Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian is a novel so symbolically and philosophically dense that anything outside of the volumes devoted exclusively to its analysis would not do justice to McCarthy's work. However, it may still prove useful to delve deeper into a certain fragment of the text and see what can be gleaned from it through literary analysis. While this novel covers a vast amount of different topics and philosophies, one that particularly stands out is existentialism. Nowhere is human finiteness more evident than in Blood Meridian. So, moving forward, there needs to be even more specificity, as it's conceivable that an entire book could be dedicated solely to existential philosophy in Blood Meridian. For the purpose of this essay, which is insignificant compared to how deep and rich certain ideas can be extracted from the novel, the reader can look specifically at the final passage of the story as well as the relationship between the judge and the boy as symbols of Existential Philosophy. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay It may be helpful to first gain a sense of existentialism that can later be applied to the novel. A general statement is shown in William Barrett's thorough examination of existentialism in his book Irrational Man. He writes: Science has stripped nature of its human forms and presented to man a neutral, alien universe, in its vastness and strength, to his human purposes. Religion, before the advent of this phase, had been a structure that embraced man's life, providing him with a system of images and symbols through which he could express his aspirations towards psychic completeness. With the loss of this containing structure, man has become not only a dispossessed, but a fragmented being... Furthermore, the feeling of homelessness, of alienation... has come to [make him] feel like an outsider... respect to God, to nature, and to the gigantic social apparatus…[even] from himself. (Barrett 35, 36) Existentialism, as shown by Barrett, is essentially the idea that man, through science (which is a point that will be raised later) has come to realize that human life, in all his senses, it's over; in this, the man is “homeless,” as Barrett accurately puts it. It means realizing that there will be an end and nothing else after that end. This way of thinking is very relevant to Blood Meridian. This is a novel that not only tackles death in astonishing volumes, but tackles it in downright gruesome ways. It is a novel, in fact, partly known only for its grotesque and pure violence. The Glanton gang, its core members, and those who come and go throughout the story, are intimate with death: "friends" (or at least acquaintances) are killed in incredible numbers, and by various tribes as well as each other. , the members of the Glanton gang were themselves emitters of death (whether by scalping, gun, slaughter, etc.), and all had come face to face with death in the most intimate sense. Dana Philips writes: "Blood Meridian, in contrast to most popular novels and Westerns, accepts homelessness as an inevitable condition. It does not express an aspiration for domesticity and rest, for a house on the chain mountainous" (452). If anyone had to familiarize themselves with existential ideas, it was them; perhaps this novel also serves as a sort of commentary on existential philosophy: look at how atrocious people can behave without a God of some kind. Children are hung from bushes, brains are boiled, children are scalped, puppies are shot; the list could go on for many pages.The world represented in Blood Meridian is anarchic, pure chaos. It is a place without God. Or certainly there is at least a strong argument for it. One of the introductory passages sees a priest being killed because of things that were probably not true, churches are desecrated and abandoned, anyone who seems to have any notions of a God is ridiculed; Tobin, one of the instrumental members of the Glanton Gang, is a former priest. There are a huge amount of religious artifacts and symbols, yet they are almost always portrayed in a bad or harmful light. The boy himself appears to serve as a symbol for McCarthy. He appears to be one of the few members of the Glanton Gang who can be considered morally semi-redeemable. Added to this is the fact that towards the end of the book, when the boy has become a man, the reader sees him have an almost instinctive desire to make amends with God: "He had a Bible that he had found in the mining camps and he carried with him this book, of which he could not read a single word (McCarthy 325). appear a world without religion. The boy throughout the novel seems to be the only one to have some form of sympathy, however callous he may seem at times to learn about religion, the reader can establish that association with God is the only way to have some form of morality. Without it, the reader sees what horrible tragedies occur In the moments leading up to the final conversation of the judge and the man, the reader can watch a scene that emphasizes certain points through the random death of a dancing bear at the bar where the judge and the man were currently at: One of the men had pulled a long-barreled cavalry pistol from his waistband. He turned and pointed the gun at the stage... The shot was thunderous and in the following applause all sounds in that room stopped. The bear had been shot in the trunk. He let out a low moan and began