You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when god made man the devil was at his elbow
Harold Bloom didn’t hail Blood Meridian as one of the greatest works of the 20th century for nothing. Reviews are abound on the epic qualities of the novel—many have compared it to the likes of Moby-Dick and the Inferno--, on the relentless, brutal, yet singularly poetic prose McCarthy uses, on the apocalyptic darkness the story subsumes one into, and on the antithetically Biblical rhetoric that culminates in the devil dancing in the end, claiming that he will never die.
Of these I shall not mention, but I find some significance toward the end of novel, where the kid is running away from the Judge, running, and not killing him. The kid, ‘the child the father of the man’, himself both a killer and a child with a conscience (for he refused to kill his own comrade where others had left him to), could not bring himself to commit the one murder that would have mattered, when he had wantonly murdered so many others who did not matter:
The expriest was at the kid’s side. Do him, he hissed.
The kid took the pistol but the expriest clung to his arm whispering and when the kid pulled away he spoke aloud, such was his fear.
You’ll get no second chance lad. Do it. He is naked. He is unarmed. God’s blood, do you think you’ll best him any other way? Do it, lad. Do it for the love of God. Do it or I swear your life is forfeit.
To me this is McCarthy’s expression of the utter hold evil has over man. If we accept the Judge’s arguments that violence is inherent in man, and if we view the Judge as the devil and therefore the epitome of violence itself, then what the kid refused to kill was probably himself. And if we accept that the kid was killed by the Judge in the end, then what we have here is that man refuses to kill the evil in himself, an evil that eventually consumes him in the end.
Very good read, pristine prose covered with blood, human entrails, and the triumph of natural evil.
There were fireworks yesterday to celebrate the coming of 2007. From the 24th floor I heard the neighbourhood erupt as children screamed happy new year at the top of their lungs, the way I did last time when I was young. But now: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/fun/shermans.asp
(See the 31st Dec one)
Of these I shall not mention, but I find some significance toward the end of novel, where the kid is running away from the Judge, running, and not killing him. The kid, ‘the child the father of the man’, himself both a killer and a child with a conscience (for he refused to kill his own comrade where others had left him to), could not bring himself to commit the one murder that would have mattered, when he had wantonly murdered so many others who did not matter:
The expriest was at the kid’s side. Do him, he hissed.
The kid took the pistol but the expriest clung to his arm whispering and when the kid pulled away he spoke aloud, such was his fear.
You’ll get no second chance lad. Do it. He is naked. He is unarmed. God’s blood, do you think you’ll best him any other way? Do it, lad. Do it for the love of God. Do it or I swear your life is forfeit.
To me this is McCarthy’s expression of the utter hold evil has over man. If we accept the Judge’s arguments that violence is inherent in man, and if we view the Judge as the devil and therefore the epitome of violence itself, then what the kid refused to kill was probably himself. And if we accept that the kid was killed by the Judge in the end, then what we have here is that man refuses to kill the evil in himself, an evil that eventually consumes him in the end.
Very good read, pristine prose covered with blood, human entrails, and the triumph of natural evil.
There were fireworks yesterday to celebrate the coming of 2007. From the 24th floor I heard the neighbourhood erupt as children screamed happy new year at the top of their lungs, the way I did last time when I was young. But now: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/fun/shermans.asp
(See the 31st Dec one)
1 Comments:
Lend me the book some day. Thanks.
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