Blood Meridian occurs during Manifest Destiny, a 19th-century American imperialism and territorial expansion program. America’s commitment to Manifest Destiny was a driving force behind the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848. This war becomes a key event in the book, where Cormac McCarthy dramatizes the brutality and hypocrisy of imperialism and Manifest Destiny. The novel shows that the true embodiment of the imperialist ideal is not what Captain White calls an instrument of emancipation.
McCarthy based his portrayal of the Glanton Gang on actual historical records. In 1849, a man named John Joel Glanton led a gang. Judge Holden, another key figure, supported the gang, which was contracted to slaughter Apaches in Mexico. The gang later fled to Arizona after abandoning their mission to kill Mexicans for their scalps. In 1850, they took control of the Yuma Crossing of the Colorado River. McCarthy’s primary source on the Glanton Gang is Samuel Chamberlain’s 19th-century memoir, My Confession: Recollections of a Rogue.
Chamberlain reflects on his misfortunes and adventures as a soldier in the Mexican-American War and shares his experiences with the Glanton Gang. He describes Judge Holden as a massive man, Glanton’s second-in-command, a cold-blooded criminal with eyes that gleamed like a glutton about to erupt in the sullen ferocity of a devil’s face.
By grounding the book in historical records, McCarthy avoids the accusation that the violence and atrocities in Blood Meridian are exaggerated or overly pessimistic. He argues that humans are always capable of such acts and likely always will be. McCarthy grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee (despite being born in Rhode Island). As a child, he attended Catholic schools and served as an altar boy at the Church of the Immaculate Conception.
Later, McCarthy incorporated the sounds and sights of Tennessee into his work, with many of his novels reflecting what has been called Catholic nostalgia. During the 1950s, McCarthy attended the University of Tennessee. Although he never finished his degree, he began publishing short stories. He wrote plays and novels in the 1960s and ’70s, living off grants and writing.
In 1981, McCarthy won his most prestigious award, the MacArthur Fellowship, thanks to Blood Meridian. The novel marked a shift in his writing style. Similar changes can be seen in works like No Country for Old Men (famously adapted into a film by the Coen brothers). McCarthy published Blood Meridian in 1985, blending intellectual depth with depicting the violence tied to Western expansion rather than offering commentary on morality.
The story is set in the 1850s but does not follow the typical “bad guy vs. good guy” narrative most Westerns are known for. Literary critics have called it an anti-Western, a picaresque novel in which characters move from one grand adventure to the next. Today, the book is hailed as the Great American Novel. The main character is “the kid,” a teenager who has run away from home.
The kid wanders southwest until he eventually meets Judge Holden. He joins a gang of robbers accused of stealing cattle. However, many of the outlaws are killed during the gang’s first incursion into Mexico. The kid survives and is imprisoned until Judge Holden frees him. The judge also introduces the kid to mercenaries who are trading Native American scalps to local officers. The judge negotiates the trade of the scalps.
It becomes the driving force behind the gang. After the mercenaries get into violent confrontations with members of the Apache tribe, many of the gang’s leaders are killed. The group splits up, but the kid survives the violence. He leaves what is left of the gang, but years later, he has one last confrontation with Judge Holden. Over time, the judge has developed a grudge against the kid since their last encounter.
The judge tells the kid that he noticed him showing mercy towards soldiers on previous expeditions. In the judge’s worldview, this act symbolizes weakness. He says that the ability to kill without mercy makes one all-powerful. Immediately after, he kills the kid during a violent struggle in a restroom. Blood Meridian became one of the most violent and widely read books ever written in English.
The novel focuses on lawlessness and violence, especially the role of Judge Holden’s gang in making a living through the brutal practice of scalping for bounties. Killing becomes so ingrained in their lives that their first instinct is to kill anyone they come across. The story is a grim procession of violent acts, from barroom brawls to horrific massacres on the plains.
The setting in the book is at odds with the life forms that inhabit it. Nature is indifferent, foreign, and barren. Judge Holden has always believed that is the ultimate endeavor of war. In his mind, human beings are the primary players. He argues that war continues because young and older men like him thrive in it. It is almost as if the kid embodies the senseless violence that the judge speaks of.
Despite everything, the kid still desires to join the gang of Glanton’s scalp hunters. They spread terror and massacre across the borderlands of Mexico and the United States. In his speeches, Judge Holden continues to make sweeping claims. He says that war is a battle of choices, and fate, or the lesser will, determines the outcome. War is God in the judge’s eyes—it shapes the course of the universe.
Ironically, the book describes a world without morality or law, testing the reader. From the very beginning, the narrator presents the book’s central issue: In every corner of the world, there are savage and wild places that challenge whether creation can be shaped by human will or whether the human heart will be tested instead. Toward the end of the book, Judge Holden offers one possible answer to this problem: if war is not sacred, then only the superficial is.
The idea of justice, as presented, demands a space for unrestrained war. Violence, in this view, is not limited by mercy. The strength and dominance of the new world emerge as a key feature of the “meridian” itself—a line in history where humanity’s actions will be tested in the flames of pure war.
