Blood Meridian -- a Novel by Cormac McCarthy
The human animal has stalked the earth for millennia, feeding on knowledge and growing in cunning. It has refined its methods of survival to spectacular heights. Yet, an incurable illness resides within its being. Clothed in the veneer of civilization, the human animal fails to overcome its violent nature. Like the scorpion ferrying the frog, it must obey a deeper rule. Never at peace, the species has sought new and more scintillating experience. Its big brain is in search of more; more power, more territory, more recognition, more. Regardless of the facade, its motivation wells from a deep insatiable instinct to reign. The human animal must conquer, defeat and control. Negotiation is loss of power and the thirst for power is at the core of the creature.
Does this portrayal seem cynical? Perhaps not to author Cormac McCarthy, as he penned his book "Blood Meridian." The depravity of human nature revels in disregarded violence within its pages. The characters slog through blood as if it were mud after a rain, and collect souvenirs of human body parts, animal flesh, and images too horrible to erase in a day. McCarthy introduces his main character, "the kid," as "pale and thin," "he can neither read nor write and in him broods already a taste for mindless violence" (3). The reader quickly learns that "the kid" is a virtual orphan -- his mother dead in childbirth and his father a drunk. His prospects slight, "the kid" runs away from home at the age of 14. He is without a plan, or notion of one, yet his tastes lead him from one violent situation into another, to which he responds without purpose or conscience. "The Kid" is a vacuum, an empty animal loosed upon the world without caution or warning.
The reader observes the indifference of life toward the living and dead as "The Kid" encounters primordial men who would beat him to death, only to befriend him. "The Kid" describes the movement of his life simply when he says, "I been everywhere. This is just one more place" (331). Indeed, the reader survives hideous carnage with "the Kid" only to encounter...
Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses Cormac McCarthy is to some degree a very distinguished writer of a normally cheap genre of fiction: as Brewton claims, McCarthy's goal in All the Pretty Horses was to "tell authentic westerns using the basic formulas of the genre while avoiding the false sentimentality, uncritical nostalgia, and unearned happy endings that often characterize the genre in its popular forms." (133). But what kind of representation
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The only women appearances in the novel are isolate and the characters are all whores that have no precise role in the story. Indians also make their appearance felt in the story, but none of them has a significant role. Blood Meridian has nothing to do with being a revisionist western, as it does not attempt to present people with a revised picture of old westerns. It is purely anti-western,
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