Set in the American frontier with a loose historical context, the narrative follows a fictional teenager from Tennessee referred to 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 American Indians and others in the United States–Mexico borderlands from 1849 to 1850 for bounty, sadistic pleasure, and eventually out of nihilistic habit. The role of antagonist is gradually filled by Judge Holden, a physically massive, highly educated, preternaturally skilled member of the gang with pale and hairless skin who takes extreme sadistic pleasure in the destruction and domination of whatever he encounters, including children and docile animals.
A teenage runaway, "the kid", was born in Tennessee during the Leonidsmeteor shower of 1833. Having made it to Nacogdoches, Texas, the kid shelters in a tent from the heavy rain. In the tent a reverend is giving a sermon. A judge enters the tent and approaches the pulpit and addresses the crowd. He explains that the reverend is an imposter and wanted for "a variety of charges", details of which incite the crowd to violence. The judge buys the kid a drink. Later the kid brawls with Toadvine then assists him with arson and violence. As the kid flees he sees the judge, and the judge smiles at him.
In Bexar the kid attacks a bartender. For this attack the kid is sought out and persuaded to meet Captain White. With Captain White the kid joins a company of ill-equipped filibusters. White's company is overwhelmed by Comanche warriors. The kid escapes and is followed by Sproule, also of White's company. The pair are eventually picked up by a passing cart. Sproule dies en route but the kid is handed to authorities in a town. The kid is taken to Chihuahua and meets Toadvine again. Toadvine arranges for the pair and one other inmate to be released into Glanton's gang of scalphunters. The judge is in company.
The gang originally contract to protect locals from marauding Apaches, offered payment for each scalp. But ultimately the gang kill anyone who can provide a suitable scalp until they can no longer contract for or redeem them. At the Colorado River, Glanton learns of a ferry. The gang appropriate it. They remain more or less settled there until attacked and largely massacred by Yumas.
The kid escapes with Toadvine but the pair are chased until they make it to the wells at Alamo Mucho. Here they meet the ex-priest Tobin, also of the Glanton gang. The kid shoots some of the Yumas, and the rest retreat. The three are met by the judge, who is at this point unarmed. The kid and Tobin head toward Carrizo Creek.
Having found water the kid and Tobin are attacked by the judge, who now has two rifles and two horses. The kid kills the horses and Tobin is shot through the neck by the judge. The kid and Tobin elude the judge until the pair are found by Diegueños who feed them at their camp at San Felipe.
The kid and Tobin enter San Diego. They both need a doctor, so Tobin goes looking for one. The kid is arrested. The judge visits him. The kid is released and finds a doctor and has the surgery he needed.
Later in the same year the kid is in Los Angeles and sees Glanton members Toadvine and Brown hanged. The kid buys, then wears "the scapular of heathen ears that Brown had worn to the scaffold". The kid travels.
In 1878, the kid has matured and is now the man. He invites a small group to sit with him at his fire. These four boys are interested in the man's scapular of ears, but the congeniality soon sours and ultimately the man kills one of the boys.
The man heads to a bar and the judge meets him and tells him, among other things: "Drink up. This night thy soul may be required of thee". Later the man heads to the outhouse where the naked judge attacks him. Later, another man opens the door and says "Good God almighty", then walks away. Back in the main building, the judge is naked and dancing, and saying that he never sleeps, and will never die. He is a great favorite of the bar patrons.
Characters
Major characters
The kid: The novel's anti-heroic protagonist or pseudo-protagonist,[7] the kid is an illiterate Tennessean whose mother died in childbirth. At 14, he flees from his father to Texas. He is said to have a disposition for violence and is involved in vicious actions throughout. He takes up inherently violent professions, specifically being recruited by violent criminals including Captain White, and later by Glanton and his gang, thereby securing release from a prison in Chihuahua, Mexico. The kid takes part in many of the Glanton gang's scalp-hunting rampages, but gradually displays a moral fiber that ultimately puts him at odds with the Judge. "The kid" is later as an adult referred to as "the man".
Judge Holden, or "the Judge": A huge, pale and hairless man who may or may not be supernatural. He is a polyglot and polymath and a keen examiner and recorder of the natural world. He is extremely violent and deviant. He is said to have accompanied Glanton's gang since they found him sitting alone on a rock in the middle of the desert and he saved them from pursuing Apaches. It is hinted that he and Glanton have some manner of pact. He gradually becomes the antagonist to the kid after the dissolution of Glanton's gang, occasionally having brief reunions with the kid. Unlike the rest of the gang, Holden is socially refined and remarkably well educated; however, he perceives the world as ultimately violent, fatalistic, and liable to an endless cycle of bloody conquest, with human nature and autonomy defined by the will to violence.
