“See the child.”
“The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.”
“I know your kind, he said. What’s wrong with you is wrong all the way through you.”
“You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it. You believe that?
“I dont know.
“Believe that.”
In the interest of erasing my previous ignorance of the genius of Cormac McCarthy, I’m making up for lost time. After being positively rocked by the epic “The Road,” I did a little research and discovered that McCarthy had also penned a Western classic, “Blood Meridian: The Evening Redness in the West.” I quickly slotted it into my reading rotation, and when its turn came up recently, I launched into it with eager anticipation.
The story follows an early teenager evolving into a life of crime, terror and violence in the unsettled and rule-lacking West of the 1850s. Going without a name and referred to only as “the kid” (following McCarthy’s trend toward namelessness, like in “The Road”) by everyone he runs with, he is the focal point of the novel’s whirlwind, frantic start. Using his trademark sparse punctuation and hard-hitting sentences, McCarthy shifts gears with his prose here, perhaps in an effort to capture the personality of the desert and the era in which the kid’s adventures take place. Written 20 years prior to “The Road,” “Blood Meridian” is rich with long, descriptive sentences, much more flowery and detailed in juxtaposition to “The Road’s” utter starkness. The novel also represents McCarthy’s first foray into the Southwest after many pieces set in Appalachia, and many feel “Blood Meridian” borrows heavily from “My Confession: The Recollections of a Rogue,” by Samuel Chamberlain. Some have even gone so far as to say the kid represents Chamberlain, but since McCarthy has never granted an interview about the book, it’s all up for interpretation.
However, in the listings and descriptions of the many, many brutal acts of violence that pepper this novel on seemingly every other page, McCarthy relies on his best technique: shocking you with straightforward, even, unflinching, abrupt writing. A prime example comes when the kid & Co. ride upon a tree full of dead babies, which is introduced matter-of-factly, seemingly slid into the text among other words that weigh the same, that carry the same value (“The way narrowed through rocks and by and by they came to a bush that was hung with dead babies.”). This understated communication is all the more startling and unsettling for its sparseness of prose, its directness of description.
“Blood Meridian” truly begins when savage Comanches attack the kid’s group, slaughtering, raping, beheading, eviscerating, scalping and dehumanizing on a blue desert.
“ … all the horsemen’s faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of Christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools.”
On a side note, I have read that many readers -- even scholars -- have been simply unable to rationalize or come to terms with the almost inconceivable violence and moral vacuity that permeates and defines the book, and as a result, simply can’t finish “Blood Meridian.” From infanticide to church slaughters, from cannibalism to animal torture, from rape to pillaging, I am here to attest that it can be an awful lot to stomach. In particular, I found myself thinking, “Shooting and drowning puppies? Really?” and “Driving scores of mules off of cliffs on purpose, for crissakes?”, among other utterings of disbelief. Another obstacle to the digestion of “Blood Meridian” in this vein is McCarthy’s usage of a lot of unrecognizable words and Spanish dialogue, which can be a bit off-putting and make for a harder read.
Anyway, following the kid’s narrow escape from the Comanches, he falls in with a band of killers and outriders: the Glanton Gang. This group of marauders is charged with scalping savages, to be paid by the pure number of scalps they bring back. The journey across the desert is replete with mirages, sorcery, encounters with bloodbats, pursuit by wolves, the constant specter of Indian attack, the overhanging worry of water possession and a tenuous truce with the terrain (map found here) itself.
“All night sheetlightning quaked sourceless to the west beyond the midnight thunderheads, making a bluish day of the distant desert, the mountains on the sudden skyline stark and black and livid like a land of some other order out there whose true geology was not stone but fear.”
We are told that the kid runs away at 14 and is shot at 15 (“He can neither read nor write and in him broods already a taste for mindless violence.”), with most of the piece itself picking up his riding with the Glanton Gang at the age of 19. However, because we are purposely detached and placed at a remote distance from the kid, it is difficult to get a feel for his actual age at times. McCarthy never lets us inside the kid’s mind or gives us witness to his thoughts, so we are left to judge for ourselves how the kid feels about what he is involved in and how willing a participant he is in the boundless killing and destruction. His sparing of Shelby and his passing on multiple opportunities to slay the Judge are among the decisions that lead us to believe that there is more to the kid than just mindless wandering and a thirst for blood, and he is apparent in his omission in many of these violent acts.