to dance faster, dancing in silence except for the clacking of his large feet on the boards. Blood ran down his groin... The man with the gun fired again and the gun rose and roared and the black smoke rose and the bear groaned and began to stagger drunkenly. (McCarthy 339) Although the judge and the man have not yet begun to speak to each other, the reader still sees signs of existentialism. The apparent randomness of the shooter's act acts somewhat metaphorically as the death is often reckless, random and unprecedented. Elmo Kennedy has a fitting maxim: “Death is so easy and life is so random.” These points highlight existentialism as they not only emphasize human finiteness, but rather go beyond and recognize this finiteness. Moving forward in the passage, the reader sees that after the bear is shot, he dances faster. This is perhaps McCarthy's commentary on the human spirit. When the bear is hit and becomes more or less aware of his imminent death, he not only resumes his activity as before, but does so with even more enthusiasm. Likewise, at the very moment when man emerges from enlightenment regarding the absence of an afterlife (and therefore from a total and genuine death in its most real sense), man also resumes his activity as before . Man does not simply cease to exist or cease to pursue passion; rather it does so in new and different ways, now open to new possibilities. And to continue on this path, man can also try to do what he wants with greater urgency, just as the bear dances with more enthusiasm after being hit; the fact that man knows that death is random and imminent pushes him to pursue what he will do now with thesense of a deadline. One might consider the judge and the boy as a couple; through an existential lens, the judge represents science and reason while the boy represents a remnant of faith towards anything that could be considered a religion. The judge is this mega-intelligent, mega-philosophical entity. He is this seven-foot man who can persuade even the most difficult individuals to do things you could never imagine them doing, a master of rhetoric. He also speaks several languages ​​(and probably knows more; the reader is only introduced to those that the judge himself is compared to. His knowledge probably goes far beyond that) and seems to have a vast knowledge of all things scientific. He is always giving lectures, drawing models in his book, and imposing his philosophies on the group. In fact, his knowledge in all things science saves the Glanton Gang several times; however, there is one event that stands out as particularly unlikely and particularly demonic. The judge has mixed together a variety of miscellaneous materials and from the essential nothingness surrounding them finds a way to create gunpowder. The finishing touches to his concoction are shown rather horribly as such: We took out our members and launched ourselves and the judge on his knees kneaded the mass with his bare arms and the pee squirted here and there and shouted at us to do it . piss, man, piss for your soul, because you don't see the redskins over there, and in the meantime you laugh and prepare this great mass into a black and disgusting dough, a devil's batter judging from the smell it has and he himself is not a damned dark pastry chef. don't assume and he takes out the knife and starts troweling it on the south-facing rocks, spreading it thin with the knife blade and looking at the sun with one eye and him smeared black and smelling of piss and sulfur and smiling and brandishing the knife with a wonderful dexterity, as he did it every day of his life. (McCarthy 138) It's ritualistic and occult-like, but ultimately it's science and that's what saves them. By taking on the judge as a symbol of newfound knowledge and reason, the reader sees a helpful figure but also sees that the same figure carries with it a capacity for so much potential to be evil. In this comparison, the boy would therefore have that ever-present desire for the spiritual or religious. If there is anyone who should not believe in God's mercy, it is the child: abused in some way as a child and then endured a life of what is probably the closest thing to Hell, the boy still at the end of the novel yearns God one way or another, as he carries around a Bible that he can't even read. It is the instinctive extension of ourselves into submission to a greater power. And the boy, being one of the very few figures in the story with a desire for religion, is also described as one of the most moral people and probably one the reader feels the most affinity towards. There is also the knowledgeable Tobin who throughout the novel seems to maintain some form of faith and belief in God. He too is portrayed in a “flattering” or at least more sympathetic light. Looking at the novel with existentialism in mind, McCarthy seems to be saying that a place without God (which is the setting of Blood Meridian) has the potential to become so evil. It is a sort of protest towards the complete abandonment of God. There may be a message to be discerned from the final encounter between the judge and what is now man. The reader sees, after the conversation about the war which in itself deserves a book of analysis, the man go to the bathroom. Opening the door, the man sees the judge waiting for him almighty: “The judge was sitting on the cabinet. He was naked and stood up smiling, took him in his arms against his immense flesh and.