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"No man is give leave of that voice [...] when it stops, said Tobin, you'll know you've heard it all your life" (McCarthy, 2001: 128).

Benjamin Tobin Character Study:

Often referred to as the ‘expriest’, Benjamin Tobin is one of the key characters in Blood Meridian. A priest he may have been, but through the entirety of the novel, he is an instrumental member of the Glanton gang. Though pessimistic in his opinion that the Christian God is biased and cynical, Tobin still a firm believer. As a result of this, he frequently clashes with the Judge, who believes War is God. The two often compete for influence over the Kid and, through this, the pair become mouthpieces for their respective Gods, and the Kid, the everyman figure. Though not without sin, he is young and impressionable. Tobin appears to gain the upper hand, keeping close to the Kid and acting as his guardian. Even after the Judge shoots Tobin whilst wearing a makeshift mockery of a cross (McCarthy, 2001: p.242), Tobin attempts to have the Kid murder the Judge, to eradicate the apostle of War. The Kid will not, however, claiming that “he ain’t nothin”. Though, the truth of it more likely appears to be that the Kid was too afraid to carry out the murder (McCarthy, 2001: p.249-50). The fate of Tobin at the end of the novel is unknown, though it is likely, with a bullet would through his neck from the Judge, that he did not survive. The priest fell from God through leaving the church and joining Glanton’s gang. He then falls further as the Judge triumphs over him. In this, War triumphs over God. Shadow triumphs over light. In the world of Blood Meridian, even a man with as precarious a faith as Tobin cannot be allowed to survive in the godless borderlands, the dominion of War, and the Judge sees to it that he doesn’t.

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The full collection of Margaret Murray's stunning series of art prints illustrating Blood Meridian used in my Benjamin Tobin character study post.

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The old man swung his head back forth. The way of the transgressor is hard. God made this world, but he didn't make it to suit everybody, did he?

I don't believe he much had me in mind.

Aye, said the old man. But where does a man come by his notions. What world's he seen that he likes better?

I can think of better places and better ways.

Can ye make it be?

No.

No. It's a mystery. A man's at odds to know his mind because his mind is aught he has to know it with. He can know his heart, but he don't want to. Rightly so. Best not to look in there. It ain't the heart of a creature that is bound in the way God has set for it. You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the machine. And evil can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it.

- Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy (again)

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When they entered the judge’s quarters they found the idiot and a girl . . . cowering naked in the floor. Behind them also naked stood the judge. He was holding leveled at them the bronze barrel of the howitzer. The wooden truck stood in the floor, the straps pried up and twisted off the pillow-blocks. The judge had the cannon under one arm and he was holding a lighted cigar over the touch-hole.

r/cormacmccarthy

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I know your kind, he said. What's wrong with you is wrong all the way through you.

Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian

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The Judge

By the singingknives on deviantart

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The Wolf and the Lamb by Jean-Baptiste Oudry

“When the lambs is lost in the mountain, he said. They is cry. Sometime come the mother. Sometime the wolf.” - Cormac McCarthy, ‘Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West’ (1985)

“When the Fox hears the Rabbit scream he comes a-runnin', but not to help.” - Thomas Harris, ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ (1988)

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Gérard DuBois’s illustration for Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian.

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"War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner"

-The Judge, Blood Meridian.

(McCarthy, 2001: p.255).

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Judge Holden's Notebook: "Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent" (McCarthy, 2001: p.207). The Judge's notebook exists as a compendium of relics, natural forms, and animals. In a landscape dominated by nothing but war, War, the God of this landscape as the Judge identifies, must send his apostle, the Judge, to mark all in his kingdom. In this, the Judge's notebook exists as a holy text. A domesday book, a codex of the domain of War, to solidify their dominance over the landscape and take ownership of it.

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A piece of artwork by Mateus Roberts simply titled BLOOD MERIDIAN depicting the killing of the 'white Jackson' (McCarthy, 2001: p.110).

In a number of messages I shared with the artist, he detailed that he deliberately depicted this scene as a sort of ritual or ceremony to reflect the religious undertones he could detect in the violence of the novel.

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Cormac McCarthy's fascinating interview with Oprah Winfrey in which he, unprompted, details the song he envisioned the Judge playing on the fiddle at the novel's end. This scene is analysed in another post on this blog!

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"You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man the Devil was at his elbow" -Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian. (McCarthy, 2001: p.18).

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Artistic Interpretations of Blood Meridian's "Legion of Horribles", the Comanches. Their almost dreamlike, light and feminine dress is shown equally, yet in creatively different ways, in each piece. This idea is discussed further in the essay post elsewhere in this blog! (McCarthy, 2001: p.43).

