American irregular: frontier conflict and the philosophy of war in Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, or The Evening Redness in the West

Abstract

This article examines the portrayal of frontier conflict in American writer, Cormac McCarthy's 1985 novel, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West. It argues that McCarthy's work is one of the most profound American literary meditations ever composed on the subject of irregular conflict. The article traces the novel's literary antecedents and historical background and analyses its use of language, its structural narrative, and its lyrical descriptions of bloodshed and extreme guerrilla violence on the Texas–Mexican frontier in the mid nineteenth century. Particular attention is paid to McCarthy's development of a philosophy of war, which is related to the Counter-Enlightenment ideas of Joseph de Maistre and Friedrich Nietzsche. It is suggested that McCarthy employs the experience of irregular conflict on the American frontier as a philosophical lens to articulate the idea of war as a form of divination – an approach that is based on a mixture of Maistre's theory of redemptive violence and Nietzsche's cult of the existential warrior. The article concludes that McCarthy's blending of irregular conflict with a philosophy of war – empowered as it is by some of the most sumptuous of all twentieth-century American literary prose – endow this classic novel with a timeless and transcendental quality. McCarthy's unflinching representation of the anatomy of irregular conflict thus emerges not only as a searing portrayal of America's past frontier experience, but also as a powerful metaphor for understanding the endemic violence of twenty-first century insurgency in such countries as Iraq and Afghanistan.

Keywords:

• Cormac McCarthy
• Blood Meridian
• American frontier conflict
• irregular warfare
• literary portrayal of guerrilla violence
• philosophy of war
• Comanche and Apache raids
• Maistre
• Nietzsche

Notes

 1. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature, 68.

 2. Slotkin, Regeneration through Violence; The Fatal Environment ; and Gunfighter Nation.

 3. Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation, chapters 13–17. For historical links between American frontier conflict and contemporary counterinsurgency see Joes, America and Guerrilla Warfare and Tierney, Chasing Ghosts.

 4. Marlantes, Matterhorn and Junger, War. See also the award-winning accounts by reporters David Finkel, The Good Soldiers, and Dexter Filkins, The Forever War.

 5. McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West.

 6. Quoted in Grossman, On Combat, 8.

 7. For accounts of McCarthy's literary career and analyses of his novels see Arnold and Luce, Perspectives on Cormac McCarthy; Owens, Cormac McCarthy's Western Novels; and Cant, Cormac McCarthy and the Myth of American Exceptionalism.

 8. Bell, The Achievement of Cormac McCarthy, xii.

 9. Cant, Cormac McCarthy and the Myth of American Exceptionalism, 26–27.

10. Turner, The Frontier in American History.

11. Nolan, ‘A Review of Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West’.

12. For Blood Meridian's critical reception, see the summary in Cant, Cormac McCarthy and the Myth of American Exceptionalism, 23–4.

13. McMurty, Lonesome Dove.

14. See Cant, Cormac McCarthy and the Myth of American Exceptionalism, chapter 1 and also Harold Bloom on Blood Meridian in his How to Read and Why, 254–63.

15. Cited in Cant, Cormac McCarthy and the Myth of American Exceptionalism, 160; Daugherty, ‘Gravers False and True’, 172.

16. Grossman and Lacayo, ‘All Time 100 Novels’; New York Times, Sunday Magazine Section, 21 May 2006, 16.

17. Cited in ‘Tragic Ecstasy’, in Josyph, Adventures in Reading Cormac McCarthy, 86.

18. Josyph, ‘Blood Music: Reading Blood Meridian’, 170 and Josyph, Adventures in Reading Cormac McCarthy, 51–75.

19. Bloom, How to Read and Why, 255.

20. Castel, ‘Introduction’ to Goodrich, Scalp Dance, 1865–1879, xi.

21. Fehrenbach, Comanches; Goodrich, Scalp Dance; Gwynne, Empire of the Summer Moon.

22. Fehrenbach, Comanches, 76.

23. Quoted in Sepich, Notes on Blood Meridian, 9. See also Sepich, ‘“What kind of indians was them?” Some Historical Sources in Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian’.

24. See Sepich, Notes on Blood Meridian, chapter 1 for a discussion of these and other works.

25. Chamberlain, My Confession.

26. McCarthy, Blood Meridian, 3, 13, 87, 122–35, 106–7.

27. McCarthy, Blood Meridian, 57, 247, 220, 153. See also Shaviro, ‘“The Very Life of Darkness”’, 145–6.

28. For discussion of the Colt revolver in frontier warfare, see Utley, Frontiersmen in Blue, 26–7; Frontier Regulars , 76–7; and Lone Star Justice , 74–5, 79–80; and Bellesiles, Arming America, 354–430.

