Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
"Blood Meridian: Or, The Evening Redness in the West" is a novel by Cormac McCarthy that explores the brutal realities of violence and civilization in the American Southwest during the mid-19th century. The story follows a teenager known as "the kid," who leaves his home in Tennessee in 1849 and becomes embroiled in a gang of scalp hunters led by Captain John Joel Glanton and the enigmatic Judge Holden. This group is hired to hunt down and kill Indigenous people for bounty, highlighting the harsh and often savage imposition of what was considered "civilization" on the frontier.
As the kid navigates various violent encounters, including a horrific massacre at the hands of Comanche and the internal conflicts within the gang, the narrative delves into themes of moral struggle and the nature of evil. Judge Holden, in particular, stands out as a demonic figure representing a philosophical worldview dominated by violence and death. The novel culminates in a confrontation between the kid and the judge, with the kid ultimately unable to escape the cycle of brutality that consumes him. McCarthy's work challenges conventional narratives of Manifest Destiny, offering a stark portrayal of the moral complexities involved in the settling of the West. The novel's exploration of violence serves as a grim reflection on humanity’s darker impulses and the historical legacy of conquest.
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
First published: 1985
Type of plot: Western
Time of work: The mid-1800’s
Locale: The Southwestern United States and Northern Mexico
Principal Characters
The kid , the unnamed protagonist, who joins a band of professional scalp huntersCaptain John Joel Glanton , the leader of the bandJudge Holden , his mysterious, almost supernatural second-in-commandTobin , the kid’s closest companion, a former priest who has become a scalperAngel Trias , the governor of the Mexican state of Chihuahua, who hires the scalpersToadvine ,David Brown ,Bathcat ,Grannyrat , andBlack John Jackson , members of the band
The Novel
Based on historical events and actual personages, Blood Meridian: Or, The Evening Redness in the West recounts the exploits of a brutal band of professional scalp hunters who, employed by local governments in the American Southwest and in Mexico, murder Indians for bounty. The novel emphasizes the violent manner in which “civilization” is imposed on a savage land and thus challenges accepted notions concerning Manifest Destiny and the settling of the West.
McCarthy’s protagonist is “the kid,” an unnamed boy who runs away from home in Tennessee and heads west, arriving in Nacogdoches, Texas, in 1849. Although only sixteen years old, the kid is an experienced fighter, a survivor in a vicious world. Moving on to Bexar, Texas, he is offered a position with a Captain White, who is leading an expedition into Sonora, Mexico. White argues that the Mexicans are a degenerate race, deserving of conquest, and that the land is godless and needful of salvation. White proves to be mad, but the kid accompanies the group. After days in the desert, they are attacked and slaughtered by a Comanche war party; the kid is among the few survivors of the exceedingly brutal massacre. Finally reaching a town, he is arrested by the local authorities and sent with other remnants of the group to Chihuahua City, where they are put to work cleaning filth from gutters in the street.
Into Chihuahua City rides a party of professional scalp hunters, led by Captain John Joel Glanton, with the monstrous, mysterious Judge Holden as second-in-command. Holden arranges freedom for those prisoners who wish to join the scalpers, and the kid takes the offer. Glanton has been hired by Angel Trias, governor of the state of Chihuahua, to eradicate Indians in the vicinity; the fee set is one hundred dollars for each scalp brought in. Thus, the small gang of men sets out into the Mexican territory, searching for prey. Roving through the wild land, the scalp hunters find and slaughter stray groups of Apaches—men, women, and children—in addition to occasional Mexicans whose scalps might pass for Indian. A war party then catches their trail and pursues them in a series of skirmishes back to Chihuahua City, where they collect their money and proceed to take over the town in drunken riot. From that point, they ride from city to city, bringing violence, death, and horror with them wherever they go.
In Jesus Maria, Mexico, the citizens of the town turn against the rampaging gang, kill several of them, and force them to flee. They are soon hired by the governor of Sonora and again set out on their bloody business, murdering almost without distinction whatever unlucky wayfarer they encounter. Glanton’s gang is then attacked and chased by Mexican soldiers under the command of General Elias; several of the band are killed, and the survivors are forced to draw arrows to determine who will have horses to ride through the desert. The kid is one of those who escape, and after a torturous journey arrives in the town of Santa Cruz, where he again joins Glanton.