Outdoors, the literal line takes over; hearts are shaped like clay, burned by murder, and cracked by guilt. In the end, McCarthy makes space his own by weaving in historical yet mysterious details. He portrays actual events that intersect with the narrative, showing how spaces shift into places—this includes the near-total destruction of creatures and the near-genocide of a nation.
So, the question arises: What caused this change? McCarthy’s character undergoes an unexpected shift when he crosses the border between the United States and Mexico. It suggests a profound lack of understanding among the onlookers. As a nation, America’s influence might have played a role in the more significant transformation of McCarthy’s character. The book’s cryptic epilogue deepens our understanding of what happens in the face of change, especially within the broader war for freedom and the battle over space.
Additionally, the agents of war become gods with dominion over the earth. Glanton controls his gang, and Judge Holden seems to control nearly everything he encounters—whether it is the gunpowder from a club stool or the children he violates and kills. Throughout their journey, the scalp hunters are more interested in making a profit than anything else.
They waste their money on debauchery. They also seek to dominate the lives of those around them. Anyone who failed to serve in the war lost their power. By the end of the book, it seems only Judge Holden is destined to live forever, as McCarthy depicts him in a kind of war dance. Holden was not just a criminal; he was more of a devilish ruffian that everyone knew.
He was a swindler, fabricator, magician, killer, and child abuser. He was also fascinated by the innocence he sought to destroy. However, the judge’s crimes are not simple in McCarthy’s world. His world is more complex because it has demons in it. As long as we keep our feet on the ground, the judge is a character who is both attractive and fascinating yet utterly ridiculous in all his disgusting ugliness.
When he first met the kid, he followed him with his eyes. Later, he claimed that he had loved the kid like a father. The kryptonite is Ben Tobin, the ex-priest, now a defunct novice. Tobin constantly urges the kid to defy the judge, offering convictions that contradict the judge’s words.
The essence of the judge’s argument is that life is truly fascinating—even if it has no meaning other than what humans force upon it. Moral law is just humanity’s invention, created to disenfranchise the strong for the sake of the weak. The real mystery is that there is no mystery at all. It is worth considering whether Judge Holden speaks for McCarthy somehow. Tobin comes closer to presenting an alternative to the judge’s philosophy.
Tobin was also the one who ordered the kid to kill the magistrate when they met him in the desert after the massacre at the Yuma ferry. Tobin tells the kid he must do it for the love of God, or else he will lose his life. Still, the judge claims he keeps a small quantity of leniency for the heathen in his soul. After the kid is rescued from the desert and locked up in San Diego, the judge turns him over to the authorities as the cause of the massacre.
According to the judge, the kid failed to face the truth outside, to “face” the judge. The judge lives on, dancing in the shadows and the light, always a favorite. He claims he will never die, and the epilogue proves this.
Nothing can restrain the judge or limit his power over each reader. The judge can constantly be confronted, even though the moral choice remains. He aims to dominate by becoming the victor in every actual or imagined conflict involving his will. His consequence is showing no mercy to others who have taken them out of his control. As Judge Holden tells the kid at the end of the book, there is a blemish in the fabric of his heart; he saved a corner of clemency for the heathen.
Because the kid has shown mercy, the judge must show him none. In the end, the one who serves a war god does not stay a servant but becomes a god himself. Naturally, Blood Meridian focuses on what we could call the brotherhood of brutal men. They killed the lamb entrusted to them. One of these men is the kid who feels the spark of God within him through his heart’s call.
Because of this, he “awakens” slightly, reaching beyond the bloodlust of the herders who kill. Like the kid, Huckleberry Finn from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer tries to save his friend from the overlord’s justice.
He also challenges the destructive force of societal norms but is judged only by his sense of morality. In McCarthy’s world, the judge kills the kid in the outhouse. The kid has “awakened,” but he is not wise enough to survive. So, he has no chance. For similar mercy, there is something the scalp hunters cannot destroy: the book and its readers.
Ironically, Judge Holden, who has left such a notorious mark, should only be a sketch in a book, viewed by readers with more perspective than his own. Through witnessing, the book gives voice to human suffering that would otherwise be lost to history. More importantly, compassion and self-awareness are tied to witnessing. Though vague, the kid is more than just another crown hunter.
He can witness the cruelty in his actions and judge them. This strange innocence explains his small acts of kindness. Like saving Dick Shelby’s life, these actions are little consolation against the judge’s vision of an eternal, nameless night. However, it is only through the book that we see this.
References
- Bednar, A. (2008). The Glanton Gang and Manifest Destiny: Historical Roots of McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian“. American Historical Review, 113(4), 1129-1144.
- Chamberlain, S. (1956). My Confession: Recollections of a Rogue. University of Oklahoma Press.
- Litz, A. (2001). Cormac McCarthy: The Existentialist Western. Western Literature Review, 44(3), 102-117.
- Manfred, G. (2003). The Historical Context of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. Journal of American Studies, 37(2), 56-72.
- McCarthy, C. (1985). Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West. Random House.
- Strychacz, T. (2005). Violence and Morality in the American West: A Reading of Blood “Meridian”. American Literature, 77(1), 35-50.
