Bloody Brilliant - Violence and the Judge in Blood Meridian

Wesley Bingham

Dr. Spurgeon

ENGL 4301

10/15/2013

Bloody Brilliant

Survival in the harsh world of the old west was no easy task. There was death all around, nobody to really trust, and an environment that was just as cruel as the Glanton Gang. You had to kill or be killed back then and there was no real law and order to prevent killing without good cause. The government even paid some men to kill others; this was the way of the west in the mid-1800s; A time when cults were paid to commit mass murder of entire villages of Indians. Cormac McCarthy uses extreme violence and war mentality found in Blood Meridian to break the misconception of the 20th century cinematic cowboy, and show his readers the truth about the brutal and inhumane nature of many of the people who lived back then.

One of the more horrific acts depicted throughout the novel is the Glanton Gang killing Indians and collecting their scalps which they would later trade off to the government for money. This demonstrates just how evil men could be back then, but it also shows how corrupt even the government was. "Adopted from an actual episode dating from the late 1840's, when the Mexican government paid American mercenaries for episodes of slaughter and mayhem" (Parini 180). Parini shows us here that the things described in the book are not entirely fictitious and are in fact based, at least in part, on true events and historical figures. It means that McCarthy's story is a fairly accurate depiction of the way life was in the old west. People like Glanton and his gang were remorseless murderers who slaughtered entire families for profit. "He took the skinning knife from his belt and stepped where the old woman lay and took up her hair... and passed the blade of the knife about her skull and ripped away the scalp" (McCarthy 98). This excerpt from the novel shows us just how cruel Glanton and his gang were and how excruciatingly detailed McCarthy can be when showing the gangs heartlessness. This image of a man butchering an innocent Indian woman for no other reason than profit shows us the true nature of humans back then and how far they would go to expand their wealth.

Throughout the book there is an innumerable amount of meaningless murders, but the victims are not all Indians, There are a number of examples of cruelty towards nature, but the most disturbing is towards the end of the novel when we see the dancing bear killed. "He was holding his chest and a thin foam of blood swung from his jaw and he began to totter and to cry like a child and he took a few steps, dancing, and crashed to the boards" (McCarthy 326). McCarthy shows the bear dying like a human itself. This was not only a bad time of human on human violence but even more so of human violence against nature and animals. "The unnatural acts here are many--nature as captive, forced to dance on a stage, crying like a child, its death as the shedding of blood without meaning or significance" (Spurgeon 1). At least we have one, if a grotesquely evil, reason for killing other humans in the novel which is profit/ Killing the bear was done for absolutely no reason which further shows the inhumane cruelty of some westerners during his time.

We are taken on this journey through Blood Meridian by The Kid, McCarthy's nameless protagonist. We as readers are there for his entire life, from beginning to end and we see him grow from a boy with a heart for violence into a full grown kill. At the end of the book when the kid has grown up and is killed by the Judge. McCarthy gives him the only anonymous death. We get no details or visuals of his death. Shortly before the killing, Holden remarks that the Kid was a traitor to Glanton's band and it's principles in having shown clemency for the heathen" (Sepich 1). The rest of the