John Joel Glanton, or simply "Glanton": The American leader, or "captain", of a gang of scalphunters who murder Indians and Mexican civilians and military alike. His history and appearance are not clarified except that he is physically small with black hair and has a wife and child in Texas. He is a clever strategist. His last major action is to take control of a profitable Colorado River ferry, which ultimately leads to an ambush by Yuma Indians in which he is killed.
Louis Toadvine, or simply "Toadvine": A seasoned outlaw with whom the kid brawls and then burns down a hotel. Toadvine has no ears and his forehead is branded with the letters H and T (horse thief) and F (felon). He reappears unexpectedly as a cellmate of the kid in the Chihuahua prison. From here he mendaciously negotiates the release of himself and the kid and one other inmate into Glanton's gang. Toadvine is not as depraved as some of the gang, questioning the killing of innocents, but is nonetheless a violent criminal. He is hanged in Los Angeles alongside David Brown.
Ben Tobin, "the priest", or "the ex-priest": A member of the gang and formerly a novice of the Society of Jesus. Tobin 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 great spiritual enemies. He survives the Yuma massacre of Glanton's gang but is shot in the neck by the Judge. He is last seen after he arrives in San Diego with the kid and goes off on his own to look for a doctor.
Other recurring characters
Captain White, or "the captain": An American Veteran soldier and filibuster who believes that Mexico is a lawless nation destined to be conquered by the United States. Captain White leads a patchwork company of militants into Mexico along with the recently recruited "Kid". After weeks of travel through the harsh Mexican desert, the company is ambushed by a Comanche war party. Captain White makes his escape with a few "officers" but is ultimately caught, beheaded, and subsequently has his head "pickled".
Bathcat, or "the vandiemenlander": Born in Wales, Bathcat went to Van Diemen's Land to hunt Aborigines. He has three fingers on his right hand. Aside from a necklace of ears, his most notable trait is a number tattooed on the inside of his forearm, suggesting that he may have been sent to the colony as a convict. He is killed by Native Americans during their travels through Pimería Alta; a fate that was foretold during his introduction.
David Brown, or simply "Davy" or "Brown": A member of the gang who wears a necklace of human ears - likely taken from Bathcat's corpse. He is arrested in San Diego and Glanton seems especially concerned to see him released. He brings about his own release but does not return to the gang before the Yuma massacre. He is hanged with Toadvine in Los Angeles.
James Robert Bell, or "the idiot": A mentally challenged man who becomes affiliated with the Glanton gang after his brother, Cloyce joins. Before the brothers joined, Cloyce would keep the idiot in a cage so people could pay money to see him. He's also regularly shown chewing on his own feces. The Judge takes a liking to the idiot, as he can be easy to manipulate. The Judge would later have the idiot chained like a dog and make him hold his weapons. The Judge later uses the idiot to try to kill both the kid and Tobin. By the end of the novel, the Judge is not seen with the idiot, leaving his fate like many in the novel, unknown.
John Jackson: "John Jackson" is a name shared by two men in Glanton's gang–one black and one white–who detest one another and whose tensions frequently rise when in each other's presence. After trying to drive the black Jackson away from a campfire with a threat of violence, "White Jackson" is decapitated. "Black Jackson" assumes an integral role in the gang. While still referred to by numerous slurs, Jackson is nonetheless treated as part of a "body" that cannot have any part killed or violated, as Judge Holden goes to great lengths to rescue him after a confrontation on a mountain pass.
A major theme is the warlike nature of man. Critic Harold Bloom[8] praised Blood Meridian as one of the best 20th century American novels, "worthy of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick,"[9] but admitted that his "first two attempts to read through Blood Meridian failed, because [he] flinched from the overwhelming carnage."[10]
Caryn James of The New York Times argued that the novel's violence was a "slap in the face" to modern readers cut off from brutality.[11] Terrence Morgan thought the effect of the violence initially shocking, but then waned until the reader was desensitized.[12] Billy J. Stratton of Arizona Quarterly contends that the brutality is the primary mechanism through which McCarthy challenges the "oppositional structure" of the conventional narrative of the Old West; "[R]eaders encounter characters that are often depicted as more animal than human in their behaviors, participating in a ruthless struggle for fortune and power. It is the absence of a recognizable heroic character along with the negation of the Eurocentric oppositions that McCarthy's deployment of animal imagery is meant to illuminate."[13]
James D. 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."[14] In her aforementioned review, Caryn James noted that McCarthy depicts characters of all backgrounds as evil, in contrast to contemporary "revisionist theories that make white men the villains and Indians the victims."[11]
Epigraphs
One of the epigraphs entails an ancient scalped skull.
