Here is Cormac McCarthy's interview with Oprah for his 2006 novel The Road. McCarthy is known as a fiercely reclusive writer and has probably given three interviews in his entire life.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Hello
I will be looking at allusion in Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. I will cite various biblical, historical, and literary allusions in the novel and discuss the novel's relationship to and view of the past with respect to history and literature.
To do this, I will refer to Samuel Chamberlain's My Confession: the Recollections of a Rogue, which is a non-fictional memoir of Chamberlain's time with John Joel Glanton's gang of scalphunters. This source was most likely used by McCart
hy in his writing of Blood Meridian.
I will also cite parallels between Blood Meridian and Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, and various biblical, and poetic influences.
I will be pondering the following questions:
What is the novel's relationship to American and literary history?
What is McCarthy implying through his usage of literary, biblical, and historical allusion?
Basically i've written a long, winding, aimless essay.
To do this, I will refer to Samuel Chamberlain's My Confession: the Recollections of a Rogue, which is a non-fictional memoir of Chamberlain's time with John Joel Glanton's gang of scalphunters. This source was most likely used by McCart
hy in his writing of Blood Meridian.I will also cite parallels between Blood Meridian and Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, and various biblical, and poetic influences.
I will be pondering the following questions:
What is the novel's relationship to American and literary history?
What is McCarthy implying through his usage of literary, biblical, and historical allusion?
Basically i've written a long, winding, aimless essay.
Historical Allusion
HISTORICAL ALLUSION
Judge Holden. Samuel Chamberlain's My Confession (a non-fictional memoir of Samuel Chamberlain's adventures) speaks of :
Judge Holden of Texas, a gigantic, hairless man. Who or what he was no one knew, but a more cool-blooded villain never went unhung. Always cool and collected, but when a quarrel took place and blood shed, his hoglike eyes would gleam with a sullen ferocity worthy of the countenance of a fiend...He was by far the best educated man in northern Mexico. He conversed with all in their own language, spoke in several Indian lingos, at a fandango would take the harp or guitar from the hands of the musicians and charm all with his wonderful performance, out-waltz any poblano of the ball, plum centre with rifle or revolver, a daring horseman acquainted with the nature of all the strange plants and their botanical names, great in geology and mineralogy, with all an errant coward, but not that he possessed enough courage to fight Indians and Mexicans or anyone where he had the advantage and strength stealing weapons, but where the combat would be equal he would avoid it if possible.
Now Blood Meridian's version of Judge Holden:
An enormous man had entered the tent and removed his hat. He was as bald as a stone and he had no trace of beard and he had no brows to his eyes nor lashes to them. He was close to seven feet in height...(6).
[Judge Holden] adduced for their consideration references to the children of Ham, the lost tribes of the Israelites, certain passages from the Greek poets, anthropological speculations as to the propagation of the races in their dispersion and isolation through the agency of geological cataclysm and an assessment of racial traits with respect to climactic and geographical considerations (84).
[Judge Holden] pointed to that stark and solitary mountain and delivered himself an oration to what end I know not, then or now, and he concluded with the tellin us that our mother the earth as he said was round like an egg and contained all good things within her (130).
As you can see, McCarthy took the Judge's physical attributes, the gigantic size, the hairlessness, and characteristics such as his multi-lingual capabilities, musical talent, and historical, literary and botanical knowledge directly from My Confession. This poses the question: What does it mean that McCarthy has modeled his character so directly from historical fact? I assert that McCarthy is creating links to the past in order to place his novel into history. He will accompany this with literary and biblical allusion, which I will discuss later. Why he does this is something else I will get to in a later post.
Judge Holden. Samuel Chamberlain's My Confession (a non-fictional memoir of Samuel Chamberlain's adventures) speaks of :
Judge Holden of Texas, a gigantic, hairless man. Who or what he was no one knew, but a more cool-blooded villain never went unhung. Always cool and collected, but when a quarrel took place and blood shed, his hoglike eyes would gleam with a sullen ferocity worthy of the countenance of a fiend...He was by far the best educated man in northern Mexico. He conversed with all in their own language, spoke in several Indian lingos, at a fandango would take the harp or guitar from the hands of the musicians and charm all with his wonderful performance, out-waltz any poblano of the ball, plum centre with rifle or revolver, a daring horseman acquainted with the nature of all the strange plants and their botanical names, great in geology and mineralogy, with all an errant coward, but not that he possessed enough courage to fight Indians and Mexicans or anyone where he had the advantage and strength stealing weapons, but where the combat would be equal he would avoid it if possible.
