Cormac McCarthy and the Philosophy of Violence || A Christian Take || Blood Meridian SUMMARY

In this video I summarize and analyze blood meridian, or that evening redness in the west, by Cormac
McCarthy. I loved this book and hope you enjoy my review!

[Micolashcage]

as a Christian, this channel resonated with me. Its hard to find Christian perspectives on a variety of art mediums on Youtube.

subscribed!

[nathanjs]

Just finished reading this book and was looking for videos discussing it, so I’m glad you made this so recently. I’ve been a huge McCarthy fan for years and had been saving this book as something to look forward to reading - it did not disappoint! As a fellow Christian, I also found so much insight in this book. Thanks for taking the time to talk about it!

[goneshootin]

“Men of war and men of faith have strange affinities.”

[kickedintonextweek]

The Kid is a tragic story of being lukewarm as well. This is ultimately what the judge accuses him of; that he alone was unable to fully commit to anything. He will make compassionate action one day, and cruel the next. He tells Tobin that he has not heard God speaking within him, and when the Kid is confronted by a burning bush in the wilderness, he still ultimately seeks out the Judge and returns to him, like a dog returns to vomit. This inaction and lukewarmness is what eventually seals his fate by the end of the story.

[matthewranisau]

Thank you for taking your reading and communication gifts and posting - it’s really helped me

[thetributary]

Love your take. One of the best in the American canon. I’m a Christian who consumes literature like it’s a job and I’m always looking for biblical allusions and nods at objective moral standards. Most believers have allowed religiosity and modern Gnosticism to eclipse the beauty of God in art and literature. Few to discuss this with. You should start an online community—I’ll join.

[ashroskell]

I was fascinated by your thesis. I think you’re right and you’ve added some ideas that I hadn’t thought of before, to cogitate. I took the epilogue as a way of drawing a line under McCarthy’s thesis, symbolically both explaining why that period of out of control violence appeared to end, whilst showing us that all that what really happened was that it didn’t cease, but merely changed in its manifestations, not its nature.
The man is using a machine to plant these deep circles, empty cylinders, in the ground, one after another. Then he burns the gasses off and starts the next one, all the time being followed by what could actually be anything from people to animals, possibly birds seeking worms from the freshly dug earth, or assistant workers, doing their follow up work on the holes he planted. You really can read any species into that group of followers behind the man. But what he’s doing is making these perfect circles in the ground, at measured and equal distances: circles have no, “meridian.” Mark any point on a circle as being, “the top, ” or peak, and from that point on you are descending back down. As the Judge said, (paraphrasing) at the moment mankind reaches the meridian of his achievement he also begins to decline and die; that, “sunset, ” is visible on the horizon at the very meridian. I took it that McCarthy was saying something about the repetitive nature of man’s tendencies, and the fact that he leaves nothing behind but an empty space which profits only those who follow his wars, and them only for a brief time.
I got an existential vibe from the epilogue, as though he was discussing this repetition as something that we’re doomed to see over and over until we cease to exist, or until the heat death of the universe; which, by the way, is an uncaring universe, content to ignore our tiny dealings and repeat its own processes long after we’re gone.
The beginning of the novel uses that quote from the poet, William Wordsworth, “The child, the father of the man.” And it’s worth noting that, “the kid, ” (who never gets a capital letter) is now referred to by McCarthy as, “the man, ” by the end of the novel. Yes, I see the appalling crime of his father withholding life saving education from the kid, but . . .
Is it not true to say that the Judge has become the father of the kid, as his antagonist, and is battling for his soul? When the kid became, “the man, ” Judge Holden had lost that battle, so he responded in the same way that he always did when confronted with purity, maturation or innocence: he destroyed it.
In that sense, the story is ultimately nihilistic. We are unfixable, destructive war makers, doomed to be so forever, whitewashing our historic crimes through false narratives, whilst even that which we call, “war, ” is so often just rapine and pillage. And that evil within us cannot be killed, like the Judge, who represents a figure who argues that you can embrace this fact and profit from it, or be eradicated. It is possible to rise above these instincts but doing so cannot save you from war: only fighting, or prosecuting wars can do that, for the little time we have on earth.
However, by next week I will have seen yet more meaning and themes and have reached new conclusions, as I have already several times.
But that is McCarthy’s genius, beyond his sheer beautiful facility with language and the mesmerising poetry of his prose: he leaves you with an organic, living artefact inside your mind, that forces you to ponder the meaning of life, arguing its case. It continues to debate with you and evolves around your understanding. I’ve only ever encountered two other authors with that capacity; George Orwell and Alexander Solzhenitsyn (discounting certain philosophers who weren’t writing fiction) and even they were not dealing with direct historical cases at the time.
You got me really thinking about this, which means you’ve done an excellent job . . . on me at least. Thank you.

[etinarcadiaego]

This is a great analysis. I agree about the natural descriptions having a kind of otherworldly beauty...in Chapter IV, with the filibusters, the desert landscape is this alien hostile antagonist, but later there are scenes of true sublimity. There's a scene where Glanton examines a leaf while riding through the mountains, and McCarthy writes something like "it's perfection was not lost on him." As if he's saying that not even a killer like Glanton is totally immune to the beauty inherent in creation.

[cormacgreene]

Read the book once, maybe understood 20%. Read it a second time and it opened itself right up to me.

[pauliewalnuts]

A truly excellent analysis. Upon my revisiting Blood Meridian, I did think the novel serves as a total endorsement of Christianity, exploring one of the many ego-driven alternatives to faith that may take the place of the Church in its absence or decline- herein we are invited to see what could happen wherein the championing of unceasing violence and war displaces faith and connection with God

Good exposition. It requires deep thinking to recognize the book as a masterpiece, which it is.

[hmmrage]

Great video. The best on the book that I've found on YouTube.

[boksteve]

Well done cover of one of my favorite books Caleb! Lewis also hits on evil as destroying beauty for the sake of it in Perelandra. The scene where Ransom discovers the trail of half dead frog like creatures left by the Weston's unman really ties into your point.
BTW a friend referred me to your channel and I am hooked!
Thanks!

[workingtheories]

I do t think the judge wants to destroy beauty—I think he wants to possess it as wholly as possible. He wants to capture it, own it, and eliminate it from being available ever again. He wants the existence of all things to be contained in himself. Something like that.

[GodwardPodcast]

Reading this again right now. Glad I found this channel! Excellent vid.

[lyon]

Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian (or The Evening Redness In The West) is brilliant. Thoroughly and unquestionably epic. McCarthy is among the great American authors if not the pinnacle. His writing is at another level and other worldly. He's easily in the rarified air of Don DeLillo, with his prose in Underworld, or Vladimir Nabokov in Bend Sinister or Lolita (which, admittedly, i could only read halfway before i had to put it down, for good, over the subject matter).

The analysis in this video is outstanding. The reference to the Book of Judges was new information for me and rings true. So many great points in this video. Well done. It's exceptional.

[ronwood]

What an excellent take on the entropy and breaking down of Christianity. Lord have mercy what a book for the upside down world we live in.

[IrishTechnicalThinker]

Excellent analysis brother. God bless from Ireland.

[burkemarksity]

This was a fantastic review... and some great comic relief mixed in - well done!

[loganwillis]

Thanks for the video man I’ve been looking for a page like this since I’m a Christian who reads a lot of fiction