Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy

Blood Meridian: Or The Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy is a sprawling and feverishly intense epic about a band of misfits, scalpers and mercenaries in the mid-1800s American South West. The novel follows the journey of an ill-fated, nameless kid from Tennessee as he falls in with “the judge” – a bizarre but compelling figure of quasi-mythological power and influence.

The kid is inducted into a cavalry of scalpers, mercenaries and other mercenaries who do the “unsavory” work of cleaning blood-soaked land of its inhabitants: Indians, Mexicans and Mexican-Americans. All are referred to indiscriminately as “Apaches”. The kid’s silent partner in this enterprise, “the judge”, is a man of advanced age and mysterious origin with an air of grim omnipotence. He is equal parts myth mythic figure, teacher, philosopher and unhinged madman. His relentless, often grotesque and nihilistic musings punctuate the narrative and set the tone for the bloodshed that is to follow.

The band’s journey takes them into a series of unorthodox battles that push the boundaries of morality and seek to “purge” the land of Indians and Mexicans as an act of “righteous” conquest. Through these gruesome events, the moral foundations of civilization are upended as the novel paints a nightmarish vision of an unforgiving and uncaring world, where violence and chaos are accepted as an ineluctable part of life.

In McCarthy’s inimitable style, Blood Meridian is an allegorical work about the harsh realities of human nature, the cost of freedom and the ultimate futility of man’s purpose. A clear narrative structure, combined with an evocative and lyrical use of language, bring the reader into a world of emotions, past and present, as vivid as it is all-encompassing. Though brutal and often harrowing in its themes, Blood Meridian is ultimately a meditation on man’s fallibility and, perhaps more so, his capacity for resilience and strength in the face of immense adversity. The power of storytelling to move and inspire, and to remind us of the value of compassion and understanding, is masterfully delivered in McCarthy’s masterwork.

Though it is widely seen as one of McCarthy’s greatest successes, Blood Meridian has remained somewhat of an obscure “cult classic”. Readers of Cormac McCarthy will find the familiar themes and the striking examples of his renowned writing style all represented here in this turbulent ode to the human spirit in its purest, most chaotic form. Whether it be a genre-defying narrative that holds readers of all genres in its thrall, or a unique and thought-provoking exploration of culture and morality, Blood Meridian is another indisputable masterpiece from one of America’s greatest living novelists.