Now Blood Meridian's version of Judge Holden:
An enormous man had entered the tent and removed his hat. He was as bald as a stone and he had no trace of beard and he had no brows to his eyes nor lashes to them. He was close to seven feet in height...(6).
[Judge Holden] adduced for their consideration references to the children of Ham, the lost tribes of the Israelites, certain passages from the Greek poets, anthropological speculations as to the propagation of the races in their dispersion and isolation through the agency of geological cataclysm and an assessment of racial traits with respect to climactic and geographical considerations (84).
[Judge Holden] pointed to that stark and solitary mountain and delivered himself an oration to what end I know not, then or now, and he concluded with the tellin us that our mother the earth as he said was round like an egg and contained all good things within her (130).
As you can see, McCarthy took the Judge's physical attributes, the gigantic size, the hairlessness, and characteristics such as his multi-lingual capabilities, musical talent, and historical, literary and botanical knowledge directly from My Confession. This poses the question: What does it mean that McCarthy has modeled his character so directly from historical fact? I assert that McCarthy is creating links to the past in order to place his novel into history. He will accompany this with literary and biblical allusion, which I will discuss later. Why he does this is something else I will get to in a later post.
Literary Allusion
Literary Allusion
The allusion in Blood Meridian varies from specific quotes from well-known poems, to parallels in structure from well-known plots. I argue that the language surrounding these parallels echoes that of the original work so much that they become allusive rather than just similar in structure. By that I mean that McCarthy is inviting us to make these referenced works part of his work.
1. The Bible
His folk are known for hewers of wood and drawers of water but in truth his father has been a schoolmaster (3).
Now therefore, you are cursed, and you shall never cease being slaves, both hewers of wood and drawers of water for the house of my God.
Joshua 9:23.
He adduced for their consideration references to the children of Ham...(84).
This is significant. According to the Bible, Ham was the son of Noah who was cursed after gazing upon his naked father. I think this is important because in looking upon his naked father, Ham is seeing where he came from, seeing the mystery of his origin. This is a small detail, but I'll argue that we as humans are cursed for gazing upon our origin in the form of written history, or when we view history as a means to access the past.
2. William Wordsworth
My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began,
So is it now I am a man,
So be it when I shall grow old
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man:
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
All history present in that visage, the child the father of the man (BM 3).
Again we have the allusion coupled with a reference to history. But the sentence before the above reads: "in him broods already a taste for mindless violence." McCarthy's child is vastly different from the one of Wordsworth's poem. Wordsworth's child is naturally innocent, and believes in natural piety. McCarthy's is inherently stained by the history of human violence: "all history present in that visage," this child is human history, and human history is stained by blood. This is only one of the many instances where McCarthy pairs violence with children. In the first description we ever see of the Judge, he is "serene and strangely childlike," (BM 7). In the last description we have of him, he is an "enormous infant," (BM 335). McCarthy does this to define evil and "mindless violence" as something inherent as the innocence of Wordsworth's child.
3. Moby-Dick (MD will be blue/BM red)
a. Structure
The kid as Ishmael. But in the case of the kid, we don't have an access to thoughts like we do with Ishmael. This is evident in both novels opening lines:
Call me Ishmael. A personal, inviting, charismatic opening.
See the child. A distant, detached, observational based opening.
Judge Holden as Ahab.
Holden and Ahab are both men of great ideals but questionable morals. Ahab's monomaniacal quest is summed up below:
The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them, till they are left living on with half a heart and half a lung. That intangible malignity which has been from the beginning; to whose dominion even the modern Christians ascribe one-half of the worlds; which the ancient Ophites of the east reverenced in their statue devil; -- Ahab did not fall down and worship it like them; but deliriously transferring its idea to the abhorred white whale, he pitted himself, all mutilated, against it (MD 198).
The Judge's:
War is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one's will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate
game because war is at least a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god (BM 249).
One last thing. The overall plot structure of the two novels is comparable. Both begin with a young man on a journey who meets a mysterious but charismatic leader. Then the leader takes center stage for a good chunk of the novel while the young men fade. Then towards the end both character's importance becomes clear: Ishmael as the carrier of Ahab's story, and the kid as a force against the Judge :"Yet even so you could have changed it all," (BM 307.)
Moby-Dick: Passages
Prophets:
Shipmates, have ye shipped in that ship?" The above words were put to us by a stranger, who, pausing before us, levelled his massive forefinger at the vessel in question. He was but shabbily apparelled in faded jacket and patched trowsers (MD 108).
