McCarthyism, but Not in That Way

On my shelves sits four novels by Cormac McCarthy: Suttree, The Road, No Country for Old Men, and Blood Meridian.

My first experience with McCarthy was The Road a number of years ago when I was in high school and very much unappreciative of the ability to know the rules so well you can break them. I actually recall the feeling of boredom (yeah, what the hell right?) while making my way through it and I took the absence of punctuation as permission to speed through because I hadn’t learned what pacing meant yet.

Needless to say, I am thankful for second chances.

I’ve mentioned elsewhere that I read books for book clubs that I have no intention to attend. Well, Reader, I did attend a book club for Blood Meridian, but I was 10 minutes late, so I left before I had the chance to discuss (social anxiety-1 Karly-0), so by popular demand, I am giving the masses what they want: a book review. Character progression, or whatever you want to call it.

Blood Meridian shocked me. I felt hypnotized and in a trance for the few days it took me to get through it. By the time I closed the cover for the last time, I felt exhausted as if I had just climbed K2 with no oxygen. Grueling, gory, graphic, guttural. A level of violence more grand than your little brother finding Call of Duty: Black Ops in middle school–Blood Meridian is an experience. When was the last time a book made your jaw drop?

A genre I am learning to have a deeper appreciation for is that Southern Gothic, American Southwest, gritty, cowboy style twang that makes you want to unlace your sneakers, throw on chaps, get on a horse, and get the fuck outta dodge. Edward Abbey, though I’ve not read his fictional works, does this well. So does McCarthy. And what a coincidence, they were friends. Blood Meridian certainly hits on some of this gritty Southwest style, but in the 19th century Manifest Destiny kind of way.

So this is where it gets interesting. When we think of Manifest Destiny and that expansion westward, we think of an open frontier, endless possibilities, and most of all, a concept of hope. That this completely ignores the reality that Manifest Destiny is some sick and twisted game American Imperialism plays is left for textbooks to clear up. The bottom line, however, is that our little fourth-grade brains were taught that the pilgrims went westward in the spirit of adventure, hope, and prosperity with Beautiful Columbia leading the way toward progress and civilization and though it was hard in those wagons, the promise of life & God was enough to get them westward! Going into the bright white light of the western sun symbolizing all of the things that could be with hard work, perseverance, and a God-Fearing Soul.

Wrong. wrongwrongwrongwrongwrong.

That the west is generally symbolized as a beacon of hope and opportunity is starkly contrasted with McCarthy’s depiction of gore and violence in the same place that ought to await the American Dream. A bush with dead babies, murdered dogs, mules, horses, and the sky a blood red in the excruciating desert heat all counteract this idea of American Prosperity. And it is not that the American dream is dead, per se–The Judge would argue that it is alive and well–it is the fact that the Western Frontier was not a peaceful place, seemingly devoid of God. Even down to the unlivable desert heat, the travel west doesn’t give the impression of hope and prosperity, it represents some sort of extreme condition that weeds out the weak–the West being then something that is not for everyone (as commonly depicted), but only for a few.

We mark progress, destruction, and destiny through The Kid’s life. No stranger to violence as a child, The Kid and his own lifespan represents the blank slate we associate with children (the American West) and the violent expansion that accompanied “progress” (Manifest Destiny). The Kid symbolizes the American West in its infancy and we watch its growth through the violent years of the late 1800s and how it becomes tainted with the lust for violence. Being that the American Dream is anything the heart desires, The Kid depicts the reality: destruction for the sake of destruction because “war is god” and the highest form of divination (261).

This is where the irony lies: where is God? Unlike The Road where morality seems to stem from the father, God seems to be present in Blood Meridian which came as a surprise to me. Stage left: The Judge.

We meet The Judge when he tells a lie about a pastor that enrages the congregation (goat fucking is no joke) which leads to the pastor getting shot and killed. When asked how The Judge knew about the sins of the pastor, The Judge declares that he had never even met the pastor. As Nietzsche says: God is dead and we killed him.

The Master of life and death, The Judge controls the fate of everyone around him. Described almost ethereally, the question of if The Judge is the antichrist or God himself come up consistently. It all feels very Old Testament and frankly, I don’t think we can come to the conclusion of what exactly The Judge is. If he is some Old Testament God, he spares no one, but if he is the devil, there is no one there to stop him. But The Judge is responsible for the killing of the Pastor–did he kill God or become it?

In either the capacity of God or the devil, The Judge leads the men west toward violence how Columbia leads America West toward progress. The purity of the Southwest is stained with the blood of scalps before it even has the chance. I’d argue this is the most accurate depiction of Manifest Destiny there is and probably the point McCarthy was trying to make: there was nothing peaceful about this period.

God, no God. The Judge leads his faithful followers destroying everything they come to because for them Manifest Destiny is the process of creation through destruction. The trance-like state of moving through this book perhaps parallels the trance-like state of following The Judge. The pattern of pale blue pure desert meeting the blood soaked scalp-hunting was like a pendulum swinging in front of my eyes hypnotizing me until something so egregious happened that brought me out of it. Then the process would repeat.

I thought of the song “Black Hole Sun” by Soundgarden while reading this book. Also hypnotic and trance-inducing and perhaps even fitting for Blood Meridian.

The American Southwest, even still, is thought of as an inhabitable place. Though less violent than what is depicted in Blood Meridian, it comes as no surprise that the Southwest is thought of in this way. One thought I had while reading this was how Blood Meridian could almost act as a re-telling of Lord of the Flies, but with a slightly different motive. Throwing Piggy off of a cliff seems tame compared to McCarthy’s blood soaked language, but the point stands, when left to their own devices, Man reverts to his original sins. And again, that God-like language and theme surprised me as someone who remembers The Road being completely devoid of God altogether.

So, unlike Lord of the Flies, I don’t recommend reading this in 9th or 10th grade English. I also don’t recommend this for supplemental reading into an elementary school curriculum while learning about the American West post-colonial period. Truthfully, this is a hard book to recommend. It’s violent and graphic in ways that only the darkest corners of my mind could conjure up, yet it is beyond words how McCarthy managed to make something this incredible.

So, if you have a weak-stomach, skip the dead baby bush. If you can manage it, give it a go and get hypnotized by McCarthy’s trance-inducing novel. One of a kind and truly an American feat.