Blood Meridian: Bibliotheca Webinar

McCarthy's prose style in Blood Meridian reads like Faulkner with beautiful flowing clarity and transparency not often broken up with punctuation, creating very long and powerful sentences with a gravity and biblical weightiness.

“the style is truly beautiful you can't take anything from that uh in many ways mccarthy seem reads like faulkner with that beautiful flowing uh clarity and transparency uh not often broken up with punctuation so there's a very long and very powerful sentences also a certain gravity to his prose uh it's a a kind of seriousness that uh people have sometimes described as uh biblical in its weightiness”

Indians are not monolithic—different tribes like the Apache and Comanche were enemies, with the Comanche nearly destroying the Apache in the 19th century.

“the indians are not one big monolithic thing and they will be happy to tell you that if you ask so are the white people the difference between filibusters and the united states army and the white people that you meet in la and san diego um they're not unified”

Blood Meridian is a Bildungsroman (novel of development/education) where the anonymous protagonist 'the Kid' undergoes violent self-preservation but maintains some capacity for mercy, setting him apart from other characters like the Judge.

“blood meridian is also a kind of bildum's rama and what that means is that it's a novel of development or a novel of education and in this case we don't find out who the protagonist is we know him as the kid and later on as the man but he's anonymous he is uh in some ways a cipher it's hard to know what to think of him he is terrifically violent but it's violence in the cause of self-preservation it's not violence for violence sake”

McCarthy does not idealize any race in Blood Meridian—he gives no 'noble savagism' to Native Americans and presents all groups (Apaches, Comanches, White Americans, Mexicans) as equally capable of terrible violence.

“my inclination would be to say that uh no race gets idealized in other words he doesn't take any uh cheap shots by giving us a kind of noble savagism uh the he since he knows the actual history uh the the apache were a very large very fierce tribe and during the historical time in the in the 19th century um they were almost completely destroyed by the comanche”

The people who built Stonehenge were completely unrelated genetically to the people who defended England in 1066, meaning that in 3,500 years they had wiped them all out.

“the people who built stonehinge were completely unrelated in a genetic sense to the people who defended england in 1066 in that 3 500 years they had wiped them all out”

Religion does not have any way of explaining evil—evil is a simple brute fact, and the harder we try to create an understanding of it through religious frameworks, the more impossible the task becomes.

“religion doesn't have any way of explaining it evil is a simple brute fact the harder we try to create the odyssey the more impossible it becomes”

The Judge's first action in the novel is a lie—he falsely accuses a Christian minister of raping an 11-year-old girl and having sex with a goat, causing the minister to be lynched, then denies making the accusations, demonstrating his nature as the 'father of lies.'

“the judge is a liar the first time we meet the judge he tells a lie about a christian minister and gets the christian minister lynched he says to the uh revival meeting that the judge raped an 11 year old girl and had an improbable sexual relationship with a goat now the goat is not just a quadruped is also a symbol here the judge retires away from the lynch mob and goes to a bar and announces that he does not know the parson”

Sugrue proposes a new interpretation of the outhouse scene: the judge may have scalped the man after killing him, treating him like the 'heathen' that he despised, and the man's retention of clemency for the heathen results in his being treated as a heathen himself.

“i reread it since i i had a little discussion and it occurs to me you know what might have happened what might be a way of explaining that outhouse scene where the kid is dead i think he's in the judge's giant ice cream suit but it occurred to me i wonder if the judge didn't scalp him the idea being that since he has clemency for the heathen he gets treated like the heathen right so in that respect uh he was looking for and had some faith in moral order”

Captain White demonizes Mexicans as barbarians while encouraging barbaric behaviors in his own army of white men, yet Mexicans are sometimes depicted as more civil than whites—demonstrating that civilization/barbarism is not tied to race or nationality.

“captain white for example demonizes the mexicans by calling them barbarians yet encourages barbaric behaviors in his own army of white men while we see the mexicans at times being much more civil than than they are”

This is Sugrue's meditation on Thomas Hobbes' political philosophy—the 'war of all against all' that civilization overcomes, illustrating that the discomforts of civilized air-conditioning are preferable to the terror of actual wilderness.

