Hello, beautiful people, welcome to a new review! For this review, I get into my third Cormac McCarthy book, Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West. A difficult, dense, and frankly brutal book that is downright fantastic from start to finish. It’s a tough one in both the plot and how it’s presented, but if you take the time to really get into it and think, it’s a great read to pick up.
Main Characters:
The kid: Our unnamed main character, who in his youth joins a gang that hunts Indigenous people viciously, is kind of a blank slate that does what he needs to survive and is often emotionally disconnected from what’s going on around him
Glanton: The Leader of the gang that The Kid joins, the gang hunts and scalps Indigenous people, is a horrific leader who craves blood and power
Judge Holden: Plays a large role in our story as a member of the gang, while not the leader, is highly influential to the men in the gang, craves conflict and a fight, and is genuinely evil in all manners
Tobin: The ex-priest of the gang who, while being a part of something terrible, will often be a type of conscious or other perspective in the group
Toadvine: Another member of the gang who connects with The Kid and shares wisdom and understanding with him
David Brown: A member of the group who will often take things to another level, often to the disturbance of the other men in the group
My Review
As mentioned above, this is not my first Cormac McCarthy book that I have checked out, and while Blood Meridian is a great book, I am not sure I would recommend it to be the first read. All of his books are fairly gory and creepy in some aspects, but just the difficulty of the storyline in Blood Meridian would make it a tough one to start out with. I guess you could argue that all of his books are challenging in some way or another, but I just found this one to be a bit more philosophical than some of his other books are. If you’re open to the challenge, though, it’s definitely worth it to check out. I gave Blood Meridian a 9/10 rating overall and am looking forward to picking up my next Cormac read.
Blood Meridian follows our main character, The Kid, as he attempts to survive on his own as a runaway. In his travels, he is introduced to a group of men who can only be described as vile and inhumane. The gang travels around as a group fighting, slaughtering, and, as their prize, scalping Indigenous communities who are seen as pests to the Texan settlers. The gang’s leader, Glanton, is charismatic and able to convince our main character to join them for survival and protection. Glanton demands loyalty of his men, but his unhinged desire to kill and get his prize makes him dangerous to the group’s survival. Then we have Judge Holden, while not the leader of the group, could be just as well. The Judge is a physical embodiment of chaos and violence; his influence over the men is spine-tingling, and it only serves to boost his ego further. We also have Tobin, our ex-priest of the gang (make that make sense right), who serves as our very small sliver of humanity in this group of vile men. He is often the rare one to question if the group needs to do as much as they are, and generally, what the purpose of this all is. We also have many other small characters in the gang, like Toadvine and David Brown, who, while smaller in the group, add to the violence perpetuated within it. The book follows this gang now, including The Kid and the more time he spends with him, the more he sees the group dissolve into madness. When the group attempts to tackle their biggest kill yet, driven by ego and questionable morals, we see the true picture of all the men and just how evil and unhinged they can become.
I found it really interesting that The Kid ends up being our main character, because he’s not exactly someone you feel like you ever really know. He’s basically a runaway, arguably just drifting through life and looking for a sense of purpose or belonging. So when he falls in with Glanton’s gang, even though they’re literally out there committing unspeakable acts, it weirdly makes sense. It’s a group. It’s somewhere to exist. Somewhere to survive. And that’s more than he had before. Honestly, The Kid isn’t all that different from the rest of the men he rides with. He’s emotionally closed off, lost, and numb to the world, just like the others. He doesn’t seem to know who he is or what he stands for, so it’s not shocking that he can be pulled into that level of violence. The brutality becomes routine, a means to survive, and it chips away at whatever innocence he might have had left. I don’t even know if he had that much to begin with, but what’s clear is that any chance of moral clarity gets swallowed up in the bloodshed.
Then there’s The Judge. And honestly? The name is borderline laughable. He’s not a judge in any real sense of the word. He’s a man who commits atrocities and seems to believe he has the right to do so, like he’s passing some grand moral sentence, when really, he’s just dealing out his own twisted version of justice. His ego is next-level. And that’s what makes him so dangerous. Because it’s hard not to get sucked into it. He speaks with so much certainty and confidence, even though all he brings to the table is chaos, violence, and fear. He presents conflict like it’s a natural, divine order of life, like war is holy and eternal and the only thing that matters. But he conveniently ignores the fact that the only reason there’s conflict in this story is because he and his gang are literally out there massacring people for profit. Sure, conflict might be a part of human nature, but Holden weaponizes that idea to justify horrific violence. He never questions his own role in creating the bloodshed. But I guess that’s what happens when you’re operating from a place of supremacy, people can justify anything if they believe they’re inherently above others.
Glanton is fascinating in a different way. You can see why he’s the leader and not the Judge; he has the charisma and brute force to hold the group together. But he’s no better. He’s just as unhinged, just as cruel, and his confidence in the gang’s power is ultimately what leads them into disaster. He’s all bravado and zero foresight.
Tobin, the ex-priest, is kind of the outlier. He’s a weird little contradiction; he still holds onto some sense of righteousness, but he’s just as complicit in the gang’s violence as anyone else. And yet, he’s necessary. He brings in a sliver of humanity, which this book desperately needs. He offers the Kid a glimpse of a different way of thinking, something that isn’t drenched in blood and ego. His religious views are honestly hard to swallow in a context like this, but I guess that’s part of the point. How do you reconcile faith with this kind of horror? You don’t. You can’t. There’s no redemption arc for what these men are doing, and McCarthy doesn’t pretend there is.
I think the book hits hard on this idea that people will always find ways to justify violence, to justify doing whatever serves them, even when it’s horrific. It’s not just about war, it’s about how easy it is to lose your soul when survival, power, or ideology are on the line. And at the end of the day, evil has a way of outlasting good. It’s not fair. It’s not poetic. But it feels true. Just look around.
*** Don’t read any further if you don’t want to read any spoilers ***
The book ends with the gang taking part in the battle at Yuma Crossing, most gang members losing their lives in the process.
The loss in the gang is unsurprising. Their ego and overconfidence lead them to believe that they are more than a group of thugs who take people’s scalps. Actual battle is different, it’s more than just blatant violence and attack.
The Kid survives and goes off on his own again, and is later introduced as The Man. The book ends with The Man meeting face to face with the Judge again. It’s a question of whether he has come to face his demons or come to finally meet his end. We assume that the Judge kills him, but it’s never fully said. I assume that he did. I sat on this ending for a while because I obviously wanted The Man to kill him and had to question why end it this way. I mean to be honest, it’s because it’s realistic. In all reality, The Man is no better than Judge, and has done and seen the same as he has. It may be more so that divine retribution factor, where The Man cannot outrun his past, and has to come back to where his demons started to end it all. I mean, maybe he knew that the Judge would understand him, and see him for who he really is deep down.
I hope you enjoyed this review. Thank you for checking it out. Feel free to subscribe to the page to be one of the first to know when I release a new review!
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