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Since its publication in 1985, the extreme scenes of violence in Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian have posed a central problem for critics. So far, they have addressed its violence by either historicizing it in the context of American imperialism, or by naturalizing it as part and parcel of the human condition. Through a reading of Judge Holden's character as a figure of the law, I propose instead to read its violence as the result of a metaphysical yearning for meaning to brace us against the fear of the unknown. I argue that this is what forms the basis of the judge's rule in Blood Meridian, and by extension, what the novel reveals as the dark underside of modern society. By demystifying the judge thus, the illusion of the rational ground of society falls away, thereby opening up new possibilities for meaning.
Keywords: Cormac McCarthy / Blood Meridian / violence / law
Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, or, The Evening Redness in the West (1985) is notorious for both the extent and representational style of its violence. It persistently, repetitively, and graphically details the exploits of a group of "scalphunters" in the Southwestern border region just after the Mexican-American War, leading critics to either revel in or be repelled by the incredible carnage on its pages. As Steven Shaviro wrote in one of the most oftquoted essays on McCarthy, "Blood Meridian sings hymns of violence, its gorgeous language commemorating slaughter in all its sumptuousness and splendor" (143). One review noted how "Blood Meridian comes at the reader like a slap in the face" ( James). Another called its violence "excruciating" (Donoghue), while fans and critics alike have never stopped wondering why it can be so "exhilarating" to read "such an excessive, doom-obsessed, bone-chilling novel of blood" (Daugherty 169).
But critical zeal aside, this notoriety is well-deserved. To take an example from one of the novel's many wanton massacres, the following scene depicts the slaughter of a ragtag army of American filibusters by frenzied Comanche warriors,
riding down the unhorsed Saxons and spearing and clubbing them [. . .] and stripping the clothes from the dead and seizing them up by the hair and passing their blades about the skulls of the living and the dead alike...