“so this is his meditation in a way on thomas hobbs political philosophy this is the war of all against all it's easy when you're sitting in front of a computer screen in an air-conditioned room to say you know civilization is getting on my nerves if any of you have seen that that show that they have uh naked and afraid whether people are dropped off in the jungle uh civilization they find out very quickly how much they like civilization”

The Judge cannot be killed because he represents a permanent feature of human life—evil and death are eternal forces that cannot be eliminated.

“the judge as he says at the end of the book cannot be killed and the fact that he cannot be killed uh suggests that this is a permanent feature of human life one of the other epigraphs at the beginning of the book says that death and dark or rather death is the very life of the darkness and that's true the life of the judge who is the darkness who is evil who is the adversary um he lives off death”

The Judge shedding his white suit and dancing naked is analogous to a serpent shedding its skin, connecting to the serpent in Gilgamesh that denies eternal life and is thought to be immortal—the Judge claims immortality just as snakes shed their skin to renew themselves.

“now here we have the judge claiming to be immortal and what i think that when he takes off his uh ice cream man white suit and puts puts it on uh the man after he's killed him i think what he's done is shed his skin because i think that he's the serpent from gilgamesh that's how i think it connects to that epigraph about the ancient uh skull that had been scalped this has been going on forever and evil never gets old death is always reaching out its dark and sparkling hands”

Evil in McCarthy's worldview is often not symbolic of anything in the narrative—when people are killed, it is not a symbolic statement but a literal fact; this refusal to symbolize evil is what makes the novel so disturbing.

“evil is often not symbolic of anything in mccarthy evil is just evil and that's one of the things that's so disturbing about it in other words when he talks about the comanches riding after the people who had wrestled the cattle and if you remember that scene where there's one paragraph of comanches dressed in various kinds of clothing they had taken and covered in blood”

War endures because young men love it and old men love it in them, making young men perpetual vessels for the war impulse—this feeds into the Judge's statement that 'war is god' and connects to McCarthy's critique of masculine violence.

“the judd and we've talked a little bit about this the judge says simply that war endures because young men love it and old men love it in them”

McCarthy wrote Blood Meridian after moving to New Mexico, where he was interested in the mixing of cultures and the horrifying and brutal circumstances by which civilization was imposed on indigenous peoples and nature.

“he moved to new mexico and he was very interested in the mixing of cultures and also in the real historical circumstances by which um our civilization was imposed upon the people there and upon nature and he found out that it was astonishingly horrifying and brutal”

Before Europeans arrived, Indians were not lacking in imagination regarding awful things to do to each other—when Europeans came, they simply added to the mix and brought diseases, but the pattern of violence and cruelty was already present.

“before europeans got there um indians were not lacking in imagination with regard to awful things to do to each other in other words when you had europeans come they just added to the mix and brought a bunch of diseases but it was pretty much like that like ethiopia and that 300 000 year old skull”

The Kid represents the possibility of transcending pure survival and power dynamics through maintaining clemency and moral restraint, even when these choices provide no practical benefit.

“well um my view is not as dark as that i don't think evil wins out um he kills the kid the judge kills the kid but look the kid like all mortals is gonna die that's not the problem um the problem is can we extricate ourselves from the bottom of dante's inferno into a mess that we like better yes evil will still be operative there but we won't be scalping people on a regular basis”

The Kid finds a frozen Bible in the pack of a frozen couple and chooses to take it despite being illiterate, suggesting he has escaped the Judge's crushing moral gravity and is no longer a candidate for becoming a small version of the Judge.

“in the kids travels he eventually eventually encounters uh a frozen couple and these frozen couple and this their horses have a frozen bible inside their pack and he takes this now this is a very interesting symbol because the kid's illiterate so what would he do with the bible he could have taken anything he was taking gunpowder or uh lead for making shot or uh he could have taken you know any kind of implement that he found useful but instead he decided to take something that wasn't useful he took a bible that he couldn't read so i take this to mean that he's escaped the kind of crushing moral gravity of the judge”

The judge demands leadership from the Glanton gang in exchange for teaching them how to manufacture gunpowder from saltpeter and sulfur found in nature, a scene reminiscent of Faust selling his soul to the devil in Goethe's play.

