A General Analysis Provides Insight Into Characters

Bowers, James. Reading Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. Boise State University Press, 1999.

This book is simply James Bowers’ explanations and simple interpretations of the characters and situations found within Blood Meridian. He makes no claim to any central idea for his book, and it seems that he follows the journey a reader might only having more information on hand. Of McCarthy Bowers says; “McCarthy’s narrative constants include the vanishing rural South, the dad-to-day struggle for existence, a world bereft of redemption, and the primacy of nature. A fascination with primal energies leads him to suffuse his work with crime and violent death(6)". Bowers divides his reading into sections that include: A Re-Envisioning the West:A Residue of Nameless Rage, The Kid, the Judge, and a “Taste for Mindless Violence”, Glanton, Holden, and the “Formal Agenda of an Absolute Destiny”, The Yuma Massacre: “A Ritual Includes the Letting of Blood”, and Conclusion. This work as a whole has no central argument, it simply makes observations as the reading through Blood Meridian progresses.

While no central argument exists within this book many points are made by James Bowers that can be used to understand the nature of the characters, their philosophies, and their relationships with each other. Furthermore Bowers emphasizes at the beginning that understanding the history of the taming of the west can help to shed light on McCarthy’s rendering of that history and the characters he placed within it. Of this history Bowers says; “The primary fiction of the American frontier - that freedom and individualism is gained by going west - is reduced to existential nothingness. The wilderness, rather than granting spiritual purification, renders characters demonic. Violence does not regenerate but warps the human heart(8)". He suggests that the violence experienced by the characters can be an explanation for their twisted morals and values, and the prevalence of this violence is what leads the judge to believe that war is inevitable and must therefore be embraced. Regarding this violence and how important it is to understanding the characters of Blood Meridian, Bowers explains the relationship between the kid and judge as this; “And because the kid finally refuses to worship this deity, the novel’s central relationship, that between the kid and the judge, concludes with a mortal judgement(12)". Bowers even makes mention of the judge’s mastery of words and the fact that this skill allows him to control and create his own end. The judge’s doctrine is surmised as “words master meaning - the jargon of the legal profession, commerce, and Manifest Destiny need to be fathomed in order to hold ‘authority’ and be heeded. But with the exception of Tobin, and perhaps the mature kid at novel’s end, all McCarthy’s characters are enslaved by the power of words(27)". The importance of understanding the kid or the judge and their relationship is just as important as understanding their different rhetorical styles, especially when approaching the ethical significance of their interwoven relationships with the narrator and the reader.