“You better get out of my way, he said.
“The kid wasnt going to do that and he saw no use in discussing it. He kicked the man in the jaw.”
“Kindly fell on hard times aint ye son? he said.
“I just aint fell on no good ones.”
Though the Glanton Gang constantly faces impossible odds, their mission begins to change from being hired to collect the scalps of Indians who have savaged the countryside to simply killing anything and everything in its path, and we eventually see that the kid and Toadvine, perhaps the closest thing the kid has to a friend, begin to question why and whether the murder of innocents is necessary.
In fact, as time progresses and the walls of morality continue to be under assault from blow after blow, the Glanton Gang slowly morphs into something much worse than even the savages they are chasing. At one point, separated from his comrades, the kid watches a battle from the height of a mountain, seeing the silent senselessness from far away, and we sense that he is beginning to see something of the light.
“ … the slant black shapes of the mounted men stenciled across the stone with a definition austere and implacable like shapes capable of violating their covenant with the flesh that authored them and continuing autonomous across the naked rock without reference to sun or man or god.”
“ … each more pale than the one before and all tattooed, branded, sutured, the great puckered scars inaugurated God knows where by what barbarous surgeons across chests and abdomens like the tracks of gigantic millipedes, some deformed, fingers missing, eyes, their foreheads and arms stamped with letters and numbers as if they were articles requiring inventory.”
“Like beings provoked out of the absolute rock and set nameless and at no remove from their own loomings to wander ravenous and doomed and mute as gorgons shambling the brutal wastes of Gondwanaland in a time before nomenclature was and each was all.”
As these cowboy pirates morph into a force that is worse than the Indians, questions begin to arise in our collective minds: Who are we supposed to pull for? What is the kid’s role and involvement in all of this? What are we supposed to think or consider about his lack of commentary on the events that surround -- hell, engulf -- him?
It is only toward the end of the book that you start to realize and understand that perhaps the tale isn’t about the kid at all; that, in the end, it is truly about the Judge. As part philosopher, part archaeologist, part pedophile, part McGyver, part child murderer, part Michael Vick, part lawyer, part magician, part alien and part Bill Bratske, Judge Holden seems to be a man without partisanship, a giant who refuses to pick sides and actually lives to set different entities against each other. He launches into soliloquies on civilization itself and waxes poetic about what war is and means.
Much critical commentary has discussed what the Judge is supposed to represent in the grand scheme of “Blood Meridian.” The fact that he is immortal, appears to dabble in the black arts and conjures up spiritual themes leads to conjecture that he could possibly personify the devil. It was hard for me to argue with critic Harold Bloom’s assertion that the Judge is “the most frightening figure in all of American literature.” The only sure thing to me about the Judge is that he represents the ageless anchor of the book.
“It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way.
“Seen so, war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one’s will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god.”
“For whoever makes a shelter of reeds and hides has joined his spirit to the common destiny of creatures and he will subside back into the primal mud with scarcely a cry. But who builds in stone seeks to alter the structure of the universe …”
“The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down. The rain will erode the deeds of his life. But that man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate.”
“Your heart’s desire is to be told some mystery. The mystery is that there is no mystery.”
McCarthy offers tremendous detail of the architecture, setting and topography of the desert. Yet one thing I took some issue with was the caricature-ish depictions of dialogue at times (such as the four lines below), which led me to wonder whether this was lazy writing or a necessary tool to set the scene. It reminded me of spaghetti Westerns where tumbleweeds roll through deserted towns and one beleaguered rustler says to the other, “It’s quiet” (long pause, wait for it), before adding, “Almost too quiet.”
“‘This is a terrible place to die in.’
“‘Where’s a good one?’”
“In truth they did not look like men who might have whiskey they hadnt drunk.”
“‘Cant or wont?’
‘You pick the one that best suits you.”
“I don’t threaten people. I told him I’d whip his ass and that’s as good as notarized.’
‘You don’t call that a threat?’
Brown looked up. ‘It was not no threat. It was a promise.’”
Through the course of the story, the kid has weathered being jailed; stabbed; shot by an arrow and enduring its subsequent harrowing removal; trekking through the snowy mountains without gear; traversing the desert without supplies or water; surviving attacks in the midst of night while he sleeps; being chased by a thousand Indians; and escaping unthinkable death and torture at the hands of scores of savages on a number of occasions. Still, in the end, he meets a fate similar to Elvis Presley, which leads us to ask, “What was it all about? What are we supposed to take out of the strange and seemingly pointless journey of the kid? Or are we supposed to taking anything at all from it?"
