McCarthy, Blood Meridian

(AN: I've added quotation marks where there previously were none, just to make things easier. Also, st0p flamin', prepz!!1)

In The Brothers Karamazov, when Ivan and Alyosha are discussing God and religion, Ivan remarks of the devil, "I think if the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness." In many of the incarnations of evil in literature and other media, evil has appeared in very readily understandable human forms, even while it appears superhuman. Robert Pippin, in a class I took on Heidegger's Being and Time, said that the world is intelligible even if it were to stop making sense; if, all of a sudden, a tear appeared in the sky and squirrels began spitting fire, it wouldn't make sense, but it wouldn't make sense in a way that we can comprehend. Three incarnations of evil that we should consider:

Iago from Shakespeare's Othello, who declares "I am not what I am," rendering himself formless;

Colonel Hans Landa from Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, who, aside from being an intimidating figure, appears formless as well -- he shifts allegiances, is able to speak several languages and thwarts all the best-laid plans; 

and Jason from the Friday the 13th series, though he could be replaced by any number of villains from horror movies, such as Michael Myers from Halloween, who possess preternatural speed, appearing to teleport from one place to another (think of all the Last Women Standing who run as fast as they can, only to be met by the slow-walking serial killer). 

I'm choosing to focus on villains because Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian is perhaps most memorable for the character of Judge Holden, the giant, hairless antagonist who speaks innumerable languages, has expertise in every field of science and engineering (causing the expriest to note, "I've never seen him turn to a task but what he didnt prove clever at it"), possesses superhuman strength and agility, and is really just the most evil dude ever created.

And that's saying a lot, given the omnipresent evil that blankets the landscape of the novel like the clouds in the Sonoran desert sky. While McCarthy's other novels like The Road and even No Country for Old Men provide us with respite from the evils of men through familial love and fatalism, respectively, there's no escape in Blood Meridian. Evil is everywhere, and it will find you.


Entropy

Blood Meridian is an anti-Western, a book that showcases the tropes of the Western while simultaneously subverting them (an idea for a tumblr: "Thanks, Postmodernism," in the vein of "Thanks, Obama.") The most well-known trope of the Western is lawlessness, the notion of the Wild West, where citizen-vigilantes try to bring law and order to evil train robbers and their ilk (fact: I don't know a lot about Westerns). Here, that lawlessness is foregrounded, but the romanticism is abandoned. The Glanton Gang as they're called begin by scalping Indians who have been raiding wagon trains and killing settlers, but quickly devolve into killing anyone in their path. 

Laws are an attempt at bringing order to an unordered world. Hence, a land without laws will be subject to the same entropy that is chipping away at the foundation of the universe. Here's a passage: 

“Far out on the desert to the north dustspouts rose wobbling and augered the earth and some said they’d heard of pilgrims borne aloft like dervishes in those mindless coils to be dropped broken and bleeding upon the desert again and there perhaps to watch the thing that had destroyed them lurch onward like some drunken djinn and resolve itself once more into the elements from which it sprang. Out of that whirlwind no voice spoke and the pilgrim lying in his broken bones may cry out and in his anguish he may rage, but rage at what?”

Recall the opening of the Iliad: the Rage of Achilles, Rage with direction, with purpose, with object, Rage that begins a spectacular war, but a war unlike the wars in Blood Meridian. In McCarthy's universe, there is nowhere for man to direct his rage. (Also, "drunken djinn"? Damn, that's good.) Recall also that in the Old Testament, God frequently appears as a pillar of smoke and/or fire, and in the book of Job, he speaks to Job from a whirlwind.

In a universe that actively resists law and order, what can the purpose of the Glanton Gang, residents of the universe, be, even at its most noble? We get a sense of the purposelessness of their endeavor here:

"And so these parties divided upon that midnight plain, each passing back the way the other had come, pursuing as all travelers must inversions without end upon other men's journeys."

Perhaps the most eloquent (and simultaneously horrifying way of describing the lawlessness of McCarthy's vision is in this quote from the Judge in response, I think, to the question of whether life exists anywhere else in the universe: 

“The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.

“The universe is no narrow thing and the order within it is not constrained by any latitude in its conception to repeat what exists in one part in any other part. Even in this world more things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man’s mind can compass, that mind itself being but a fact among others.”

Or, put more succinctly, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio..."

