” from his birth in Tennessee
under a meteor shower to his death fifty or so years later under yet another
meteor shower. As a fourteen-year old, he meets “The Judge”, an icon of evil
not easily surpassed by any other such fictional character. The Kid having not
met his fate as a youth at the hands of the Judge eventually finds himself in
Nagadoches Texas where he joins up with an inept band of US Army irregulars.
This group is bound for Mexico where they intend to take
property and land from the Mexicans. However, their plans are demolished by a
passing band of Comanches. Most of the Americans are killed, but the Kid ends
up after some desert-induced privation in a Mexican prison. While there, he
joins a more competent but even more morally bankrupt group. This new group is
a band of scalp hunters led by John Glanton. The Glanton gang will eventually
include the Judge. This gang will institute a reign of terror on the local
Mexican populace, soldiery and Native American bands until they themselves are
destroyed with few survivors. Amongst the survivors are the Kid, the ex-priest
Tobin, and the Judge. The book concludes with the Kid much older and now
referred to as the Man. The Man meets the Judge in an outhouse at the very end
of the book. The Judge survives, but the Kid’s outcome is only suggested, never resolved.
The text used in the book is extraordinarily spare. McCarthy
does not use quotation marks to note conversational passages or even
apostrophes for contractions. Indeed, McCarthy in furtherance of this spareness
uses extensive Spanish language passages which are left untranslated. The English
language sections are infused with a sense of both the bible and the 19th
century. Like the violence referred to above, this spare language and
untranslated Spanish help to create a stage on which the themes and characters
live and die on. And such characters, the four that are most significant is the
earless Toadvine (a near constant associate of The Kid), the ex-priest Tobin
(actually never a priest, ironically only a failed noviate), the violent but
still somewhat merciful Kid, and the bald, fatalistic, scientific, pederast and
thoroughly satanic Judge. To be honest, a complete critical review of this book
could be spent focusing on the hairless, fiddle-playing, dancing Judge.
To comment that these four characters play metaphorical
roles in the book is quite an understatement. The two about whom the book
revolves are the Judge and the Kid. The Kid proves himself time and again
capable of violent exertions that would frighten almost anyone. And yet in
contrast with the war-loving Judge he is instead an example of the benignly
violent character; whether or not he feels any empathy for his victims is left
unclear. The Judge states quite clearly that war is act of the highest moral value.
In a final conversation with the Kid, he refers to it as a dance and asserts
that only a Man set above the animals is capable of it. The Kid and the
ex-priest make various halfhearted arguments to the contrary at various points
in the book, but it is clear from each confrontation, and as well from the book’s
ending that violence is the conscious decision of Man; it is part of his nature.
Another theme that runs through this book as well as several
other McCarthy books is that of borders. It shows up in the title of course as
well as the geography in “Blood Meridian” between the United States and Mexico.
McCarthy also uses it on several occasions in a more nuanced fashion to make
his point. Consider his use of the two Jacksons in the Glanton gang; one black,
one white, and both violently opposed to one another. The reference is to Cain
and Abel by the death of one Jackson at the hands of the other. But the primary
purpose of these various dichotomies is to highlight the difference between Man
and beast, between Good and Evil – like the spare language, there are no greys
in any of these differences.
Violence and Borderlands are however the secondary themes; they
work to support the central theme of this book, and that is a variation on a
philosophical argument known as Theodicy. This was a concept introduced by
Leibniz in the early 18th century. There are several versions of it,
but the gist is that Theodicy asserts that the presence of evil in the world
and why God permits it is an argument for the probability of God; the probability, rather than the possibility. That this book goes to some
effort to demonstrate the existence of Evil is without question. McCarthy leaves
it to the reader to draws his own conclusions about God’s probability, but he
certainly pushes one in the Theodictic direction. Another important aspect is
to consider the irony of the Judge’s nature. He spends much of the book analyzing
and recording his observations of Nature in his endless quest to own and
control the World. As such, he is not only an icon for the devil and evil, but
also for the “amoral” pursuit of Science to own and control Nature – which would
obviously include God himself, from some perspectives. Quite an indictment of Science and something of
an allusion to the Garden of Eden wherein Satan indices Eve to eat from the
tree of knowledge.
As mentioned above, the ending is purposely vague (there is
great debate on why this is so amongst the academics). To set the scene,
consider how many times the reader is told that the Judge is a pederast who abuses
and then kills his young victims, and how he missed a chance with the Kid at
the beginning of the story. When we reach the book’s conclusion, the Kid, now
the Man seems completely aimless and with hardly an argument to counter the
Judge’s immoral (to the Kid/Man,
certainly not to the Judge) views towards violence and war. The Man makes one last
feeble attempt at verbal jousting with the Judge, and then moments later, The Man enters an outhouse wherein he find the
Judge, nude. The suggestion is of murder and humiliation for the Man; his
apotheosis at the hands of the Judge. The end result of this meeting is in a
manner completely unlike the rest of the vividly portrayed acts of violence in this
book; no description, only suggestion.
The only note of explanation is made by one of two cowboys upon later opening
the door to the outhouse: “Good God Almighty”. Ignoring the religious reference
made by the cowboy, multiple questions are left unanswered: did the Man enter knowingly
to death and sexual humiliation, did he make one more fight or only passively submit
to his fate, and is his fate emblematic of our own?
My opinion is that McCarthy is indeed saying that Man’s
nature is that of the beast, and that we are not in control of our fate, nor
even aware of it; and like the beasts, we are doomed to die without any real
understanding of the Universe. We make our feeble attempts to explain nature,
to control it and ourselves, but like the animals and children we are merely
victims waiting for our sentence of death to be carried out by some indifferent
Power. This point is made clearer in the Epilogue wherein a line of holes are
lit in the desert that passersby wander across. The holes
themselves are described as “validation of sequence and causality as if each
round and perfect hole owed its existence to the one before”. Einstein and his theory of General Relativity
would not be pleased with this phrase (he proved a lack of causality in Time),
but it certainly underscores McCarthy’s pessimistic view of Man and his “understanding”.
“Blood Meridian” is a brilliantly written and conceived work
of art. It is most clearly not for every reader. But if you are of a philosophical
bent, and can tolerate the violent themes throughout this book, you too will be
amazed at its artistry. I could not be further from McCarthy’s view as regards
Man and the Universe, but I can still be awed by what he has done with “Blood
Meridian” – perhaps, you will be, too.
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