Blood Meridian

 

Wolves: 

 "When the lambs is lost in the mountain, he said. They is cry. Sometime come the mother. Sometime the wolf."

"La gente dice que el coyote es un brujo. Muchas veces el brujo es un coyote." (Translated- People say that the coyote (wolf) is a witch. Many times, the witch is the coyote."

"Wolves cull themselves, man. What other creature could? And is the race of man not more predacious yet?" 

 

These wolves are ever present in the novel. Whenever the Kid and his gang of misfits are close to death or are in danger, the wolves appear as an ominous reminder of their hardships. They also represent the shiftiness inside people. Whenever a person acts like a coyote or wolf, they always have a strange look about them. They are always trying to commit acts of craftiness and make someone's life miserable.     

 

Judge Holden:

“It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way.” 

 

Judge Holden is introduced as a very minor character, calling out that the preacher conveying his ideas was a charlatan. The judge claims to never have even met the man before seeing him in the tent where the reverend is preaching, and he seems to do it for mere fun. The fact that the Judge seems almost “correct” (he convinces people that he is right, and they decide to beat and lynch the preacher) with every accusation he makes foreshadows a “talent” he has. The judge has this seemingly infinite knowledge about everyone and everything around him. Holden speaks multiple languages, three of which include English, Spanish, and Dutch. Holden knows where to be at the right time. He’s highly philosophical with an interest in nature and the darkness associated with it. However, the Judge doesn’t represent knowledge. Representing pure malice, Holden is the devil himself. The Judge craves power like no one else in the book, and he will stop at nothing to get what he wants. He uses his knowledge to get anything and to take advantage of everyone around him. Further tainting his image as a corrupted and evil individual, the Judge commits pedophilic acts. He always has a supernatural aura about him because of his complete baldness, his tall stature, and his childlike features. In the final pages of the novel, the Judge claims to never sleep and never die. All of these characteristics combined create an image of the devil. From a seemingly insignificant character in the beginning to a full-hearted antagonist at the end of the novel, the Judge evolves into something outside of the novel. 

 

The Landscape:

“They rode on and the sun in the east flushed pale streaks of light and then a deeper run of color like blood seeping up in sudden reaches flaring planewise and where the earth drained up into the sky at the edge of creation the top of the sun rose out of nothing like the head of a great red phallus until it cleared the unseen rim and sat squat and pulsing and malevolent behind them.” 

 

"By noon they had begun to climb toward the gap in the mountains. Riding up through the lavender or soapweed, under the Animas peaks. The shadow of an eagle that had set forth from the line of riders below and they looked up to mark it where it rode in that brittle blue and faultless void. In the evening they came out to upon a mesa that overlooked all the country to the north... The crumpled butcher paper mountains lay in sharp shadowfold under the long blue dusk and in the middle distance the glazed bed of a dry lake lay shimmering like the mare imbrium."

 

I felt like although not necessarily one concrete object or image, the achingly beautiful prose juxtaposed against horrendous, mindless violence is such an important aspect of the novel. It represents the beautiful yet tainted image of America's West. McCarthy likes to put contrasting images of the West in his novel using gore and innocence within its pages. As seen in the first quote above, there are images of light and creation yet he uses words like blood and flames to describe it. The often use of imagery to describe his world of the ungodly West leaves us with so many details to imagine what the world is like, not only in the West but all around us. There is always beauty in the world, but there is always violence to contrast it.  There are also contrasting words of the barren desert and the scenic plants around it.  These scenes seem to "cleanse the palate" of the reader's mind of the gory violence that may have just occured. 

 

Dead Baby Bush:

The godlessness of the Wild West is best symbolized by the bush of dead infants in the first half of the novel. In reference to the Burning Bush in the Bible, this unholy bush is an unnatural monument on the desert. Moses looked away from the bush in respect, but the Kid and his companion stare at it with absolutely no shame. The babies are described as "larval to some unreckonable being." These babies were so young they couldn't even be recognized as human children. The babies did not even have time to mature into someone who could've been great; the godlessness of the West stole their future and their innocence from them. 

 

Jugglers:

The family of jugglers have such a foreboding feeling about them. The juggler and his wife tell the fortunes of the men in Glanton's company. The juggler tells the fortune of one of the African American members, Jackson, but the juggler is not understood well because of the language barrier. There is such a feeling of apprehension in this scene when Jackson asks the judge what the juggler was saying; the judge smiles and replies, “I think she means to say that in your fortune lie our fortunes all.”  It seems as if the Judge was aware of something that the rest of the men weren’t able to grasp at the moment: the amount of violence and death lying ahead of them. The image and presence of the jugglers sets the tone for the rest of the novel; the future of the men is something dark, grim, and of course, violent. Not only do the Jugglers symbolize the impending doom of the group; the tarot cards they produce symbolize the characters. The Kid picks the four of cups; it symbolizes a self-preserving attitude. The boy seems to survive throughout the book even when the rest of his companions seem to perish. The African American, John Jackson, picks up the Fool. The Fool is a rather unique tarot card because it symbolizes a new life and a person who could be anything he or she wanted. Always overshadowed by the white Jackson, the black Jackson murders his white company member, symbolizing a new start for the man. Finally, Glanton picks the chariot tarot card. It symbolizes overcoming the demons inside yourself. Glanton drops the card, and it is never found. The juggler's wife then says that a curse was put upon him for not accepting his future. This symbolizes his murderous rage and insane mannerisms.