Knowledge

Perhaps related to lawlessness is the division between those who know and those who do not; specifically, this amounts to a division between Judge Holden and the rest of the characters. The Judge knows all, or at least tries to: “Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.” (Can we just pause for a moment and let the brutality of that sentence sink in?) The Judge knows, and strives to know, and that sets him apart. Many of the others have given up trying to know. An old man explains it to the Kid: “It’s a mystery. A man’s at odds to know his mind cause his mind is aught he has to know it with. He can know his heart, but he dont want to. Rightly so. Best not to look in there." Neither can a man know his mind (cf. Russell's paradox) nor should he try to know his heart (Jeremiah 17:9 -- "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?"). 

Like Col. Hans Landa, who uses his polyglotism both to ingratiate and to deceive, Holden has no interest in knowledge that does not benefit him at the expense of others. And like Landa, Holden uses his knowledge in devastating ways. Compare the coolness of Landa's conversation with the farmer, first in French and then in English, to the Bacchanalian fervor of Judge Holden as he dances around a circle of urinating men, improvising gunpowder to use against the Apaches. 

It's important to note also the expriest's opinion of knowledge: "Oh it may be the Lord’s way of showin how little store he sets by the learned. Whatever could it mean to one who knows all? He’s an uncommon love for the common man and godly wisdom resides in the least of things so that it may well be that the voice of the Almighty speaks more profoundly in such beings as lives in silence themselves.” In this way, Holden sets himself apart from God's will. 

By the way, to Judge Holden, the expriest is just known as "priest." Can a man, once elected, ever lose his election?
 

"What's He A Judge Of?"

Much has been made of the identity of the Judge. Is he human? Superhuman? He's probably just the devil, right? If I can pretend for a moment to know anything about McCarthy as an artist, I would say calling the Judge inhuman would be too obvious and calling him the devil would be too stupid. As much as Iago exists, or Hans Landa, or even Jason or Mike Myers, so too does Judge Holden. If he were the devil, then he's the devil; big whoop, so what? I think the most terrifying answer is found in the Judge's own words: “Your heart’s desire is to be told some mystery. The mystery is that there is no mystery.”

Holden's assertion that there is no mystery should strike a chord with us, having just finished the Brothers Karamazov. Dusty filled the book with mysteries: Ivan is called a riddle, much as Dmitri claims that God besets us with riddles; Zosima speaks of the mystery of human existence; and the final mystery is of course that of human psychology. To Dusty, all the world is a mystery, and the mystery deserves our reverence. But Judge Holden? All is knowable to him. He does not sit agape like the Imbecile (who likely stands in for humanity, beating the bars of his cage and being a participant in trivialities like baptism): he writes, he thinks, he judges, and he knows. He is not content with mystery; he is Descartes taken to the nth degree, a true Master and Proprietor of nature.

Another guess I've heard is that Judge Holden is a judge of men, as we might think of God being. In some ways, Holden bears a resemblance to God. When the Gang arrives in town, welcomed as heroes, they are given new clothes, and the Judge and Glanton are cloaked in white and black, respectively. (You gotta feel like McCarthy was just beating you over the head with a bat called Symbolism with that one.) But Holden as a judge of men is also too boring, and that's according to the man himself: “What is true of one man,” said the judge, “is true of many.” Being a judge of men would imply that some men are one way and others another. Is that the universe as McCarthy sees it? I beg to differ.
 

What Is It Good For?

Eternal war ravages the novel, and the Judge is always there for it -- the novel's last paragraph where he is dancing naked is easily the most frightening thing ever put to paper. His assault (murder? rape? or symbolic swallowing-up?) of the Kid/Man at the end is all the more reason to believe that he represents the inescapability of war. But again, we have evidence to the contrary in the Judge's own words. I'll quote this at length, but all we need is the last sentence; it's long, but so, so good:

“All other trades are contained in that of war…It endures because young men love it and old men love it in them. Those that fought, those that did not… Men are born for games. Nothing else. Every child knows that play is nobler than work. He knows too that the worth or merit of a game is not inherent in the game itself but rather in the value of that which is put at hazard. Games of chance require a wage to have meaning at all. Games of sport involve the skill and strength of the opponents and the humiliation of defeat and the pride of victory are in themselves sufficient stake because they inhere in the worth of the principals and define them. But trial of chance or trial of worth aspire to the condition of war for here that which is wagered swallows up game player, all.
“Suppose two men at cards with nothing to wager save their lives. Who has not heard such a tale? A turn of the card. The whole universe for such a player has labored clanking to this moment which will tell if he is to die at that man’s hard or that man at his. What more certain validation of a man’s worth could there be? This enhancement of the game to its ultimate state admits no argument concerning the notion of fate. The selection of one an over another is a preference absolute and irrevocable and it is a dull man indeed who could reckon so profound a decision without agency or significance either one. In such games as have for their stake the annihilation of the defeated the decisions are quite clear. This man holding this particular arrangement of cards in his hand is thereby removed from existence. This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the justification. Seen so, war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one’s will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god.”