When the kid elects to pass up killing the Judge on four different occasions, it appears to be a pivotal part of the book; it feels if his fate is sealed from there, which naturally makes me wonder whether the kid wanted to die after all, wanted to be put of his misery, a broken, confused man now middle-aged and lost. For all its faults, the Glanton Gang in essence represented the only family the kid ever knew, and when the scoundrel misfits dispersed to their demise (the death of the black Jackson was very poetic in the ultimate attack on the gang) or other outposts, the family dissolved, leaving the kid to drift aimlessly, deeper and deeper into outright immorality. He even purchases a morbid necklace that had once belonged to one of his colleagues, a suitable symbol that represents his desire to remember that lost family. Even his one attempt to confide and possibly confess his past turns out to fall on the deaf ears of a dead woman. And through it all, McCarthy accomplishes the trick of keeping the kid morally ambiguous until and through the very end.
In the end, the kid-turned-man is forced to kill a mirror image of himself as a kid. He sees himself in Ellrod (“This country was filled with violent children orphaned by war.”), who says, “They aint nobody done it yet”, which is a repeat of a line the kid used in his youth upon being told he was almost killed. Interestingly, it was at this point, when the kid has to end Ellrod’s life before it truly begins, that McCarthy chooses to subtly begin referring to the kid as the man. In fact, Ellrod is the same age, 15, as the kid was when he was first shot, so having to murder Ellrod in self-defense (“You wouldn’t of lived anyway, the man said.”) feels as if it is closing the chapter on his youth, wrapping up one more loose end before the kid can finally rest in peace.
McCarthy evokes echoes of Stephen King at times (in particular with the lines “But someplace in the scheme of things this world must touch the other.” and “I wonder if there’s other worlds like this, he said. Or if this is the only one.”, which reminds of King’s phrasing from Jake upon one of his deaths: “There are other worlds than these.”) and creates some beautifully tension-filled dialogue between the kid and the Judge in building up to the book’s climax. During the inevitable squareoff between the duo after so many years, the Judge talks of fate and destiny as the kid parries the verbal threats up until the end, which is only hinted at as something brutal and ghastly (many have made the point that, after so many pages of unthinkable violence, the kid’s murder and must have been something horrific indeed if it goes undetailed; others have commented that perhaps the Judge, after so many years of pursuit, finally rapes the kid, who is possibly a voluntary participant). A suitable ending, this is a wonderfully constructed scene by a master at his best, interweaving tension, philosophy, beauty and the looming, lingering threat of imminent death.
“The last of the true. The last of the true. I’d say they’re all gone under now saving me and thee. Would you not?”
“Drink up, he said. Drink up. This night thy soul may be required of thee.”
Unfortunately, I have to say that the book’s epilogue is a big-time “WTF!?” In my opinion, the following of someone putting the holes for fence posts on the prairie may relate to someone finally attempting to contain the violence and bring order to the outlaw West. It could also signify the arrival of someone who will possibly, eventually challenge the Judge. But in my mind, it just seems oddly misplaced in terms of context.
When taken as a whole, though, the confusing aspect of the epilogue doesn’t take away from what many consider to be McCarthy’s true masterpiece, a book called by Bloom “the ultimate Western, not to be surpassed” and a “prose epic,” and compared to Melville’s “Moby Dick.” In fact, “Blood Meridian” was considered the second-most-important work of American fiction in the last quarter century in a 2006 poll of writers. McCarthy’s choice to interject himself only as a narrator to the unimaginable -- yet true and real -- violence of the Mexico-Texas borderlands in this time, along with his decision to employ the kid only as a guide on this journey, forces the reader to handle the heavy lifting of judgment and categorizing who is good and evil.
For those able to withstand the gag-reflex-threatening violence of the tale until its final words, taking on the task of assigning morality seems easy in comparison -- if impossible to answer definitively.
“His origins are become remote as is his destiny and not again in all the world’s turning will there be terrains so wild and barbarous to try whether the stuff of creation may be shaped to man’s will or whether his own heart is not another kind of clay.”
“Moral law is an invention of mankind for the disenfranchisement of the powerful in favor of the weak.”
“He never sleeps. He says that he will never die. He dances in light and in shadow and he is a great favorite. He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die.”
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