“he wants leadership and that's the price he demands for telling the bedraggled uh collection of scalp hunters how to make uh gunpowder from saltpeter and sulfur that can be found in nature on a dry volcano you know that scene is very much like the scene the beginning of george's faust when faust sells his soul to the devil”

The priest/ex-seminarian in Blood Meridian, who is shot in the neck by the judge while bleeding to death, represents a figure who tried to confront evil but was defeated because he was merely human and unable to match the judge's supernatural nature.

“the judge tries to kill the priest and fails but does shoot him in the neck and the priest can't stop the bleeding i have to think this is symbolic blood all right uh the fact that he's a priest or at least was a seminarian suggests that he too has that clemency for the heathen and he's the one that does his best to confront the judge but he's merely human and can't ultimately get the job done uh the judge is the adversary”

Blood Meridian raises but doesn't answer the question posed by both the kid and the judge: whether clemency and mercy for the outcast and despised are compatible with human nature, or whether the judge represents humanity's true nature.

“the problem is can we extricate ourselves from the bottom of dante's inferno into a mess that we like better yes evil will still be operative there but we won't be scalping people on a regular basis which happens constantly”

The phrase 'we won't get fooled again' (from The Who) suggests that society can improve but not perfect itself, and the perfect is the enemy of the better—supporting McCarthy's vision of modest rather than utopian progress.

“it reminds me of that old song by the who we won't get fooled again we can improve society but we cannot perfect it and the perfect is the enemy of the better”

While Freud says civilization has its discontents, McCarthy's point is that the lack of civilization has far greater discontents—the state of nature is characterized by genocide, bloodshed, and suffering on a scale worse than civilization's problems.

“freud may be onto something when he says that civilization has its discontents this is cormac mccarthy's way of saying that the lack of civilization has far greater discontents this is his limited appalachia for civilization all right”

McCarthy's message in Blood Meridian is that you can choose between hell or purgatory—the point is to accept the limited good of civilization rather than seek impossible perfection.

“what he said what mccarthy is saying is look you can have hell or you can have the sort of purgatory we live in make the smart decision”

McCarthy suggests that when the old god of war is replaced by the new god of civilization (rational order), any trade is an improvement—from 'war is god' to 'order is god'.

“i think mccarthy is suggesting is that uh from war is god any trade you make is up so at the end when we have these guys digging these cartesian post holes turning the uh wilderness into uh a logical structure um yeah this is a a repudiation of that dismoral disorder in favor of a new god a new regime a new civilization”

The violence in Blood Meridian, including mass killing of Indians and settlers, resembles the imagery of Hieronymus Bosch's 'The Garden of Earthly Delights'—unapologetic, terrifying, and comprehensive, much like the Iliad's depiction of war.

“if you know the painting by hieronymus bosch the garden of earthly delights it has some of that terrifying imagery uh nothing is wholesome everything is covered in blood uh there's a kind of unapologetic recounting of death that reminds one of the iliad”

Money represents the abstract form of human desire and unlimited, unleashed libido—the counterfeit coin in the Kid's ether dream represents the satisfaction of false desires that are not truly good for people despite being desired.

“money turns out to be as marx put it the abstract form of human desire and what that means is that unlimited unleashed libido will generate uh the same lust for money that the kid dreams about when he's under the influence of ether and remember that he has that dream or ether hallucination of a coin counterfeiter um the counterfeit coin here i think is the satisfaction of libido it's not what's really good for you it's not what's really desirable despite the fact that people often desire it so money i think represents uh the basest and most dangerous of desires”

There is ingratitude in those who constantly criticize civilization without recognizing how much they have gained from it that they did nothing to earn—benefits like lack of intestinal worms, low infant mortality, and absence of blood feuds.

“there's a certain sort of i'm gonna put it uh ingratitude in those that are constantly criticizing without recognizing how much they've gotten from civilization that they didn't do anything for consider the fact that we don't have intestinal worms or 50 infant mortality or uh blood vendetta we haven't done anything to actually enact those our ancestors did this is something we get from civilization”

The Judge believes he allows the universe to exist by his sufferings and keeps a blank notebook in which he copies and illustrates things, thereby giving them the ability to exist, resenting anything that exists outside his ken.