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Violence as an Art Form that Whispers of the Divine in Blood Meridian: The above piece of artwork feeds into the essay point below in an interesting way. The hauntingly beautiful art style, the twisting of the branches, and the almost doll-like expression of the babies' faces add to the idea that McCarthy's tree of babies exists as a depraved art form. An idol, hand crafted, as an offering to War who, as the Judge asserts, is the deity of the borderlands.

As mentioned elsewhere on this blog, not even new-born babies are free of sin in the world after the Fall. A world I argue McCarthy enhances, showing violence at its most depraved, to exemplify its existence as one of the basest and most spiritual functions of man. A religion of sorts. The manner in which the corpses are draped across the tree, however, shows an undeniable degree of wicked artfulness. Softness and creativity, in the most haunting way imaginable. As Harold Bloom argues in The American Canon, Blood Meridian’s violence may be intense, but it is not gratuitous. Rather, to Bloom, it is a “terrifying art” (Bloom, 2019). In a similar way to a religious practice, like decorating a Christmas tree or hanging tapestries, the displaying of the babies can arguably be seen as a ritualistic act of worship. A way to show fealty to violence; to the God the Judge identifies to be War. This same softness or elegance to McCarthy’s violence can be seen in what is arguably the novel’s most infamous scene. The attack of the Comanches. The native American tribe are described to be “clad in costumes attic or biblical”, one wearing a “bloodstained weddingveil” (McCarthy, 2001: p.53). However, the religious artfulness of this scene does not only lie in the warriors’ dress. As the first arrow of the battle flies, the victim sat with this arrow “hanging out of his neck. He was bent slightly as if in prayer” (McCarthy, 2001: p.53). In this, there are clear traces of what K. R. Hassen calls the “whispers of the divine”. While Hassen acknowledges the inherent godlessness of this novel, he feels that God is revived through a depiction of violence and brutality. This works in direct tandem with the Judge’s claim that war is, in fact, God. Through acts of violence, human beings are closest to this God. This can be pushed further into an identification of religious ecstasy that is detectable throughout this, and many other, violent scenes in this novel.

Religious ecstasy, as Philip Ennis describes it, is an oceanic or eternal feeling of ultimate catharsis and self-expression as a result of a religious experience or worship (Ennis, 1967). Put this way, it can be read throughout the entirety of Blood Meridian, specifically during acts of extreme brutality. For example, as the Comanches are cutting down the Glanton gang, one warrior is shown “hacking and chopping at the naked bodies, ripping off limbs, heads, gutting the strange white torsos and holding up great handfuls of viscera, genitals, some of the savages so slathered up with gore they might have rolled in it like dogs” (McCarthy, 2001: p.54). The bodies detailed are ones of already butchered enemies. The Comanche warriors gain nothing from doing any of this but self-gratification. To be almost expected to “roll” in the gore “like dogs” is to revel in the sight of, the act of, and the feeling of violence. This, without having to extrapolate nearly far enough, can be linked directly to a disturbing presentation of religious ecstasy. Hassen’s “whispers of the divine”, in this, become almost deafening as McCarthy’s presentation of War as God becomes undeniable. Even the aforementioned act of religious softness, of creativity, can be found in this most brutal of scenes when viewed from this angle. The Comanches revel in the blood and viscera, the touching, holding, and smearing of them. Most disturbingly, this image almost mirrors that of a child learning to play with paints or other new textures. The wonder and sensory euphoria and the almost primal fascination and excitement as a result. The two images are undeniably comparable to a disturbing degree. Here, it is reinforced that violence is a return to the most primal and natural function of humanity. It becomes, again, undeniable to refute McCarthy’s presentation of violence as a search for meaning, for self-expression, and ultimately for the divine throughout this novel.

Bloom, H. (2019). The American Canon: Literary Genius from Emerson to Pynchon. Library of America.

Ennis, P. H. (1967). Ecstasy and Everyday Life. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 6(1).

Hanssen, K. R. (2017). “Men are made of the dust of the earth”: Time, Space, Matter, and Meaning in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. The Cormac McCarthy Journal, 15(2).

McCarthy, C. (2001). Blood Meridian: Or the evening redness in the West. Modern Library.

Baby Tree Blood Meridian Illustration by Dame Darcy

The way narrowed through rocks and by and by they came to a bush that was hung with dead babies… These small victims, seven, eight of them, had holes punched in their underjaws and were hung so by their throats from the broken stobs of a mesquite to stare eyeless at the naked sky. -Cormac McCarthy

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“He loves games? Let him play for stakes.”

—

Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian

-The Judge

(one of my favorite lines)

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Another reader's comprehensive interpretation of the presence of God in Blood Meridian.