Depravity and Destruction in Blood Meridian Essay -- Blood Meridian Es

Depravity and Destruction in Blood crest Cormac McCarthys Blood aggrandisement is a passionate, lyrical, and ugly fabrication of crime and destruction of life in the grey-headed West. It is a story of a hellish journey where force play and corruption are currency in a life of capital punishment and treachery. Contrasting scenes of scenic beauty, poetically described by McCarthy, are negated by his gruesome accounts of despicable scenes of human cruelty in the examination of evil. homogeneous all of McCarthys earlier wises, Blood top of the inning (1985) had a lukewarm comer to the literary world in the sense of sales and publicity, in secern due to McCarthys own aversion to self-promotion (Woodward 28). Yet critics and scholars were captivated by the empty violence of the story and its tale of deceit, genocide, and gruesome realities set around the US-Mexico knell in the 1840s (James 31). Blood Meridian, McCarthys fifth book, was received with a variety of reactions from critics. Terence Moran, though finding McCarthys writing to be "evocative," believed the author "failed in Blood Meridian to retell a simple Western in his haunting, original vowelise" (37). Conversely, Steven Shaviro wrote, "Cormac McCarthy, the solitary poet of his exultation, is our greatest living author...this novel manifests a sublime visionary business office that is matched only by a still more ferocious caustic remark" (144). This novel, due to its candid narration of barbarous events, prevails as one of a few books which challenge traditional molds of literature. Not a story of the recoverable antagonist or the helpless victim, Blood Meridian blurs the lines of sanctity and depravity in this lawless and demoralized land. This examination of the most unimaginable e... ...stence in a world of depravity that seems foreign to the reader, but is all similarly normal in the world created in the book (147). As the novel tells of the kids appa lling journey, much of the action seen is centered around Judge Holden. The mysterious, cancerous man varies in interpretation from godlike to child-like. Many critics have commented on Holdens manipulative power, ability to remain unchanged by years, and his appearance in several places at what seems the same time. Many lines are drawn amongst Judge Holden and the devil (Wallach 125). Though not a literary triumph in terms of book sales and overall recognition, Cormac McCarthys Blood Meridian tells and intriguing story in a light in which the Old West is rarely seen. Conscienceless violence, devil-like characters, and breathtaking scenery fill this novel uninhibited by morality or rectitude.