"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"
The Old Hermit, pg. 19
Three epigraphs open the book: quotations from French writer Paul Valéry, from German Christian mysticJakob Böhme, and a 1982 news clipping from the Yuma Sun reporting the claim of members of an Ethiopian archeological excavation that a fossilized skull three hundred millennia old seemed to have been scalped. Regarding the meaning of the epigraphs, David H. Evans writes that
[t]he taking of scalps, as McCarthy's third epigraph suggests, enjoys a profound antiquity, one coterminous with, perhaps, the beginnings of the species Homo sapiens.[15]
Ending
The narrative closes with ambiguity pertaining to the final state of the kid, or the man. Since the book portrays violence in explicit detail, this allusive portrayal has caused comment. Given Judge Holden's history and other details in the text, he presumably rapes the man before killing him.[16] Alternatively, perhaps the point is that readers can never know.[17]
Religion
Hell
David Vann argues that the setting of the American southwest which the Gang traverses is representative of hell. Vann claims that the Judge's kicking of a head is an allusion to Dante's similar action in the Inferno.[18]
Gnosticism
The second of the three epigraphs which introduce the novel, taken from the Christian theosophistJakob Böhme, has incited varied discussion. The quote from Boehme is:
It is not to be thought that the life of darkness is sunk in misery and lost as if in sorrowing. There is no sorrowing. For sorrow is a thing that is swallowed up in death, and death and dying are the very life of the darkness.[19]
No specific conclusions have been reached about its interpretation nor relevance to the novel.[citation needed] Critics agree that there are Gnostic elements in Blood Meridian, but they disagree on the precise meaning and implication of those elements.
Leo Daugherty argues that "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."[20] Daugherty sees Holden as an archon and the kid as a "failed pneuma."[citation needed] He says that the kid feels a "spark of the alien divine."[21]
Daugherty further contends that the 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 of Christianity. 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."[22]
However, Barcley Owens argues that while there are undoubtedly Gnostic qualities to the novel, Daugherty's arguments are "ultimately unsuccessful,"[23] because Daugherty fails to adequately address the pervasive violence and because he overstates the kid's goodness.[citation needed]
Theodicy
Douglas Canfield asserts that theodicy is the central theme of Blood Meridian. James Wood took a similar position, recognizing as a recurrent theme in the novel the issue of the general justification of metaphysical goodness in the presence of evil.[24] Chris Dacus expressed his preference for discussing the theme of theodicy in its eschatological terms in comparison to the theological scene of the last judgment. This preference for reading theodicy as an eschatological theme was further affirmed by Harold Bloom in his recurrent phrase of referring to the novel as "The Authentic Apocalyptic Novel."[25]
Writing
Cormac McCarthy in 1980, by which time he had already been working on Blood Meridian for about five years
McCarthy began writing Blood Meridian in the mid-1970s.[26] In a letter sent around 1979 he said that he had not touched Blood Meridian in six months out of frustration.[7] Nonetheless, significant parts of the final book were written in one go, "including the astonishing 'legion of horribles' passage".[7]
A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery [...].
McCarthy worked on the novel while living on the money he received from his MacArthur Fellows grant in 1981. It was his first attempt at a western and his first novel set in the Southwestern United States, a change from the Appalachian settings of his earlier work.[7]
In 1974, McCarthy moved from his native Tennessee to El Paso, Texas, to immerse himself in the culture and geography of the American Southwest. He taught himself Spanish, which many of the characters of Blood Meridian speak.[7] 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 book has been described as "as close to history as novels generally get".[27]
The Glanton gang segments are based on Samuel Chamberlain's account of the group in his memoir My Confession: The Recollections of a Rogue. Chamberlain rode with John Joel Glanton and his company between 1849 and 1850. Judge Holden is described in Chamberlain's account but is otherwise unknown. Chamberlain writes:
The second in command, now left in charge of the camp, was a man of gigantic size who rejoiced in the name of Holden, called Judge Holden of Texas. Who or what he was no one knew, but a cooler-more blooded villain never went unhung. He stood six foot six in his moccasins, had a large, fleshy frame, a dull, tallow-colored face destitute of hair and all expression, always cool and collected. But when a quarrel took place and blood shed, his hog-like eyes would gleam with a sullen ferocity worthy of the countenance of a fiend... Terrible stories were circulated in camp of horrid crimes committed by him when bearing another name in the Cherokee nation in Texas. And before we left Fronteras, a little girl of ten years was found in the chaparral foully violated and murdered. The mark of a huge hand on her little throat pointed out him as the ravisher as no other man had such a hand. But though all suspected, no one charged him with the crime. He was by far the best educated man in northern Mexico.[28]
McCarthy's Judge was added to his manuscript in the late 1970s, a "grotesque patchwork of up-river Kurtz and Milton's Satan" and Chamberlain's account.[7]
McCarthy physically retraced the Glanton Gang's path through Mexico multiple times, and noted topography and fauna.[7] He studied such topics as homemade gunpowder to accurately depict the Judge's creation from volcanic rock.
