The Evil and Violent West: Exterminating a Myth of Expansion

 Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy

From the copyright page: "Typography and binding design by J. K. Lambert"., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

BerlinEagle, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Sunrise, Alter of Sacrifice, Zion by Don Graham, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

I’ve wanted to read Blood Meridian for some time. However, after watching The Road at some point in my life, I was convinced that Cormac McCarthy was not for me. However, I’m glad I overcame my reluctance (especially since I went on to read a few other books from him). Where to start with this transcendent American novel. I think William S. Burroughs once said that America was not a new land, but it was old and evil. This is the kind of book that embodies that sentiment—a book that ruthlessly interrogates the mythologies of western expansion and the frontier, sharing some of the most violent practices that have rarely been accepted in the myth of westward expansion. I loved this book for so many reasons. It seems to look both forward and backward at the same time, signifying its many influences, but also being influential in itself. I loved that there were traces of other classics like Heart of Darkness and Moby Dick, yet I found myself thinking about Beloved when I read this, wondering if Toni Morrison had read this book while she was writing Beloved. Much of the violence and descriptions of blood and torture reminded me of certain scenes in Morrison’s classic. I could also see themes from other McCarthy works in this one—especially ideas about arrogance, violence, greed, and entitlement, as well as questioning the nature of evil. Furthermore, the book had this kind of magical quality, especially surrounding the judge. I found him to be such a complex and compelling character—not someone I liked necessarily, but just wondering how he gained so much authority and power, and how we wielded it. Blood Meridian is not an easy book to read, so I imagine that I will revisit it at some point. It’s also a book that I would have loved to have read in a class or in book club (although I think the book club would have to be the right one; it’s definitely not a book for everyone. After reading it, I hopped online to read about other interpretations, symbols, themes, meanings etc., and I think that having some kind of group discussion or a further format to explore the many different layers and techniques from this book would add to my understanding. I also liked that I read James Welch’s Fools Crow right before this since it acts as a kind of different perspective to the violence from Blood Meridian. Although both books deal with different incidents and groups of frontiersmen, they both looked at the expansion of America’s conquest, examining the consequences and implications, but for different people. Blood Meridian is such an important American novel (as is Fools Crow), challenging our assumptions and the history we’ve learned about manifest destiny and westward expansion.