Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, part 1: A legion of horribles

2025-01-03

Hell aint half full. Hear me. Ye carry war of a madman's making onto a foreign land. Yell wake more than the dogs. Rich is a big McCarthy head. For Benny and Cam, it's their first taste, and we're going straight to the top shelf: the 1985 epic historical novel Blood Meridian; or, The Evening Redness in the West. In this discussion we cover the first half of the book (chapters 1-12) as a meditation on violence, manifest destiny, self-mythology, and McCarthy's own cunning plot to positioning himself within the literary canon. At the centre of it all there is the judge: a...

Hell aint half full. Hear me. Ye carry war of a madman's making onto a foreign land. Yell wake more than the dogs.

Rich is a big McCarthy head. For Benny and Cam, it's their first taste, and we're going straight to the top shelf: the 1985 epic historical novel Blood Meridian; or, The Evening Redness in the West.

In this discussion we cover the first half of the book (chapters 1-12) as a meditation on violence, manifest destiny, self-mythology, and McCarthy's own cunning plot to positioning himself within the literary canon.

At the centre of it all there is the judge: a towering, hairless enigma who might be a false god, or a devil... or something even worse.

CHAPTERS