Style
McCarthy's writing style involves many unusual or archaic words, dialogue in Spanish, no quotation marks for dialogue, and no apostrophes to signal most contractions. McCarthy told Oprah Winfrey in an interview that he preferred "simple declarative sentences" and that he used capital letters, periods, an occasional comma, a colon for setting off a list, but never semicolons.[29] He believed there was no reason to "blot the page up with weird little marks".[30]The New York Times described McCarthy's prose in Blood Meridian as "Faulknerian".[31] Describing events of extreme violence, McCarthy's prose is sparse yet expansive, with an often biblical quality and frequent religious references.[citation needed]
Reception and reevaluation
Blood Meridian initially received little recognition, but has since been recognized as a masterpiece and one of the greatest works of American literature. Some have called it the Great American Novel.[6] American literary critic Harold Bloom praised Blood Meridian as one of the 20th century's finest novels.[32]Aleksandar Hemon has called it "possibly the greatest American novel of the past 25 years".[33]David Foster Wallace named it one of the five most underappreciated American novels since 1960[34] and "[p]robably the most horrifying book of this [20th] century, at least [in] fiction."[35]
Time magazine included Blood Meridian in its "Time 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005".[36] In 2010 The New York Times conducted a poll of writers and critics regarding the most important works in American fiction from the previous 25 years, and Blood Meridian was a runner-up.[37]
Literary significance
There has been no consensus in the interpretation of the novel. Americanist Dana Phillips said that the work "seems designed to elude interpretation".[38] One scholar has described Blood Meridian as:
Lyrical at times, at others simply archaic and recondite, at still others barely literate: the dissociative style of Blood Meridian defies accommodation to conventional assumptions. And that's the point.[27]
Nonetheless, academics and critics have suggested that Blood Meridian is nihilistic or strongly moral, a satire of the western genre or a savage indictment of Manifest Destiny. Harold Bloom called it "the ultimate western". J. Douglas Canfield described it as "a grotesqueBildungsroman in which we are denied access to the protagonist's consciousness almost entirely".[39]Richard Selzer declared that McCarthy "is a genius–also probably somewhat insane."[40] Critic Steven Shaviro wrote:
In the entire range of American literature, only Moby-Dick bears comparison to Blood Meridian. Both are epic in scope, cosmically resonant, obsessed with open space and with language, exploring vast uncharted distances with a fanatically patient minuteness. Both manifest a sublime visionary power that is matched only by still more ferocious irony. Both savagely explode the American dream of manifest destiny of racial domination and endless imperial expansion. But if anything, McCarthy writes with a yet more terrible clarity than does Melville.
—Steven Shaviro, "A Reading of Blood Meridian"[41]
Attempted film adaptations
An attempt to adapt the novel by Ridley Scott ultimately faltered.