A thin man in a leather weskit, a black and straightbrim hat set square on his head, a thin rim of whiskers...Do ye cross that river with yon filibuster armed ye'll not cross it back...ye carry war of a madman's making onto a foreign land (BM 41).
As you can see, the language and description of the Mennonite is reminiscent of Elijah, the prophet of Moby-Dick.
Killing the leader:
Slowly, stealthily, and half sideways looking, [Starbuck] placed the loaded musket's end against
the door...he placed the death-tube in its rack and left the place (MD 529).
Toadvine put the muzzle of his pistol against the great dome of the judge's head.
Goddam you, Holden.
You either shoot or take that away. Do it now.
Toadvine put the pistol in his belt. The judge smiled and wiped the scalp on the leg of his trousers and rose and turned away (BM 164).
Here is a moment that aligns Ahab, the maniacal leader of the Pequod, with Holden, the maniac of The Glanton Gang. Both Toadvine and the wise Starbuck are faced with a puzzle of morality: Do you kill the leader of an evil and doomed voyage if given the chance? Both characters, under the weight of moral complexity, choose not to.
So think about this: what purpose do these allusions serve?
The allusion in Blood Meridian varies from specific quotes from well-known poems, to parallels in structure from well-known plots. I argue that the language surrounding these parallels echoes that of the original work so much that they become allusive rather than just similar in structure. By that I mean that McCarthy is inviting us to make these referenced works part of his work.
1. The Bible
His folk are known for hewers of wood and drawers of water but in truth his father has been a schoolmaster (3).
Now therefore, you are cursed, and you shall never cease being slaves, both hewers of wood and drawers of water for the house of my God.
Joshua 9:23.
He adduced for their consideration references to the children of Ham...(84).
This is significant. According to the Bible, Ham was the son of Noah who was cursed after gazing upon his naked father. I think this is important because in looking upon his naked father, Ham is seeing where he came from, seeing the mystery of his origin. This is a small detail, but I'll argue that we as humans are cursed for gazing upon our origin in the form of written history, or when we view history as a means to access the past.
2. William Wordsworth
My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began,
So is it now I am a man,
So be it when I shall grow old
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man:
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
All history present in that visage, the child the father of the man (BM 3).
Again we have the allusion coupled with a reference to history. But the sentence before the above reads: "in him broods already a taste for mindless violence." McCarthy's child is vastly different from the one of Wordsworth's poem. Wordsworth's child is naturally innocent, and believes in natural piety. McCarthy's is inherently stained by the history of human violence: "all history present in that visage," this child is human history, and human history is stained by blood. This is only one of the many instances where McCarthy pairs violence with children. In the first description we ever see of the Judge, he is "serene and strangely childlike," (BM 7). In the last description we have of him, he is an "enormous infant," (BM 335). McCarthy does this to define evil and "mindless violence" as something inherent as the innocence of Wordsworth's child.
3. Moby-Dick (MD will be blue/BM red)
a. Structure
The kid as Ishmael. But in the case of the kid, we don't have an access to thoughts like we do with Ishmael. This is evident in both novels opening lines:
Call me Ishmael. A personal, inviting, charismatic opening.
See the child. A distant, detached, observational based opening.
Judge Holden as Ahab.
Holden and Ahab are both men of great ideals but questionable morals. Ahab's monomaniacal quest is summed up below:
The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them, till they are left living on with half a heart and half a lung. That intangible malignity which has been from the beginning; to whose dominion even the modern Christians ascribe one-half of the worlds; which the ancient Ophites of the east reverenced in their statue devil; -- Ahab did not fall down and worship it like them; but deliriously transferring its idea to the abhorred white whale, he pitted himself, all mutilated, against it (MD 198).
The Judge's:
War is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one's will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate
game because war is at least a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god (BM 249).
One last thing. The overall plot structure of the two novels is comparable. Both begin with a young man on a journey who meets a mysterious but charismatic leader. Then the leader takes center stage for a good chunk of the novel while the young men fade. Then towards the end both character's importance becomes clear: Ishmael as the carrier of Ahab's story, and the kid as a force against the Judge :"Yet even so you could have changed it all," (BM 307.)
Moby-Dick: Passages
Prophets:
Shipmates, have ye shipped in that ship?" The above words were put to us by a stranger, who, pausing before us, levelled his massive forefinger at the vessel in question. He was but shabbily apparelled in faded jacket and patched trowsers (MD 108).
A thin man in a leather weskit, a black and straightbrim hat set square on his head, a thin rim of whiskers...Do ye cross that river with yon filibuster armed ye'll not cross it back...ye carry war of a madman's making onto a foreign land (BM 41).