War is god. It is not you or me or the Judge. The Judge has never claimed to be God. He would probably laugh at the idea.

The notion that war is god is likely inspired by the Gnostics, who believed that "evil is everything that is," a quote that I shamelessly copied from the Wikipedia article on this book. It is supported by the opening quote from Jakob Boehme, Christian mystic and shoemaker: "It is not to be thought that the life of darkness is sunk in misery and lost as if in sorrowing. There is no sorrowing. For sorrow is a thing that is swallowed up in death, and death and dying are the very life of the darkness." Remember that Nabokov had a problem with Dostoevsky's "sensitive murderers," and that Cicero judged that we should not treat all wrongdoers as "trembling ninnies." McCarthy definitely doesn't.

At the end of the day, calling the Judge superhuman or inhuman or the devil or the incarnation of war is easy because it lets us off the hook. It is tantamount to us, the readers, saying, "Look at this person who I am not." McCarthy, on the other hand, made the Judge humanity at its most basic: pale, featureless, like a large baby. He is something of a prototype of man, a fetus in the womb before it is brought into the light of the world. In this way, he is more of a man than any of us.

And what is true of one man is true of many.


Stray Observations

• I usually keep from saying whether or not I liked one of the books on my reading list. I'm reading these books because they're masterpieces, and unless I have a strong, defensible opinion, I'll withhold my judgment, since you, the reader, should go through them yourself regardless of my unenlightened opinion. With McCarthy, however, I feel comfortable saying a few words. On the whole, I love Blood Meridian and highly recommend it. McCarthy is a master of the English language and certainly the greatest living prose writer that I've read. One criticism I've heard of McCarthy's style is that it feels unedited. Certainly, you can see from some of the passages I've quoted that his sentence structure varies between torturously structured to blithely fragmented, often within the same paragraph. While his command of language is unassailable, I can't help but feel that his editing leaves something to be desired.
• Also, lack of punctuation is a valid artistic choice, but when you make that choice in all your books? Come on, bro, commas aren't that ugly.
• Lots of people die in Blood Meridian, and it's impressive to read an author confident enough to kill off main characters without a second thought. (George RR Martin is the prime example of this; I would've included that asshole Joffrey in my list of unbelievably evil characters, but I haven't read the books.) Some notable characters and their deaths: John Jackson, the white guy, is killed by John Jackson, the black guy. (Ow, McCarthy, that Symbolism bat hurts!) When Bathcat, a character with a necklace made of human ears, is killed, Toadvine, who has no ears, steals the necklace. 
• There's a lot of blue in this book, often unexpectedly. The desert is blue, the mountains are blue, this is blue, that's blue. If I had been more conscientious (probably on a second read-through), I'd highlight all the instances of blue. 
• Another piece of support for the "Holden is God" theory: He sketches one of the members of the gang, who spits: "I don't want to be in your book." Revelation 20:12: "And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works." (Also, Revelation 20:12? 2012? The Mayans were right.)
• Judge Holden: “The world goes on. We have dancing nightly and this night is no exception. The straight and the winding way are one… Men’s memories are uncertain and the past that was differs little from the past that was not.”

Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov: Part IV/Epilogue

It's been an uncharacteristically eventful few weeks since my last post. Among other milestones, I turned twenty-three, traveled to Europe for the first time, and ran (and completed) a half-marathon; but most importantly, before all that happened, I finally finished The Brothers Karamazov. That's right, fourth time's the charm. Since this is a discussion of the end of the book, spoiler alert or whatever.

For being the conclusion to arguably the greatest novel by arguably one of the greatest writers, Part IV is pretty damn boring. Honestly, there's no getting around it. The bulk of the book is taken up with Dmitri's trial, a hundred-page affair meant to satirize Russian legal proceedings. Much of the humor (?) and relevance has been lost in time, as is the case with many satires (except, of course, Jonathan Swift's groundbreaking work in the field of baby-eating).