Since the novel's release many have noted its cinematic potential. The New York Times' 1985 review noted that the novel depicted "scenes that might have come off a movie screen".[31] There have been attempts to create a motion picture adaptation of Blood Meridian, but all have failed during the development or pre-production stages. A common perception is that the story is "unfilmable" due to its unrelenting violence and dark tone.[42] In an interview with The Wall Street Journal in 2009 McCarthy denied this notion, with his perspective being that it would be "very difficult to do and would require someone with a bountiful imagination and a lot of balls. But the payoff could be extraordinary."[43]
Screenwriter Steve Tesich first adapted Blood Meridian into a screenplay in 1995. In the late 1990s, Tommy Lee Jones acquired the film adaptation rights to the story and subsequently rewrote Tesich's screenplay with the idea of directing and playing a role in it.[44] The production could not move forward due to film studios avoiding the project's overall violence.[45]
Following the end of production for Kingdom of Heaven in 2004, screenwriter William Monahan and director Ridley Scott entered discussions with producer Scott Rudin for adapting Blood Meridian with Paramount Pictures financing.[46] In a 2008 interview with Eclipse Magazine Scott confirmed that the screenplay had been written, but that the extensive violence was proving to be a challenge for film standards.[47] This later led to Scott and Monahan leaving the project, resulting in another abandoned adaptation.[48]
By early 2011, James Franco was considering adapting Blood Meridian, along with a number of other William Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy novels. After being persuaded by Andrew Dominik to adapt the novel, Franco shot 25 minutes of test footage starring Scott Glenn, Mark Pellegrino, Luke Perry, and Dave Franco. For undisclosed reasons, Rudin denied further production of the film.[45] On May 5, 2016, Variety revealed that Franco was negotiating with Rudin to write and direct an adaptation to be brought to the Marché du Film, starring Russell Crowe, Tye Sheridan, and Vincent D'Onofrio. However, it was reported later that day that the project dissolved due to issues with the film rights.[49]
In 2023, Deadline reported that New Regency is adapting Blood Meridian as a feature film. John Hillcoat, who previously directed an adaptation of McCarthy's novel The Road, is set to direct. Alongside his son John Francis, McCarthy was set to serve as an executive producer on the film;[50] he will retain a posthumous credit following his death on June 13, 2023.[51]John Logan was later announced to be adapting the story.[52]
In a 2024 interview, Hillcoat said he and McCarthy spent extended time discussing the film, which the author once volunteered to write and envisioned as a "Faustian tale, the journey of the Judge trying to win the soul of the kid, and consume everything in his path." McCarthy had rejected a miniseries proposal, finding television lacks a "kind of grandeur about it, an element of scale."[53]
1 2 Hage, Erik. Cormac McCarthy: A Literary Companion. North Carolina: 2010. p. 45
1 2 Kollin, Susan (2001). "Genre and the Geographies of Violence: Cormac McCarthy and the Contemporary Western". Contemporary Literature. 42 (3). University of Wisconsin Press: 557–88. doi:10.2307/1208996. JSTOR1208996.
1 2 Dalrymple, William. "Blood Meridian is the Great American Novel". Reader's Digest. Archived from the original on July 28, 2020. Retrieved April 22, 2020. McCarthy's descriptive powers make him the best prose stylist working today, and this book the Great American Novel.
↑ Daugherty, Leo. “Gravers False and True: Blood Meridian as Gnostic Tragedy.” Perspectives on Cormac McCarthy. Ed. Edwin T. Arnold and Dianne C. Luce. University Press of Mississippi: Jackson, 1993. 157-172.
↑ Shannon, Noah (2012-10-05). "Cormac McCarthy Cuts to the Bone". Slate Book Review, 5 October 2012.
1 2 Mitchell, L. C. (2015) ‘A Book "Made Out of Books": The Humanizing Violence of Style in "Blood Meridian"’, Texas studies in literature and language, 57(3), pp. 259–281. doi: 10.7560/TSLL57301.
Daugherty, Leo (1992). "Gravers False and True: Blood Meridian as Gnostic Tragedy". Southern Quarterly. 30 (4): 122–133.
Lilley, James D. (2014). "History and the Ugly Facts of Blood Meridian". Cormac McCarthy: New Directions. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. ISBN978-0-8263-2767-3.
Owens, Barcley (2000). Cormac McCarthy's Western Novels. University of Arizona Press. ISBN0-8165-1928-5.
Schneider, Christoph (2009). "Pastorale Hoffnungslosigkeit. Cormac McCarthy und das Böse". In Borissova, Natalia; Frank, Susi K.; Kraft, Andreas (eds.). Zwischen Apokalypse und Alltag. Kriegsnarrative des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts. Bielefeld. pp.171–200.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
Shaviro, Steven (1992). "A Reading of Blood Meridian". Southern Quarterly. 30 (4).
Shaw, Patrick W. (1997). "The Kid's Fate, the Judge's Guilt: Ramifications of Closure in Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian". Southern Literary Journal: 102–119.
Stratton, Billy J. (2011). "'el brujo es un coyote': Taxonomies of Trauma in Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian". Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory. 67 (3): 151–172. doi:10.1353/arq.2011.0020. S2CID161619604.
Further reading
Sepich, John (2008). Notes on Blood Meridian. Southwestern Writers Collection Series. Foreword by Edwin T. Arnold (Revised and Expandeded.). University of Texas Press. ISBN978-0-292-71821-0. Archived from the original on April 19, 2011. Retrieved April 2, 2011.
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