The gang goes on to Tucson, losing more men on the way, and then heads for California, taking with them new recruits, including an idiot boy kept in a cage. Reaching the Colorado River, they take over a ferry crossing, killing a number of Yuma Indians in the process and enslaving others to work for them. Finally the Yumas rebel, attack the scalp hunters, and massacre most of them, including Glanton himself. The kid, although wounded in the leg, again escapes and later meets other survivors in the desert. There he is encouraged by Tobin, a former priest, to kill Judge Holden—who, Tobin insists, will kill them if the kid does not. The kid, however, is unwilling to ambush the judge. He and Tobin are later rescued from certain death in the desert by a wandering band of Dieguenos Indians and find their way to San Diego, where they are imprisoned. It is now 1850; the kid has been with Glanton’s gang for less than a year.
The last chapters of the book jump forward twenty-eight years, during which time the kid—now known as “the man”—has wandered, an outcast, through the West. He has tried to renounce killing, though he is sometimes forced into it. In 1878, he enters Fort Griffin, Texas, once the main supply point for buffalo hides but now a veritable boneyard, on the brink of extinction. There he once again meets the judge, unchanged over the years, and there he is apparently killed by the judge in an outhouse behind the saloon, his death horrible enough to frighten even the most hardened witnesses of violence in that dark and brutal land. The book ends with the judge dancing in a celebration of death.
The Characters
The kid is the novel’s primary protagonist, although, like Ishmael in Moby Dick: Or, The Whale (Herman Melville’s 1851 classic, echoed throughout Blood Meridian), he disappears for considerable periods in the narrative. Although he is almost instinctively capable of violence and appears to be undisturbed by the brutality of the life he pursues, McCarthy sets him apart from the other men of Glanton’s gang. The reader is never given insight into the kid’s thoughts; he must be judged solely by his actions and occasional statements. Nevertheless, the book does dramatize its concept of moral struggle through the kid. Judge Holden chooses him as disciple or victim from the first time he sees him, and their final encounter, though delayed for almost thirty years, is, according to the judge, predetermined. In the judge’s words, only the kid, of all the group, holds back from giving himself fully to the act of bloodletting. Throughout, the kid performs acts of minor mercy, which the other members of the group refuse to do. Yet he is never able to confront the judge. After the massacre at Yuma Crossing, the kid seems increasingly haunted, finally sated with murder and gore. Still, when the judge approaches him in the Fort Griffin saloon, the kid, now the man, continues to hold back, refusing either to join the judge or stand against him. His subsequent death seems a consequence of his failure to make a choice.
Judge Holden is the most intriguing, fascinating, and horrifying of this appalling band of killers. Based on a historical figure, he is well over six feet tall, monstrous in build, and completely hairless. Yet the judge seems almost supernatural, invested with marvelous powers and knowledge, which makes his numerous acts of carnage all the more terrible. Indeed, McCarthy strongly suggests that Judge Holden embodies a greater evil than the other men of the band, that he is, in fact, demonic, a “sootysouled rascal” who waits to snare the lives and hearts of those who, like the kid, live ambivalent lives. The judge is aptly titled, for he does render verdicts and enacts punishments. Larger than life, he espouses a philosophy of the world that reduces existence to war and exacts violence and death, but he himself seems beyond death, an eternal figure in a desolate and bloody land.
John Joel Glanton comes from historical record, his exploits as a scalp hunter and outlaw profiteer found in dozens of accounts of the Old West. McCarthy’s version of Glanton accords in detail with these accounts. Glanton is, in McCarthy’s telling, a mad captain pursuing the Indian as Ahab does the white whale. Glanton’s madness, though, is different from that of Captain White, the leader of the expedition into Mexico described in the early parts of the novel. Glanton is shrewd, a tough and hard-bitten soldier. His murderous chase of the Indian has metaphysical overtones, as if he, like Ahab, is demanding that God reveal itself. Although the judge is second in command to him, Glanton seems at times manipulated by Holden; in his times of raving, only the judge can calm and quiet him. Glanton faces his death without fear, spitting in the presence of his killer and challenging, “Hack away you mean red nigger.”
Of the other members of the gang, several stand out. Tobin, the former priest, is a paradoxical figure who speaks of the presence of God but participates in the most awful atrocities. He acts as moral adviser to the kid, warning him from the judge and advising him in the matter of survival. Toadvine, a horse thief whose ears have been cropped and forehead branded in punishment, is one of the first men the kid meets in Texas. They engage in a brutal fight in the mud outside a saloon but later become companions in Glanton’s gang. Although Toadvine survives the Yuma Crossing massacre, he is later hanged in San Diego along with David Brown, another scalper. John Jackson is the one identified black member of the gang. Shortly after the kid joins Glanton’s gang, this Jackson kills a white member, also named John Jackson, for his racial slurs; the black Jackson is the first to die in the Yuma Crossing massacre. Although most of the scalp hunters are identified by name and personality, they are largely secondary, although distinctly drawn, characters in the novel.
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