Introduction
Blood Meridian is a compelling novel. Reading it is really a challenge since it gave me no concession, and yet it was clearly an aesthetic experience what I felt throughout the pages, pages that conflated a beautiful and doomed landscape. The novel occurs in the XIX century, on the Mexican-American border. However, its setting resembles more a disastrous scenario where a nightmare is continually played on. This is not to say that the book is extremely dramatic; though full of violence and death, though hideous and ghastly, the way Cormac McCarthy depicts its world is totally anticlimatic. I was truly moved by it.
This long dissertation strives to give a clear notion of my reading, of the reflection I made of the novel and on the basis of secondary sources. It is a personal reading of the novel, and in that sense its contents and conclusions are temporary.
I believe that the novel allowed me to reflect upon History –in general terms, as well as reflecting upon a particular event in American history-, Myth –considering the conquest of the West as a myth, artistic representation, and violence–, of course. All those topics are intertwined; all influence one another to create a particular work of art.
I mainly used the Modern Library 2001 version of the novel. Besides the novel, the book Notes on Blood Meridian by John Sepich and the compilation edited by Harold Bloom on Cormac McCarthy were particularly important for the paper. As part of my argumentation I referenced a large number of works by Harold Bloom, Dan Moos, Dana Philips, Stephen Shaviro, Sara Spurgeon, and a lecture by Professor M. Hungerford. I supplemented those with additional sources that gave a theoretical basis for the essay: Roland Barthes, Maurice Blanchot, Hélène Pouliquen, Susan Sontag, Simone Weil, Jane Tompkins, Mircea Eliade, among others. I should also mention Bakhtin‘s tenets and Walter Benjamin‘s theses on the philosophy of history which were considerably important to the overall work.
My intention is to draw attention to some aspects of McCarthy‘s work, but specially to prompt readers to go to them. I believe McCarthy has produced one of the most valuable novels in our time, so I expect this work would be a reason to approach it.