29. McCarthy, Blood Meridian, 98.

30. McCarthy, Blood Meridian, 4.

31. McCarthy, Blood Meridian, 7.

32. McCarthy, Blood Meridian, 34.

33. McCarthy, Blood Meridian, 47.

34. McCarthy, Blood Meridian, 46–8, 58–60.

35. McCarthy, Blood Meridian, 51.

36. McCarthy, Blood Meridian, 52.

37. McCarthy, Blood Meridian, 37.

38. McCarthy, Blood Meridian, 54.

39. McCarthy, Blood Meridian

40. McCarthy, Blood Meridian, 69.

41. McCarthy, Blood Meridian, 78, 152.

42. McCarthy, Blood Meridian, 157.

43. McCarthy, Blood Meridian, 166–71.

44. McCarthy, Blood Meridian, 171, 113.

45. McCarthy, Blood Meridian, 182.

46. McCarthy, Blood Meridian, 185.

47. McCarthy, Blood Meridian, 275.

48. McCarthy, Blood Meridian, 300–11.

49. McCarthy, Blood Meridian, 327–31.

50. Bloom, How to Read and Why, 257–8; Daugherty, ‘Gravers False and True’, 159–74.

51. Owens, The Western Novels of Cormac McCarthy, 62.

52. See Tierney, Chasing Ghosts, 52–98; 140–60. For studies of the role of violence in contemporary irregular conflicts, see Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War and Weinstein, Inside Rebellion.

53. ‘Tragic Ecstasy: A Conversation with Harold Bloom about Blood Meridian’, in Josyph, Adventures in Reading Cormac McCarthy, 88.

54. Holman Christian Standard Bible translation, The Soldier's Bible , 7.

55. Hobbes, Leviathan, 13.3–14.

56. Clausewitz, On War, 89. For Clausewitzian allusion in Blood Meridian, see also Owens, Cormac McCarthy's Western Novels, 25.

57. Gat, War in Human Civilization, 127–32.

58. Moseley, A Philosophy of War, 7.

59. For Maistre's works, see Lebrun, Joseph de Maistre; Bradley, A Modern Maistre; and Goldhammer, The Headless Republic, especially chapter 2.

60. See Bradley, A Modern Maistre, 71–9 and Goldhammer, The Headless Republic, 85–94.

61. Berlin , The Hedgehog and the Fox, 61. See also Isaiah Berlin essay on Maistre in Freedom and its Betrayal, 131–54.

62. Berlin, The Hedgehog and the Fox, 48–9.

63. Maistre quoted in Goldhammer, The Headless Republic, 100.

64. Maistre quoted in Goldhammer, The Headless Republic, 87–8.

65. Schimpf, A Reader's Guide to Blood Meridian, 3–51.

66. Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, 46–8. For a good discussion of Nietzsche and war, see Peery, Nietzsche on War, especially 28–9, 67–72, 100–4, 135–59.

67. McCarthy, Blood Meridian, 307.

68. McCarthy, Blood Meridian, 307, 198.

69. McCarthy, Blood Meridian, 248.

70. McCarthy, Blood Meridian, 249.

71. McCarthy, Blood Meridian

72. McCarthy, Blood Meridian, 146, 250.

73. McCarthy, Blood Meridian, 199.

74. McCarthy, Blood Meridian, 146–7.

75. Bloom, How to Read and Why, 259; McCarthy, Blood Meridian, 125.

76. McCarthy, Blood Meridian, 132.

77. McCarthy, Blood Meridian, 299.

78. McCarthy, Blood Meridian, 331.

79. Schimpf, A Reader's Guide to Blood Meridian, 50–1.

80. Albert Camus quoted in Smith, The Most Dangerous Animal, xxi.

81. James, ‘Is Everybody Dead Around Here?, 31.

82. Galvin, ‘Uncomfortable Wars: Towards a New Paradigm’, 2–8 and Mainwaring, ‘An Interview with General John R. Galvin, US Army (Ret), Dean, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, 6 August 1997’, 1–11. For the development of low-intensity conflict, see the essays in Klare and Kornbluh, Low-Intensity Warfare.

83. General Sir Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force.

84. Woodward, ‘Cormac McCarthy's Venomous Fiction’, 28–31.