“he uh only allows the universe to exist by his sufferings he has a blank notebook in which he copies down and and also illustrates some of the things he copies by doing so he gives them the ability to exist he resents the fact that there's anything outside his ken which has the nerve to come into existence um he is megalomaniacal”

In the novel's epilogue, surveyors set up Cartesian coordinates using fence posts and barbed wire to impose rational order on the open prairie, creating coherence and taming the American West.

“a team of surveyors are not just surveying the open prairie they are setting up cartesian coordinates using fence posts and barred wire and what they are doing is making rational and taming the american west”

Even though civilization is constructed as a thin crust over hell itself, that does not mean we have abolished the Judge—evil in different forms continues to operate in the modern world.

“the judge says he will never die and that's true even though we construct civilization as a a very thin crust over hell itself which is what we had to start to work with to begin with um it doesn't mean that we've abolished the judge the judge is still here his malevolence takes different forms but these i mean the violence that we see impulsively engaged in by the kid um probably has its analog in the scenes of mass violence that we see in terrorism or in school shootings”

Blood Meridian could be read as a comment on manifest destiny and American expansionism, though McCarthy's broader point is that the novel is unconcerned with 1980s political relevance and focuses on universal human patterns spanning 300,000 years.

“you could probably force a rig an anti-reagan anti-manifest destiny argument onto it and yeah he does he certainly dislikes manifest destiny except in so far as it was what's going to generate this civilization this thin crust over hell now it might have been done by either the indians or the mexicans but he just says look somebody put a crust over hell and then we should hang on to it right so uh i don't know how much it was concerned with the 1980s”

In the final confrontation, when the Judge tells the now-adult Man (the former Kid) 'you still have clemency for the heathen,' he is identifying that the Man retains some spark of humanity and compassion, which is the only thing separating human civilization from the law of the jungle.

“the judge recognizes the man as the former kid who escaped his malevolent influence and the judge says you still have clemency for the heathen and i take that to mean that the man the kid who became a man still has not abandoned all humanity has some spark of love and solidarity even with what the judge calls the heathen and this is the only thing that separates human life and human civilization from the law of the jungle”

The judge's white suit makes him stand out visually in the American desert and irises him as representing purity in an ironic sense—the novel associates whiteness with innocence, but the judge wears this color while committing genocide and other atrocities.

“it seems that since white is uh uh in the west uh generally associated with purity um it seems ironic that he should be walking around like an ice cream man and uh particularly in the american desert southwest and the two hats he wants it all um his desires are unlimited but i really don't know”

Blood Meridian shares thematic concerns with Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange: both are concerned with the problem of evil and the impossibility of medicalizing or treating evil as a religious question that can be solved through institutional means.

“the decision to make a moral choice and to move in a different direction reminds me of another 20th century novel which actually it has many of the same concerns and that would be uh anthony burgess a clockwork orange all right uh both of them are concerned with the question of evil both of them are concerned with the problem the problems that emerge from medicalizing evil or from treating evil as a religious question”

When the Kid says to the Judge 'you ain't nothing,' he is invoking Saint Augustine's definition of evil as a privation—an absence—meaning the Judge is literally a void, a vacuum, the embodiment of death and darkness.

“the kid says you ain't nothing and i take that to be a very serious very solemn statement because mccarthy draws upon so many books from the western canon i think what this draws upon is saint augustine's definition of evil which is as a privation as an absence you ain't nothing means that literally he's an absence he's a void he's a vacuum this is what death is this is what the darkness is”

When surveyors dig post holes for the fence, sparks come up from the earth and ignite small fires, symbolizing that civilization is a very thin, fragile, evanescent crust formed over the roof of hell.

“a funny kind of surreal thing is noted in this uh process of digging these post holes sparks come up when the shovels go down and they ignite small fires i take this to mean the civilization is a very thin very fragile evanescent crust that's formed over the roof of hell”

McCarthy can be extraordinarily subtle and extraordinarily terrifying, with phrases like 'death hilarious' combining words never before juxtaposed in ways that remain psychologically unforgettable.