Mysteries

Not only does Part IV satirize Russian trials, it is also a sharp critique of the fledging science of psychology. Science can be a dangerous tool in the hands of those whose emotions overrule their reason (which, Dostoevsky would argue, is basically everyone). Take Dmitri's avowal of deterministic neuroscience:

“Imagine: inside, in the nerves, in the head – that is, these nerves are there in the brain… (devil take them!) there are sort of little tails, the little tails of those nerves... that’s why I see and then think, because of those tails, not at all because I’ve got a soul, and that I am some sort of image and likeness. All that is nonsense... It’s magnificent, Alyosha, this science!... It’s chemistry, brother, chemistry!” 

Here is a man -- gullible, ardent, of the most pitiful disposition -- learning about a brand-new Theory of Everything, and he is utterly taken in by the promise of answers. Two things stand out. Firstly, Dmitri's description of neurons with their little tails is reminiscent of Fyodor's fear of being dragged into hell by demonic hooks: “Hooks? Where would they get them? What of? Iron hooks? Where do they forge them? Have they a foundry there of some sort?" Fyodor's questions are as misguided as Dmitri's understanding of science. 

We should also recognize this as a reversal, a Kafkaesque changing of offices: the acceptance of logic and rejection of faith at a time of desperate need. At the most critical moment when Dmitri needed answers, they were provided. Except they weren't really answers. RB Woodward, a pioneering organic chemist, said, "In chemistry, ideas have to answer to reality," to distinguish his profession for that of mathematics, where ideas have to answer to a reality that often seems alien to our own. Dmitri's conception of reality is different from Woodward's, too. He's not looking for science to understand the world; he's looking for science to answer questions about his soul, something that it does not (or at least should not) claim to do. He's looking for salvation in science, and though he thinks he has found it, he cannot help but be dragged down by the same little tails that saved him.

For after all, science is a double-edged sword; if chemistry must answer to reality, it cannot play favorites. The same discipline that delivers him ultimately condemns him when the prosecutor uses psychology in court to show beyond a reasonable doubt -- emphasis on reason -- that Dmitri killed his father. The arguments are tedious and protracted, but suffice it to say, they are convincing enough that the jury finds Dmitri guilty.

But of course he is not guilty; it is revealed in the course of Part IV that Smerdyakov killed Fyodor. (Honestly, did anyone else see this coming literally from the page Smerdyakov was introduced? It's supposed to be a shocking revelation, but maybe, to paraphrase Lisa Simpson, people were just more easily shocked back then.) And if Smerdyakov is guilty and Dmitri innocent, then the prosecutor's argument is not based in logic or science, but sophistry, which is Dusty's ultimate point, to show that human behavior is too complex, too subtle and unpredictable, to be dictated by science, physical laws, or even logic. 

This observation brings us back to Father Zosima's retelling of the story of Job back in Part II. (Some of the observations in the section are indebted to Nathan Rosen's great essay, "Style and Structure in The Brothers Karamazov".) In it, Zosima recounts how Job once had a large family whom he loved and was loved by. After God takes his family away from him and he sufficiently passes God's tests of faith, he is rewarded with a new family, whom, it is said, he loved as much as his former family. This fact, rather than the long and difficult middle section of Job wherein he struggles with being punished when he is sure of his innocence, is what Zosima focuses on, and indeed it seems to stand for the entirety of Dusty's story. Just as it is unbelievable that Dmitri, given prodigious motive and opportunity, managed to refrain from killing his father, it is unbelievable that Job could love a new family in the same way that he loved his first family. 

And yet we buy it. In reading Brothers K, I had no problem believing that Dmitri managed to stop himself from killing his father, just as in reading Job I had no problem believing that Job could find happiness with a new family (or rather, it was hard to imagine, but not beyond belief). As Zosima said, "It’s the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy." Human psychology, then, is not a hard and fast science, but a mystery, the great mystery. Logic is all well and good, but as we have seen, it can coexist with something grander, deeper, and more inscrutable. That is the wisdom contained in the call to love life more than its meaning, above logic.


Alyosha and his Disciples

When we read Crime and Punishment in high school, our teacher (Hi, Mrs. McEvoy!) asked us what we thought of Dusty's inclusion of an epilogue describing Raskonikov being sentenced to hard labor. I remember people saying that it was a poor choice, that ending with the powerful climax rather than a soft denouement would have been more effective. Having a litte background in Dusty's life would have probably helped us understand why he wrote it -- he was sentenced to labor in Siberia, as well -- but I always thought it was a good artistic choice. Clearly, the titular punishment was a psychological one, but crime is more than just mental torture; there is an earthly, physical punishment as well.

