The Violence Provides Insight

Eddins, Dwight. “‘Everything a Hunter and Everything Hunted’: Schopenhaur and Cormac
McCarthy’s Blood Meridian.” Critique Fall 2003: 25-33.

Dwight Eddins like so many other critics uses the violence found within Blood Meridian to shed light onto it’s characters and the relationship that they share. But in order for him to explain the unique relationships shared by McCarthy’s charters Eddins first strives to explain the nature of the violence, and comes to the conclusion that “From the beginning, Cormac McCarthy has been a master practitioner of this calculated estrangement. He dramatizes the seemingly inhuman extremes of the human condition and amid the seemingly unnatural presentness of natural landscapes even as he questions the very possibility of reconciling these discrepancies into a coherent picture(25)". Eddins’ describes the violence in Blood Meridian as something that is not unusual to the characters because it is something that, for them, has always been and will probably always be. He makes an argument based on this understanding that attributes many of the character’s problems to this world of mindless violence and how they have been forced to react to it.

The violence depicted in Blood Meridian is just as important to understanding the judge, the kid, and the narrator as anything they will say throughout the book. Understanding the violence means understanding their world, as it is plagued with violence. Thus in order to truly understand anything the judge, the kid, or the narrator says the reader must first consider the world’s effects on everything they do. For example the judge’s view that “war is God” can be seen as him detaching his emotions and rationalizing the violence around him. Eddins’ offers this view of the judge; “Only the judge among the riders actually occupies this detached aesthetic plateau vis-a-vis the unremitting violence of their existence; . . . The judge on the other hand, construes the perpetual warfare of existence alternately as an exhilarating game-. . . - and as a dance enjoyed by those who have delivered themselves ‘entire to the blood of war’(McCarthy 331)(31)". Furthermore the violence is another great aspect of how these characters are related as it seems to be the one thing that is unanimous to all of them. All the characters must deal with it and respond to it, and thus they are all inter connected. Eddins’ interpretation of the violence in Blood Meridian, and his explanation of it’s importance to every aspect of the book can provide an in-depth understanding of the world within which these characters really live. And by understanding their world the reader can begin to understand them.