No, no more trolls for you. We are going to troll you by denying all trollesque behavior. Constructive comments from here on! Now, how did you guys feel about McCarthy's Blood Meridian? I like the interpretation of Pter Michael James in his Honors BA thesis. Peter Michael James notes that regardless of the reaction of the reader to Blood Meridian, “it makes a definite aesthetic statement”. McCarthy’s masterpiece is filled to its brim with bizarrely intense violence. It can be difficult to appreciate the historical account gleaming behind the immense rock of thick brutality. James calls this effect the “brutalist aesthetic”. The reader becomes calloused to the constant bloodshed. The violence nearly reaches a position of ritual. Eventually, the violence seems to educe a position completely lacking sympathy for its victim. Not even a dozen pages into the novel, the kid is clubbed unconscious and he falls, face down, into deep mud. The narrator points out that the kid would’ve suffocated if a courteous passerby had not turned over his body in the thick muck. Later when the kid joins the scalping gang, he sees its leader mercilessly murdering a defenseless elderly woman, “[Glanton] pointed with his left hand and she turned to follow his hand with her gaze and he put the pistol to her head and fired.” Then the passage continues to note how the wound leaves “a fistsized hole out of the far side of the woman’s head in a great vomit of gore and she pitched over and lay slain in her blood without remedy” (McCarthy 98). The old woman’s death is ruthlessly described in shuddering detail. When the reader might assume the novel is finished with the bloodshed the murderer begins to scalp the destroyed body. Blood Meridian demonstrates how the scalper “took a skinning knife… took up her hair and twisted it about his wrist and passed the blade of the knife about her skull and ripped away the scalp”. The passage is not simply a trace of gore, but all violence and gore. Blood Meridian starts with violence and the barbarity does not conclude until the novel’s epilogue. This brutalist aesthetic hardens the reader until it seems as if the novel features no violence. The violence supersedes its typical role and becomes an overwhelming part of the setting of 1850’s South Western America. The filthy rock of violence falls away, revealing the luminous historical chronicle of an American time period. Ultimately, the reader benefits from the brutalist aesthetic and its intense effect on American history. I also like Dauherty's essay on Gnosticism and its influences in Blood Meridian. Leo Dauherty wrote Gravers False and True to show how Blood Meridian is filled with references of tragic Gnostic thought. The largest reference is the judge. Daugherty calls the judge a Gnostic Archon, a bestial ruler. The Gnostic Archon is analogous to demons from more mainstream beliefs. The judge fills the “bestial” criteria with his physical appearance. He is described as an enormous man with incredibly pale skin and no hair anywhere on his body. The judge’s extra-human appearance could certainly be described as “bestial”. The judge is also a ruler in the world of Blood Meridian. This is represented by the name of the judge’s gun. The judge named his weapon Et in Arcadia Ego meaning, “Even in Arcadia there am I” (Daugherty 124). The first-person singular pronoun “I” typically refers to “death” and “Arcadia” is a term for a pure, unspoiled place of natural value, so the name reaffirms the world of Blood Meridian as an anti-Arcadian place. The pronoun “I” also represents the judge. The pronoun suggests that the judge is “death” or a bringer of death. The judge is a demonic ruler that brings death over that upon which he rules. An example early in the novel depicts The Gnostic Archon’s area of influence is depicted early in the novel when the survivors of the short-lived filibuster group “slept with their alien hearts beating in the sand like pilgrims exhausted upon the face of the planet Anareta” (McCarthy 46). Daugherty notes that Anareta was a Renaissance term for the planet that destroys life (163). McCarthy is suggesting that the world of Blood Meridian is a world of destruction. The judge rules over his Anareta numerous times throughout the novel. He saves the Glanton gang from a hostile Apache tribe by showing them how to make gun powder. Very early in the novel, the judge persuades a crowd to kill an innocent preacher on charges of bestiality and pedophilia. Daugherty says the judge becomes “the totalizing victor in all conflicts, real and perceptual, involving his will” (164). Daugherty goes on to say that the judge “makes clear that the human world is, and has always been, a world of killing” (165). The judge is rules over all in the novel and he shows it with the continuous carnage. What did you guys get from Blood Meridian?