As you can see, the language and description of the Mennonite is reminiscent of Elijah, the prophet of Moby-Dick.
Killing the leader:
Slowly, stealthily, and half sideways looking, [Starbuck] placed the loaded musket's end against
the door...he placed the death-tube in its rack and left the place (MD 529).
Toadvine put the muzzle of his pistol against the great dome of the judge's head.
Goddam you, Holden.
You either shoot or take that away. Do it now.
Toadvine put the pistol in his belt. The judge smiled and wiped the scalp on the leg of his trousers and rose and turned away (BM 164).
Here is a moment that aligns Ahab, the maniacal leader of the Pequod, with Holden, the maniac of The Glanton Gang. Both Toadvine and the wise Starbuck are faced with a puzzle of morality: Do you kill the leader of an evil and doomed voyage if given the chance? Both characters, under the weight of moral complexity, choose not to.
So think about this: what purpose do these allusions serve?
What all this amounts to: key passages
The next step in my argument is to say that McCarthy's voice is present throughout the novel, and that he is implicitly referencing the allusions he was so careful to invoke throughout the novel. What I mean by that is the narrator is fully conscious of the allusive nature of the novel and uses that fact to make a claim about history and literature. While reading these passages keep in mind that they come in the context of a literary and historically allusive novel. Also, I find it's important to read McCarthy's prose slow because sometimes the sound and rhythm is so soothing that I stroll right through it without understanding what it's saying.
1. Their shadows contorted on the broken terrain like creatures seeking their own forms (65).
What interests me here is the "seeking their own forms." It reminds me of the story of Noah and Ham where Ham looks upon his naked father in search of his own form, and it is what we as humans do through the study of written history.
2. Rough likenesses thrown up at hearsay after the things themselves had faded in men's minds (75).
To me, this is McCarthy's view of written history, that it is just "Rough likenesses thrown up...after the things themselves had faded."
3. For this will to deceive that is in things luminous may manifest itself likewise in retrospect and so by sleight of some fixed part of a journey already accomplished may also post men
to fraudulent destinies (120).
This quote is important not only because it invokes American expansionism "manifest...destinies" but because it also calls to mind humanity's relationship to what has already happened, and the deceptive nature of past experiences.
4. In that sleep and in sleeps to follow the judge did visit. Who would come other? A great, shambling, mutant, silent and serene. Whatever his antecedents, he was something wholly other than their sum, nor was there system by which to divide him back into his origins for he would not go (309).
This was the quote that ruined my first thesis. Here, McCarthy's voice is present. I can here him saying "You know how I was so careful to follow historical fact and to coincide with Samuel Chamberlain's account of Judge Holden? Well, forget about that, this character is something completely different."
5. Men's memories are uncertain and the past that was differs little from the past that was not (330).
This quote is pretty self-explanatory. "The past that was not" meaning everything fictitious or imagined about the past.
So. Why is McCarthy doing this? After all that historical accuracy why throw these passages in there? I say that what McCarthy is ultimately doing is debunking written history as a way to understand the truths of something that has passed. To do this, he creates two links to the past:historical and literary. By passing off one (historical) as "Rough likenesses thrown up at hearsay" he brings the other (literary) to focus. I argue that what this all amounts to is an argument for literature, for "the past that was not." By creating a character from history (Judge Holden) but then saying he is "something wholly other than" the real guy, McCarthy puts his novel on a plane above written history. He allows his own fiction to make claims about truth and humanity just as we make these claims from history. What claim is he making? I believe he is implying that violence and blood are the foundation of our existence as Americans. We are the child. All history is present in our visage, too. "The child the father of the man": the man being us, modern humans, the child being our ancestors.
So what we have here is an argument for fiction as opposed to history, backed by McCarthy's virtuosic representation of violence by the contrast of his prose: the elegance of his language, and the horror of what it's describing.
1. Their shadows contorted on the broken terrain like creatures seeking their own forms (65).
What interests me here is the "seeking their own forms." It reminds me of the story of Noah and Ham where Ham looks upon his naked father in search of his own form, and it is what we as humans do through the study of written history.
2. Rough likenesses thrown up at hearsay after the things themselves had faded in men's minds (75).
To me, this is McCarthy's view of written history, that it is just "Rough likenesses thrown up...after the things themselves had faded."
3. For this will to deceive that is in things luminous may manifest itself likewise in retrospect and so by sleight of some fixed part of a journey already accomplished may also post men
to fraudulent destinies (120).
This quote is important not only because it invokes American expansionism "manifest...destinies" but because it also calls to mind humanity's relationship to what has already happened, and the deceptive nature of past experiences.