Brothers K closes much the same way. Part IV ends with Dmitri being pronounced guilty, only for the Epilogue to pick up a few months later with plans to break Dmitri out of prison so that he and Grushenka can travel to America together (the proposed plot of the second book in the Life of a Great Sinner series). We are then told that Ivan has gone mad after a breakdown during the trial, and we see Katerina and Dmitri reconcile their love for one another. In other words, denouement, denouement, denouement.

Then something different: Ilyusha's funeral. We have heard surprisingly little from the boys throughout the novel, even though it was implied that they would play a large role. We met Ilyusha first, briefly, and then were introduced to the impetuous Kolya and others in Book X when Ilyusha becomes sick and lies on his deathbed, but their part is minimal to say the least. In the Epilogue, we learn that Ilyusha has died (notably, there was no smell from his corpse) and Alyosha attends his funeral. He then leads the boys, twelve in all in a nod to Jesus' twelve apostles, to a large stone that Ilyusha wished to be buried under, and there he gives a speech. He urges the boys to be happy, something that is foreign to them -- "Such grief and then suddenly pancakes," quips Kolya -- but also, he urges them to remember, to remember Ilyusha when he was happy and when they were happy with him, because "if a man carries many such memories with him into life, then he is saved for his whole life.

"And if we have only one good memory left in our heart, even that may serve someday as our salvation. Perhaps we may even grow wicked later on, we may even be unable to refrain from a bad action, may laugh at people's tears... But however bad we may become -- which God forbid -- yet, when we recall how we buried Ilyusha, how we loved him in his last days, and how we have been talking like friends all together, at this stone, he cruelest and most mocking of us -- if we do become so -- will not dare to laugh inwardly at having been kind and good at this moment!"

Throughout the novel, Alyosha -- who had been pronounced the hero of the story -- has played a small role compared to those of Dmitri, Grushenka, Ivan, Fyodor, and Smerdyakov. His primary duty has been that of a messenger, rushing from one place to another in order to deliver messages, money, oaths of payment, threats, etc. Lise, the girl he proposes marriage to, even tells him that if they were to marry, she would end up cheating on him and he would still be delivering messages from her to the man in question and be glad to carry them. 

We remember a short parable by Kafka:

"They were given the choice of being kings or the kings' messengers. As is the way with children, they all wanted to be messengers. That is why there are only messengers, racing throughout the world and, since there are no kings, calling out to each other messages that have now become meaningless. They would gladly put an end to their miserable life, but they do not dare to do so because of their oath of loyalty."

We're not quite to Kakfa's time yet (hell, Kafka wasn't quite to Kafka's time), so the messages Alyosha is delivering have not yet become meaningless, but we can see that, given the choice between being king or envoy, Alyosha always picked the latter. He chose to cloister himself in a monastery, and when he was told to leave and go into the world, he spent his time delivering messages. (It could be argued that the office of messenger was thrust upon him, but he doesn't seem to do much to break the mold.) In the epilogue, however, he is not the messenger, but the proclaimer; in Kafka's parable, he is in the role of king. He is giving a message to be delivered by the children, his disciples. So the ending is not big and dramatic, but it is triumphant. The children praise the Karamazov name -- despite the murder, despite the conviction -- and Alyosha has progressed from messenger to king, with a Message to be delivered that is overflowing with meaning and significance. 


Stray Observations

• In contrast to the prosecutor's use of damning, pseudoscientific psychology, the defense attorney entreats the jury to grant Dmitri almost Christlike grace: he asks them to "overwhelm" Dmitri with their mercy to the point that he trembles, "horror-struck," and exclaims, "I am guilty in the sight of all men and am more unworthy than all... How can I endure this mercy? How can I endure so much love? Am I worthy of it?" This is the same feeling Christians are supposed to have in light of the gift of Christ dying for our sins.
• I didn't say much of Ivan other than mentioning that he went schizo. I was a little disappointed that such a powerful character who comes up with what is essentially an irrefutable argument against God is written out after having a nervous breakdown and seeing the devil. It's not that it's unreasonable; it just feels like a letdown. 
• An interesting point about messengers that didn't really fit in above. This guy makes the point that messengers are play-acting the role of king: that is, though children certainly pretend to be king all the time, they would never want actual power, but only the trappings of power. On the other hand, when I was a kid and my mom asked me if I would want to be president when I grew up, I said I couldn't handle that much power. That probably says a lot about me, so it's a good thing that Dusty said psychology is bullshit.