“one of the things about mccarthy is that he can be extraordinarily subtle and also extraordinarily terrifying i mean there are scenes that here that i will never be able to get out of my subconscious that there's a point in which he says uh it's a long paragraph about the comanche raiders and the turn of phrase i remember is death hilarious now it never occurred to me that death might be hilarious”

I taught the Great Books course and finished it with McCarthy's Blood Meridian to convey the message: 'Yeah, warts and all, I prefer civilization to the absence of civilization because McCarthy scared the bejesus out of me.'

“that's part of why i when i taught the great books i used to finish my great books course with mccarthy's blood meridian saying yeah warts and all um i prefer civilization to the absence of civilization because mccarthy scared the bejesus out of me fair enough”

McCarthy's Blood Meridian is the most important American novel of the 20th century and will likely still be read in a hundred years.

“i think that this is the most important american novel of the 20th century you know there it's arguable it's debatable but i think that this has all the uh the signs of something that's still going to be read in a hundred years”

McCarthy's writing style is Faulkner-influenced but his concerns are more universal than Faulkner's, addressing universal themes like those in Dostoyevsky rather than regional themes.

“he is clearly a descendant of faulkner but i think that he has a a moral a more more universal set of concerns faulkner is i think a deeply regional writer in the way that mccarthy isn't um it's said in the uh uh this novel is set in the desert but it could be just as easily set on a whaling ship or on an ice floe uh he's talking about universal things in the way that dostoyevsky is”

The light in Blood Meridian is 'grayish'—not pitch black but not the light of the sun either, more like dusk or moonlight, appearing in the final vision of civilization imposing rational order on nature.

“i actually do um but it's a very it's a very grayish all right light okay it's a it's a a kind of a dusk or moonlight all right so it's not perhaps the light of the sun that we might all like but it's not pitch black i think the key is in the final coda where they are imposing rational order on nature”

After identifying the Judge as nothing, the Judge kills the Kid and then goes back into the saloon, dances naked, and sings that he will never die. Outside, two cowboys find a horrific scene—likely the Kid dressed in the Judge's giant white suit with his neck broken or throat cut.

“the judge can't bear that anyone should share in the special gnosis that he has and so the judge follows him out to the toilet and kills him there with his bare hands he then goes back into the saloon and dances naked and the judge dancing naked sings that he will never die simultaneously looking outside two cowboys go to the jakes they open the door and they say oh my god they're horrified by what they see uh cormac mccarthy can be very subtle and leave things very open-ended but in my view what they find is the kid dressed up in the gigantic judge's seven foot tall suit”

When the historian encounters the caged idiot James Bell in the novel, the most common interpretations suggest it represents the subconscious or unconscious element in the human mind that the Judge has externalized, though Sugrue confesses this is not fully resolved.

“the most difficult symbol in the book um i have heard some very uh heated arguments and that and i must confess i don't have a good answer but the heated arguments i have heard have been that it represents the the subconscious or the unconscious element in the human mind which the judge has externalized but i have heard equally vehement arguments to the contrary now when people become vehement particularly in the soft sciences what that means is nobody really knows right”

Interpretations suggesting the Judge is a pedophile who rapes and kills an Indian boy he sits on his leg are contested because the Judge is like a giant infant, prepubescent, hairless from head to toe—more like a giant human analog of Moby Dick than a symbol of virility.

“i don't see it that way my problem with that is the judge is like a giant infant he's prepubescent he has no body hair right so he said he's a giant 300 he's a human analog of moby dick i mean that seriously i mean he says a giant white whale happens to be a human being rather than a sea mammal and so when he's naked he's hairless from head to toe so that's why i don't see him as a symbol of virility”

The Bible and the Judge's notebook are two competing alternative books—the book of God versus the book of man—vying for supremacy in establishing the moral order of the world.

“i think that it's the it's vying and competing with the judge's notebook these are two alternative books the book of man and the book of god”

The novel depicts a clash of civilizations during the Mexican-American War period (1840s) with an epilogue set in 1878, using this historical setting to explore themes of conquest, violence, and the encounter between different cultures, none of which are presented as morally superior.

“and it's about the clash of civilizations that went on at the time of the mexican-american war right this would be the late 18th or 1840s and uh it'll give us a little epilogue at the end of 1878 when we'll meet the kid in the form of the man but the main body of the book is the kids coming of age”