tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6468526068381826908.post2040372206072030469..comments2009-08-24T21:48:50.170-07:00Comments on McCarthy Hearings: Morality, Satan, and the Bible (BLOOD MERIDIAN)Petehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04512568500155565366noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6468526068381826908.post-16051129344730518782009-08-11T12:59:29.048-07:002009-08-11T12:59:29.048-07:00"With darkness one soul rose wondrously from ..."With darkness one soul rose wondrously from among the new slain dead and stole away in the moonlight....stinking like some reeking issue of the incarnate of war herself."<br /><br />He obviously knows what he has become but this book is written with a very post-modern attitude. His father quoted from forgotten poets and the kid runs away at age 14. We do not know anything about his upbringing other than his father (the schoolmaster) liked to drink. "He lies in drink, he quotes from poets whose names are now lost". I think he is the product of his own undaunted actions in a violent, vicious world. <br /><br />Example: In the wild bunch there are many moments when people make their hand into a gun than act like they are shooting someone. The children even in the film do this because violence is so prevalent through out that you cant escape it. This is the same concept in Blood Meridian for the kid because he has no family by which he can remember. This makes the kid seem more shaped by things of the world around him. When McCarthy describes the kid he says that all the kids history could been seen by his appearance, meaning that he has most likely had a hard life up to this point.<br /><br /> "He watches, pale and unwashed. He can't read nor write and in him broods already a taste for mindless violence. All history present in that visage, the child the father of man". So in fact, McCarthy does refer to him as "the child" on the first page. "kid" does not have a negative tone whatsoever, it has a tone of innocence and youthfulness. This is a historical based book, McCarthy does not want us to have positive thoughts about the kid, however he wants us to realize the significance of the times.Paulie Qhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13461541633476954464noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6468526068381826908.post-10880204416470628862009-08-11T08:00:52.510-07:002009-08-11T08:00:52.510-07:00Isn't the kid following a western convention o...Isn't the kid following a western convention of implying youth like "Billy the Kid"? If you consider Billy the Kid for a minute, he's also an outlaw, but the hero of his own story. In fact, of all the people that played a role in the story of his life, his is the only name that has lived on in modern memory. I think McCarthy's not naming the kid was so that either the reader could see the kid as representing his/her interest in the story or because the kid really wasn't the main character, so keeping his identity generic would imply that he was not the protagonist.sarahhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10580793786388425812noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6468526068381826908.post-19272976988068353302009-08-10T20:23:46.635-07:002009-08-10T20:23:46.635-07:00I do no believe that the kid was innocent. The on...I do no believe that the kid was innocent. The only time that he shows compassion is when a member of his gang was in need. I do not really feel that he was helping the people in need because he was a caring person, I feel that he felt an obligation to help them because they were in the same gang. I think this was part of the kid's moral code. <br /><br />McCarthy does not give much backgroung info on the kid. We do not know his past. We do not know why he ran away. Was he abused in some way? McCarthy does not describe the kid in a way to make me believe that he had any type of horrible events in his life. If McCarthy gave any indication of this, it would be easier to feel bad for the kid or to try to think of him as an innocent child who ended up in a bad place. The kid knows what he is doing and his choices lead me to belive that he is not just an innocent child. <br /><br />The way McCarthy calls him the kid carries a negavie tone. Kid is something you call a young person when you do not have good feelings toward them, like "he is just such a bad kid". If McCarthy wanted us to have positive feelings about him, I would think that he would have named him or at least referred to him as the child.Tinahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16087495149066278362noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6468526068381826908.post-7194926089170004822009-08-10T07:55:53.161-07:002009-08-10T07:55:53.161-07:00This is solid discussion, of the kind I envisioned...This is solid discussion, of the kind I envisioned when I set up the blog. I don't know that I agree that the kid is not an innocent. (Is that a triple negative? Bonus points for me). I was struck by his general absence through the majority of the middle of the novel, and took this to allude to the notion that the silence of decent people allows evil to thrive. It allows us to construct distance between the events of the text and the kid perhaps. It's a rorschach test--do we envision the kid's lusty participation in the events he's not mentioned in, or do we imagine him with a sort of dutiful revulsion at the events that swirl around him? <br />I think I agree with both Paul and Rebecca in their response to the novel. Like Rebecca, I found myself forcing myself to finish--there were times where I couldn't read any more horror (and I mean horror in the literal sense--the book made me repeatedly anxious and sad this time through, even though and perhaps because I had read it before). Having said that, I do find myself tremendously impressed that a text can have that effect on me; there are moments that are sublime in their perfect encapsulation of the worst in human beings. The judge's character, like Milton's Satan from Paradise Lost, is at once abhorrent and charismatic--he manages to be appealing and revolting at once.Petehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04512568500155565366noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6468526068381826908.post-52790753599785495132009-08-10T05:19:35.839-07:002009-08-10T05:19:35.839-07:00While I can't agree with Paul about loving Blo...While I can't agree with Paul about loving Blood Meridian (I had to force myself to finish it) I do see some of the points that he's pointed out in this post.<br /><br />I disagree, however, about the Kid being a manifestation of man in his innocence. I think we are not told what he is thinking because like in All the Pretty Horses, McCarthy is using indirect characterization to allow the reader to form their own opinion of what each character is like. There are actually huge sections where the Kid is not even mentioned.<br />I do not see the Kid as the picture of innocence is because of his inability to read of write. This is something that would not have been uncommon in the 1840's. He is brutal, primal, and knowingly immoral. He puts little store in God and knows what he's doing is wrong, as can be discerned in his discussion with the hermit on pages 18 and 19.<br />"Lost ye way in the dark, said the old man. He stirred the fire, standing slender tusks of bone up out of the ashes.<br />The kid didn't answer.<br />The old man swung his head back and forth. The way of the transgressor is hard. God made this world, but he didn't make it to suit everbody, did he?<br />I don't believe he much had me in mind."<br /><br />I do see the judge as Satan, although not an allusion, but the physical embodiment. He does not age, he is the tempter in the desert (despite the fact that nothing about the Kid is even vaguely Christlike). He wants to be overlord or "suzerain" (p. 198) of the earth and all within it. Everywhere he goes death and destruction follow. He is evil incarnate.Rebecca Sullivanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08186895109323247938noreply@blogger.com