Introduction
Blood Meridian is a coming of age story set in the Wild West of 19th century North America. The book initially refers to the main character as the Kid, but ends the story by referring to him as the Man. The Kid is born in the East of the United States with a drunken schoolmaster as a father. At the age of 14, he possesses innocent eyes but also a “brooding taste for mindless violence”. He divests himself from the past, moves West, and eventually joins a gang of scalp hunters. This gang contracts with local Mexican governments to collect the scalps of marauding Apache Indians, but they also kill the people of local Mexican towns, American civilians moving west, and peaceful Indians.
The other main character is the Wild West itself. An otherworldly character named Judge Holden embodies the worldview of the Wild West and attempts to persuade the Gang to accept it through orations that are sometimes comparable to sermons and other times comparable to academic lectures.
The Wild West is unique because never again will there be a terrain “So wild and barbarous to try whether the stuff of creation may be shaped to man’s will or whether his own heart is another kind of clay.” In less artistic language, the Wild West is uniquely capable of testing whether human nature can change. Early in the story, a hermit asserts that the Devil was at God’s elbow during the creation of man. In addition, he claims that although the human heart can be known, the Kid should not look into the darkness of his own heart. By the end of the story, however, the Kid becomes the Man after he acts with compassion—a capacity that the Kid possessed in limited ways earlier in the story.
A Parable of Two Sons
The Judge tells a parable in the ruins of an Indian tribe that efficiently describes his world view. A man lives in the wilderness with his wife and son. A visitor meets the father; the father attempts to cheat him; and the visitor provides a lecture on how he is a “Loss to God and man alike and would remain so until he took his brother into his heart as he would take himself.” The son supports this message, and the father repents and swears that the visitor and son are correct. However, the Father kills the man in secret and then lies to his family about it. The wife makes a tombstone to mourn the visitor.
As the father lay dying, he admits his crime to his son. This son destroys the tombstone and scatters the bones of the visitor. He then becomes a killer of men. As a “rider” to the story, the Judge introduces the young wife of the visitor who bears a son after the visitor’s death. This second son possesses a false and speculative history of his father.
The parable concludes by saying that sons are heirs to their father’s death more than their property. In addition, the Judge states that the second son is “Broken before a frozen God and will never find his way.” Unlike the first son, the second does not understand the “Small mean ways that tempered the man in life.” At the end of the book, the author introduces a decedent of the visitor, and this descendant is also a killer of men.
The point of the parable appears to be that the audience should acknowledge the historical law which the Judge describes throughout the book as the predatory culling of the weak and the love of games played for stakes. To borrow a phrase from the Judge used in another part of the book, the inheritance of violence in human nature endures. To answer the question proposed at the beginning of the book, the heart of man cannot change.
The Primacy of Historical Law
Judge Holden believes historical law subverts moral law because moral law cannot be proven by any ultimate test while an ultimate test exists for historical law. The ultimate test for historical law is both the ultimate trade and ultimate game: war. War supersedes views of the combatants on equity an rectitude. In addition, a “larger will” makes an irrevocable selection between two competing wills during war, and this selection is the truest form of divination. At the end of the book, the Judge adds to this argument by saying that the God of Vengeance an God of Compassion are silent and will remain silent. In other words, the larger will expresses its preferences exclusively through the outcome of conflict.
The Judge elaborates on his view of historical law throughout the book. He states that observation is a requirement for occurrence, and that anything that exists without his knowledge “Exists without his consent.” In a description of giant animal bone discovered in the desert, he also states “The mystery is that there is no mystery.” The Judge, therefore, seeks to expand his knowledge as a means of reducing the autonomy of others and denies the existence of any natural order that cannot be discovered.
The Kid Becomes a Man
The Kid becomes the Man when he rejects the arguments of the Judge and shows compassion to an elderly women by offering to escort her from a dangerous place. There is no conflict here, no test of wills, and no culling of the weak. The elderly women is similar to a weak man that Judge expresses contempt for as he attempts to convert the Man to his worldview one last time—both the elderly women and the pathetic man are unable to exert their will onto others.
At the climax of this book, the Kid becomes the Man when he accepts a moral law and acts on it. In the outworking of the climax, however, Judge Holden appears to murder the Man in an outhouse. After the murder, he then proceeds to dance, which the book metaphorically associates with violence, and claim that he will never die. In my view, this climax and outworking propose that the acceptance of moral law is good even if the historical law ultimately overcomes it. It also illustrates how war is the truest form of divination: The Kid dies forgotten in an outhouse while the Judge endures. This is a dark assessment of the human condition that also appears in other works by Cormac McCarthy.
Conclusion
The Wild West was both the meridian and evening of a environment where violence is the primary means to resolve conflict. It therefore provides unique insights into human nature. The book seems to be a inversion of the argument in Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. Instead of of an argument for moral law based on the human tendency to appeal to fairness, Blood Meridian argues for historical law based on the human tendency towards violence and the ability of violence to supersede any other argument. Blood Meridian also takes a firm stance on the perfectibility of human nature: Although it can be perfected in a limited way, the perfection is irrelevant in the face of historical law.
This is not a book that I would like to read again, but I’m glad I read it. The author does a great job of describing the rhythm of the Wild West by beautifully describing the geography with interjections of horrific violence.
The authors assessment of the human condition is dark…. The next book I read will probably be on the lighter side.