4. In that sleep and in sleeps to follow the judge did visit. Who would come other? A great, shambling, mutant, silent and serene. Whatever his antecedents, he was something wholly other than their sum, nor was there system by which to divide him back into his origins for he would not go (309).
This was the quote that ruined my first thesis. Here, McCarthy's voice is present. I can here him saying "You know how I was so careful to follow historical fact and to coincide with Samuel Chamberlain's account of Judge Holden? Well, forget about that, this character is something completely different."
5. Men's memories are uncertain and the past that was differs little from the past that was not (330).
This quote is pretty self-explanatory. "The past that was not" meaning everything fictitious or imagined about the past.
So. Why is McCarthy doing this? After all that historical accuracy why throw these passages in there? I say that what McCarthy is ultimately doing is debunking written history as a way to understand the truths of something that has passed. To do this, he creates two links to the past:historical and literary. By passing off one (historical) as "Rough likenesses thrown up at hearsay" he brings the other (literary) to focus. I argue that what this all amounts to is an argument for literature, for "the past that was not." By creating a character from history (Judge Holden) but then saying he is "something wholly other than" the real guy, McCarthy puts his novel on a plane above written history. He allows his own fiction to make claims about truth and humanity just as we make these claims from history. What claim is he making? I believe he is implying that violence and blood are the foundation of our existence as Americans. We are the child. All history is present in our visage, too. "The child the father of the man": the man being us, modern humans, the child being our ancestors.
So what we have here is an argument for fiction as opposed to history, backed by McCarthy's virtuosic representation of violence by the contrast of his prose: the elegance of his language, and the horror of what it's describing.
Poem
A child in the woven confines of space
His face an outward journey
a silent visage hacked by red wax
He dreams of toy-bright stillness
or an army of tottering verbs
but knows well of the unbending forms
that he thinks he knows
He makes music with the flap of his sneakers
or with scattered planks or thick clogs of paste
to fill the holes he himself had dug
He can't help but smell the honeysuckle
or the tangled vines of red azaleas.
He dreams of tasting a swollen fruit
He comes to a sea of curious marble
serene architecture where names grow dim with time
and gazes upon one rough gothic shape
Unbeknownst to him the trees wail silently
in the soil that forms his paper past
Since I didn't really track a motif, what I tried to do was use McCarthyesque language and themes. Specifically, I tried to focus on open space, isolation, material description, man's relationship to nature, and man's relationship to his past. My poem features a solitary wanderer who eventually reaches a cemetery and stares at a particular gravestone. What I think is significant in the poem is how the language may signify what is important to the boy. Also, how the boy seems to actively seek out death while life has to impose itself for him to notice. McCarthy's child also seems to be drawn to violence instead of the natural beauty that Wordsworth's child loves. The judge is a tricky character because he is so in touch with the natural glories of the earth and still preaches the theology of violence. The judge's relationship to nature is evident in one of my very favorite passages in which he teaches the Glanton Gang how to make gunpowder using only things found in nature.
He concluded with the tellin us that our mother the earth as he said was round like an egg and contained all good things within her (130).
I'm off track now, but that's my poem.
His face an outward journey
a silent visage hacked by red wax
He dreams of toy-bright stillness
or an army of tottering verbs
but knows well of the unbending forms
that he thinks he knows
He makes music with the flap of his sneakers
or with scattered planks or thick clogs of paste
to fill the holes he himself had dug
He can't help but smell the honeysuckle
or the tangled vines of red azaleas.
He dreams of tasting a swollen fruit
He comes to a sea of curious marble
serene architecture where names grow dim with time
and gazes upon one rough gothic shape
Unbeknownst to him the trees wail silently
in the soil that forms his paper past
Since I didn't really track a motif, what I tried to do was use McCarthyesque language and themes. Specifically, I tried to focus on open space, isolation, material description, man's relationship to nature, and man's relationship to his past. My poem features a solitary wanderer who eventually reaches a cemetery and stares at a particular gravestone. What I think is significant in the poem is how the language may signify what is important to the boy. Also, how the boy seems to actively seek out death while life has to impose itself for him to notice. McCarthy's child also seems to be drawn to violence instead of the natural beauty that Wordsworth's child loves. The judge is a tricky character because he is so in touch with the natural glories of the earth and still preaches the theology of violence. The judge's relationship to nature is evident in one of my very favorite passages in which he teaches the Glanton Gang how to make gunpowder using only things found in nature.
He concluded with the tellin us that our mother the earth as he said was round like an egg and contained all good things within her (130).
I'm off track now, but that's my poem.
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