Blood Meridian
Ratings346
Average rating4.1
This was a heavy read at the beginning, I found myself having to revise certain chapters just to understand what was really going on, but it got a lot easier to parse as I got used to the style of McCarthy's prose. It's really hard to look at other media about the "wild west" now without thinking it's romanticized, I've never seen such a brutal take on it before reading this.
My favourite aspect of the whole book was the judge as this slow-burn antagonist, I really like how he overshadows Glanton as the true evil, an actual representation of the devil. I also thought the conflict near the end was poignant, with the kid not developing into this embodiment of war that the judge had expected him to be, not that he became a pacifist but he kind of shook off the gratuitous killing that he had participated in almost all his life.
At first I thought this was a somewhat optimistic rebuttal that went against the judge's view of the world (and I think McCarthy's as well), but after thinking about it and re-reading the epilogue, I believe the book is actually trying to say that that a person's primal desire for warfare is just laying dormant beneath the facade of law and order we've built for ourselves. It's buried under various checks and balances keeping it at bay, but in areas of the world where those are eroded or non-existent, people do truly awful things to each other as if by their very nature. I feel like "The Road" ended on a similar note, where on the surface it seemed a little hopeful (with the child finding a new family to travel with), but the horrors of that world remained, they didn't exactly go away and the world was still doomed all the same.
This was a heavy read at the beginning, I found myself having to revise certain chapters just to understand what was really going on, but it got a lot easier to parse as I got used to the style of McCarthy's prose. It's really hard to look at other media about the "wild west" now without thinking it's romanticized, I've never seen such a brutal take on it before reading this.
My favourite aspect of the whole book was the judge as this slow-burn antagonist, I really like how he overshadows Glanton as the true evil, an actual representation of the devil. I also thought the conflict near the end was poignant, with the kid not developing into this embodiment of war that the judge had expected him to be, not that he became a pacifist but he kind of shook off the gratuitous killing that he had participated in almost all his life.
At first I thought this was a somewhat optimistic rebuttal that went against the judge's view of the world (and I think McCarthy's as well), but after thinking about it and re-reading the epilogue, I believe the book is actually trying to say that that a person's primal desire for warfare is just laying dormant beneath the facade of law and order we've built for ourselves. It's buried under various checks and balances keeping it at bay, but in areas of the world where those are eroded or non-existent, people do truly awful things to each other as if by their very nature. I feel like "The Road" ended on a similar note, where on the surface it seemed a little hopeful (with the child finding a new family to travel with), but the horrors of that world remained, they didn't exactly go away and the world was still doomed all the same.
This was a heavy read at the beginning, I found myself having to revise certain chapters just to understand what was really going on, but it got a lot easier to parse as I got used to the style of McCarthy's prose. It's really hard to look at other media about the "wild west" now without thinking it's romanticized, I've never seen such a brutal take on it before reading this.
My favourite aspect of the whole book was the judge as this slow-burn antagonist, I really like how he overshadows Glanton as the true evil, an actual representation of the devil. I also thought the conflict near the end was poignant, with the kid not developing into this embodiment of war that the judge had expected him to be, not that he became a pacifist but he kind of shook off the gratuitous killing that he had participated in almost all his life.
At first I thought this was a somewhat optimistic rebuttal that went against the judge's view of the world (and I think McCarthy's as well), but after thinking about it and re-reading the epilogue, I believe the book is actually trying to say that that a person's primal desire for warfare is just laying dormant beneath the facade of law and order we've built for ourselves. It's buried under various checks and balances keeping it at bay, but in areas of the world where those are eroded or non-existent, people do truly awful things to each other as if by their very nature. I feel like "The Road" ended on a similar note, where on the surface it seemed a little hopeful (with the child finding a new family to travel with), but the horrors of that world remained, they didn't exactly go away and the world was still doomed all the same.
This was a heavy read at the beginning, I found myself having to revise certain chapters just to understand what was really going on, but it got a lot easier to parse as I got used to the style of McCarthy's prose. It's really hard to look at other media about the "wild west" now without thinking it's romanticized, I've never seen such a brutal take on it before reading this.
My favourite aspect of the whole book was the judge as this slow-burn antagonist, I really like how he overshadows Glanton as the true evil, an actual representation of the devil. I also thought the conflict near the end was poignant, with the kid not developing into this embodiment of war that the judge had expected him to be, not that he became a pacifist but he kind of shook off the gratuitous killing that he had participated in almost all his life.
At first I thought this was a somewhat optimistic rebuttal that went against the judge's view of the world (and I think McCarthy's as well), but after thinking about it and re-reading the epilogue, I believe the book is actually trying to say that that a person's primal desire for warfare is just laying dormant beneath the facade of law and order we've built for ourselves. It's buried under various checks and balances keeping it at bay, but in areas of the world where those are eroded or non-existent, people do truly awful things to each other as if by their very nature. I feel like "The Road" ended on a similar note, where on the surface it seemed a little hopeful (with the child finding a new family to travel with), but the horrors of that world remained, they didn't exactly go away and the world was still doomed all the same.
