What does cormac mccarthy argues about the connection between violence and history - Essay Example

and Number of the Teacher’s ‘Blood Meridian’ by Cormac McCarthy: The Connection Between Violence and History Introduction The story in Cormac McCarthy’s book Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West, 1985 is based on westward expansion during a crucial period in American history. Also known as Manifest Destiny, the move westwards was a bloody process of merciless genocide. “Set primarily along the Texas-Mexico border in the mid-nineteenth century, Blood Meridian is one of McCarthy’s most well-known novels” (Greenwood 24).

Authentic historical events which occurred on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s form the backdrop to the story (McCarthy 146). Thesis Statement: The purpose of this paper is to investigate Cormac McCarthy’s argument in his book Blood Meridian asserting that violence is related to history because all historical events are caused by violence. McCarthy’s Argument on Violence Being Related to History The story’s main protagonist is a nameless young man known only as “the kid” who was born in 1833 and runs away from home at the age of fourteen.

In his wanderings across the American West, he gets involved with groups who indulge in vicious blood shed, and the murdering of Indians for their scalps. In the nightmarish world, he takes up innately violent professions when recruited by murderers such as Judge Holden who believes that violence forms the foundation of human nature and that war continues to exist at all times. Judge Holden says, “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” (McCarthy 208). Similar characters whom the kid meets are Captain White and later Glanton and his gang with whom he goes on scalphunting rampages (Greenwood 50). McCarthy weaves together history and fiction, with some of his characters being real people who had appeared in historical accounts of travels with the scalp hunter Glanton. They include “the kid’s” fellow scalp hunters, the expriest Tobin, Marcus Webster, David Brown and John Jackson.

The author “builds certain major fictional events in the narrative out of pieces of minor historical artifacts and strings certain major historical events together with his fiction” (Moos 25). In 1849 when the kid reaches Fredonia, in present-day Texas which had been the site of a land battle between the Mexican government and the founders of a separatist republic who had grabbed the land. Thus, Texas had been annexed by the United States government in 1845, and by 1849, the region was an area of conflict between Mexican governmen, native Americans, U.S. government and Texas (Greenwood 50).

The kid joins the army, and again faces violence and danger. His commander Captain White is waging war against Mexico to enable Americans to “get to California without having to pass through our benighted sister republic and our citizens will be protected at last from the notorious packs of cut-throats presently infesting the routes which they are obliged to travel” (McCarthy 33). The entire army expedition is massacred by a band of Comanches, and the kid is one of very few survivors of the blood bath.

Later in the story, on one of the kid’s several expeditions with the scalp-hunter Glanton, the group began firing at women in a village who rose up from their tasks on seeing them on horse-back, pounding down towards them. The fatally wounded women crumpled and fell. Others began to run, “old people flinging up their hands, children tottering and blinking in the pistolfire. A few young men ran out with drawn bows and were shot down, and then the riders were all through the village trampling down the grass wickiups and bludgeoning the shrieking householders” (McCarthy 148).

This vivid scene is followed by their removing the scalps of the dead, and leaving their bodies on the ground “with their peeled skulls like polyps bluely wet or luminescent melons cooling on some mesa of the moon” (McCarthy 148). The sheer horror and tragedy of the event is underscored by the wailings of the group of women who return to the village after drying fish upriver, while one old woman attempts to light a fire with the bodies lying around her. As an adult, the kid is referred to as “the man”, and after nearly three decades he encounters the judge again.

The story is ended ambiguously with the main protagonist having a mysterious and fatal encounter (Greenwood 50). Conclusion This paper has highlighted Cormac McCarthy’s argument in his book Blood Meridian, asserting that there is a strong connection between violence and history. The historical phenomenon of westward expansion during the 1840s in America forms the backdrop to the story. Not only are some of McCarthy’s characters historically verifiable, but several of their characteristics and actions are derived from historical accounts.

It is evident that the book portrays violence as a part of history of the time, with land conflicts raging between the American government, the Mexican government, and the native Indians who were the original inhabitants of the land. Thus, the annexure of Texas and the westward move were intertwined with cruelty, violence, and decimation of people, with large numbers of native Indians being killed, and their scalps taken as trophies. Works CitedGreenwood, Willard P. Reading Cormac McCarthy. California: ABC-CLIO. (2009). McCarthy, Cormac.

Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West. Retrieved on 9th January, 2012 from: https://webspace.utexas.edu/nbd232/cormac.pdfMoos, Dan. Lacking the article itself: Representation and history in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. Retrieved on 9th January, 2012 from: http://www.cormacmccarthy.com/journal/PDFs/Moos.pdf