Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian is such a symbolically and philosophically dense novel that anything other than volumes devoted solely to its analysis would not do justice to McCarthy's work. However, it may be helpful to focus on a certain fragment of the text and see what can be gleaned from it through literary analysis. Although this novel covers a vast amount of different topics and philosophies, one that particularly stands out is existentialism. Nowhere is human finitude more evident than in Blood Meridian. So in the future there must be even more specificity, because it is conceivable that an entire book could still be devoted solely to existential philosophy in Blood Meridian. For the purpose of this essay, which is tiny compared to the depth and richness of some of the ideas that can be extracted from the novel, the reader may turn specifically to the final passage of the story as well as to the relationship between the judge and the child as symbols of existential philosophy. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay It can be beneficial to first have a sense of existentialism which can then be applied to the novel. A general statement is presented in William Barrett's extensive examination of existentialism in his book Irrational Man. He writes: Science has stripped nature of its human forms and presented to man a neutral universe, foreign, in its immensity and its force, to his human designs. Religion, before this phase took hold, was a structure which encompassed the life of man, providing him with a system of images and symbols by which he could express his own aspirations towards psychic wholeness. With the loss of this containing framework, man became not only a dispossessed being but a fragmentary being... Moreover, man's feeling of homelessness, of alienation... came to be to feel foreign... to God, to nature and to the gigantic social apparatus... [even] to himself. (Barrett 35, 36) Existentialism, as Barrett shows, is essentially the idea that man, through science (which is a point that will be discussed later), has come to realize that human life , in all its senses, is finite; in this, the man is “homeless,” as Barrett accurately puts it. It's about 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 deals with death in astonishing volumes, but treats it in an absolutely horrific way. It is in fact a novel, partly known only for its grotesquerie and sheer violence. The Glanton Gang, its core members as well as those who come and go throughout the story, are intimate with death: "friends" (or at least acquaintances) are killed at an incredible rate and by various tribes as well. than between them. , the members of the Glanton Gang were transmitters of death themselves (whether by scalping, by gunning, by throat-slitting, etc.), and all had encountered death in the most intimate sense of the word. Dana Philips writes: “Blood Meridian, unlike most popular novels and westerns, accepts homelessness as its inevitable condition. It does not express a longing for domesticity and rest – for a house on the beach” (452). If anyone should become familiar with existential ideas, it was him; perhaps this novel even acts as a sort of commentary on existential philosophy: look at how atrocious people can behave without a God of some sort. Babies are hung on bushes, brains are boiled,children are scalped, puppies are slaughtered; the list could go on for several pages. The world depicted in Blood Meridian is pure anarchic chaos. It is a place without God. Or certainly, there are at least strong arguments for it. One of the introductory passages shows a priest being shot over things that probably weren't true, churches being desecrated and abandoned, anyone who appears to have any pro-God ideas being ridiculed; Tobin, one of the instrumental members of the Glanton Gang, is a former priest. There is an immense amount of religious objects and symbols, but they are almost always depicted in a bad or damning light. The child himself appears to act as a symbol for McCarthy. He seems to be one of the only members of the Glanton Gang who can even be considered morally semi-redeemable. Combine this with the fact that towards the end of the book, with the child becoming a man, the reader sees him having an almost instinctive desire to make amends with God: "He had a Bible that he had found in the mining camps and he took this book with him of which he could not read a single word. (McCarthy 325). In this, through an existential lens, the reader can interpret McCarthy's calling for man to draw closer to God as a commentary on what a world without religion might look like. The child throughout the novel seems to be the only one who entertains any form of sympathy, as callous as it may sometimes seem. In their desire to become familiar with religion, the reader can make the connection between being associated with God and the only way to have some form of morality. Without this, the reader sees what horrible tragedies occur. In the moments before the judge and the man's final conversation, the reader can watch a scene that emphasizes certain points through the random death of a dancing bear at the bar in which the judge and the man were currently there: one of the men had drawn a long-barreled cavalry pistol from his belt. He turned and pointed the gun at the stage… The gunshot was thunderous and in the next shot, all the noise in that room stopped. The bear had been shot in the waist. He let out a low moan and began to dance faster, dancing in silence except for the clicking of his large pads on the boards. Blood ran down his groin... The man with the gun fired again and the gun bucked and roared and black smoke rolled and the bear groaned and started staggering drunkenly. (McCarthy 339) Although the judge and the man have not even begun to speak to each other yet, the reader still sees signs of existentialism. The seemingly random nature of the shooter's act alone acts somewhat metaphorically in that death is often reckless, random, and unprecedented. Elmo Kennedy has an apt maxim: “Death is so easy and life is so random.” » These points highlight existentialism in that they not only emphasize human finitude, but rather go further and recognize that finitude. As the reader progresses through the passage, he sees that after the bear is shot, it dances faster. Perhaps this is McCarthy's commentary on the human spirit. As the bear is slaughtered and more or less realizes its impending death, it not only resumes its activity as before, but it does so with even more enthusiasm. In the same way, just as man begins to understand that there is no life after death (and therefore a possible total and authentic death in its most real sense), man also resumes his activity like before. Man does not simply cease to exist or pursue his passion; he does it rathernew and different way, now open to new possibilities. And to continue on this tangent, man may even seek to do what he wants with more urgency, just as the bear dances with more enthusiasm when he is shot; the fact that man knows that death is random and imminent motivates him to pursue what he wants now with the feeling of a delay. We could consider the judge and the child as a couple; through an existential lens, the judge represents science and reason while the child represents a remnant of faith towards anything that could be considered a religion. The Judge is this mega-intelligent, mega-philosophical entity. He's the 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 knows). His knowledge probably extends well beyond that.) and seems to have a deep understanding of all things scientific. He still gives lectures, draws models in his book and imposes his philosophy on the group. In fact, his knowledge in all things science saves the Glanton gang on several occasions; However, there is one event that turns out to be particularly improbable and particularly demonic. The judge has mixed a variety of diverse materials and, from the essential nothingness around them, finds a way to create gunpowder. The finishing touches of his concoction are shown quite gruesomely as such: We took out our limbs and we went at it and the judge on his knees was kneading the mass with his bare arms and the piss was splattering and he was screaming at us for piss, man, piss for your soul because you can't see the red skins there, and laugh meanwhile and work this great mass into a filthy black paste, a paste of the devil because of its stench and he is not a damn black pastry chef himself, I don't suppose and he takes out his knife and he starts troweling it over the rocks on the south side, spreading it thin with the blade of the knife and looking at the sun with one eye and he smeared with blackness and stinking of piss and sulfur and smiling and brandishing the knife with marvelous dexterity, as if he did it every day of his life. (McCarthy 138) It's ritualistic and occult, but ultimately it's science and that's what saves them. Assuming that the Judge is a symbol of newly discovered knowledge and reason, the reader sees a useful figure, but he also sees that this same figure carries the capacity for great potential to be evil. In this comparison, the child would then be this omnipresent desire. for the spiritual or religious. If anyone should not believe in the mercy of a God, it is the child: abused in one way or another as a child, then endured a life that is probably what comes closest to hell, with the child always at the end. of the novel longs for God in one form or another, because he carries a Bible that he can't even read. It is the instinctive extension of ourselves into submission to a greater power. And the child, being one of the very few characters in the story to have a desire for religion, is also portrayed as one of the most moral characters and probably the one with whom the reader feels the most affinity. There is also the older Tobin who, throughout the novel, seems to cling to some form of faith and belief in God. He too is portrayed in a “flattering” light, or at least a more sympathetic one. Looking at the novel with existentialism in mind, McCarthy seems to be saying that a place without God (which is what.