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Short essay: What Cormac McCarthy Saw When He Saw Evil
Matt McManus
“When asked to describe Chigurh, the few people lucky enough to have encountered him and survived claimed he that ‘looked like anybody.'”
There are few writers in history who have the kind of talent Cormac McCarthy does—not to mention the sheer audacity to speak with a Biblical level of authority in the 21st century. Among the deepest themes of McCarthy’s work is his analysis of good and evil. An intense analysis of what evil is—and why the human race has been so utterly unprepared to resist it—is a prominent question in his later works such as The Road and in earlier, lesser books such as Child of God. However, nowhere is it more directly the focus than in the twinned works Blood Meridian and No Country for Old Men, both of which feature unstoppable and ultimately victorious antagonists of Miltonian power and attraction. At a time when men with authority murder in the streets and world leaders call for military intervention against their own citizens, it is worth considering McCarthy’s lessons.
The Gravity of Emptiness
Blood Meridian centers on the immutable figure of Judge Holden, a gigantic albino, who joins the real life Glanton gang in exterminating Native Americans. Originally working at the behest of the American and Mexican governments—under the influence of the judge—the gang becomes a terror squad operating only for themselves, before imploding in rage and violence. Throughout the novel, the judge commits acts of startling brutality, including the sexual abuse and murder of children. Despite this, he comes across as an unrepentant Mephistopheles, knowledgeable of all the things of the world. The judge knows countless languages and skills, and he comments with such tremendous insight on the crumbling moral architecture of the world that even the few conflicted characters in the book cannot contradict him. He is a scientist who collects samples as the gang travels, chronicling the constituent features of existence.
Despite this, it is not curiosity or love of the world that drives the judge’s intellectual pursuits, and it is not even a Faustian desire to lose oneself in the to and fro of time. Curiosity and even a longing for distraction direct the self outside itself—and indirectly towards the needs of others. In theological terms, it might incline one to ruminate on the mystery of God’s creation. For the judge, science is another tool in the ultimate and human pursuit of war. Whatever “exists without [his] knowledge, exists without his consent.” Scientific knowledge becomes not the humble interest in an intrinsically valuable world but, rather, the final tool for violent mastery of a nihilistic morass signifying nothing.
The book juxtaposes the random pointlessness of chance, which characterizes so much of life, with the equally meaningless possibility that power can grant one control of the world. At its peak, this can be tantamount to acting as the lord of fate: parceling out death and suffering impartially to a species for whom that is the inevitable final end. Reducing the elected back to the nothingness, which the gravity of existence pulls towards, is a god’s work. And, in the judge’s theology, “war is god.” At the end of Blood Meridian, the novel’s anti-hero encounters the judge one final time, and the judge finally accepts an overtly metaphysical stature—dancing wildly while exclaiming that he is “never going to die.”
The Gravity of Emptiness
Blood Meridian centers on the immutable figure of Judge Holden, a gigantic albino, who joins the real life Glanton gang in exterminating Native Americans. Originally working at the behest of the American and Mexican governments—under the influence of the judge—the gang becomes a terror squad operating only for themselves, before imploding in rage and violence. Throughout the novel, the judge commits acts of startling brutality, including the sexual abuse and murder of children. Despite this, he comes across as an unrepentant Mephistopheles, knowledgeable of all the things of the world. The judge knows countless languages and skills, and he comments with such tremendous insight on the crumbling moral architecture of the world that even the few conflicted characters in the book cannot contradict him. He is a scientist who collects samples as the gang travels, chronicling the constituent features of existence.
Despite this, it is not curiosity or love of the world that drives the judge’s intellectual pursuits, and it is not even a Faustian desire to lose oneself in the to and fro of time. Curiosity and even a longing for distraction direct the self outside itself—and indirectly towards the needs of others. In theological terms, it might incline one to ruminate on the mystery of God’s creation. For the judge, science is another tool in the ultimate and human pursuit of war. Whatever “exists without [his] knowledge, exists without his consent.” Scientific knowledge becomes not the humble interest in an intrinsically valuable world but, rather, the final tool for violent mastery of a nihilistic morass signifying nothing.
The book juxtaposes the random pointlessness of chance, which characterizes so much of life, with the equally meaningless possibility that power can grant one control of the world. At its peak, this can be tantamount to acting as the lord of fate: parceling out death and suffering impartially to a species for whom that is the inevitable final end. Reducing the elected back to the nothingness, which the gravity of existence pulls towards, is a god’s work. And, in the judge’s theology, “war is god.” At the end of Blood Meridian, the novel’s anti-hero encounters the judge one final time, and the judge finally accepts an overtly metaphysical stature—dancing wildly while exclaiming that he is “never going to die.”
Read more here: https://merionwest.com/2020/06/05/what-cormac-mccarthy-saw-when-he-saw-evil/
Interesting stuff. Many fans of Cormac McCarthy grapple to understand his view of Evil and exactly what he's trying to say about it in his work, particularly Blood Meridian but also the wanton and malicious destruction of innocence he depicts in novels like The Crossing (and The Border Trilogy generally). Like others, I've read literary and critical essays attempting to explain this carefully and rarely felt they provided a surer grasp on his ultimate view. This essay, far shorter than most that tackle McCarthy, offers some food for thought.