ABSTRACT
In this essay I will argue that the central themes of Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West can be seen more clearly when they are examined through the lens of classical Greek thought. That Blood Meridian owes a great deal to epic, philosophy, and tragedy is agreed upon, yet its roots in classical Greek thought remain largely unexamined. This is surprising given that epic, philosophy, and tragedy are all products of the Greek mind. It is not difficult to find scholars noting connections to epic (Lincoln), philosophy (Frye 4), and tragedy (Bloom 11), but I will argue that if we establish the precise connections that Blood Meridian shares with these areas of Greek thought we can more clearly elucidate its central themes and gain a more precise picture of the Judge. In the first section, on epic, I will argue that the sense in which Blood Meridian is an epic can be established by showing the connections that it shares with the Iliad. I will contend that Blood Meridian is not simply epic in terms of subject matter or scope, but that its central focus is the same as that of the Iliad; namely, it is concerned with the nature of force. In the second section, on philosophy, I will show that Blood Meridian engages precisely those issues that concerned the first Greek philosophers and will contend that an elucidation of these issues can be used to characterize the philosophical positions that support the Judge’s moral and scientific pronouncements. My argument will be that the Judge quotes early Greek philosophers such as Thales and Anaximander because he shares their philosophical position. In the third section, on tragedy, I will argue that, with an understanding of how Blood Meridian is connected to the Iliad and its concerns with necessity, equality, and chance (first section), and how early Greek philosophers responded to those concerns (second section), we are in a position to read Blood Meridian as a work of Greek tragedy. I will contend that McCarthy’s work is a true work of tragedy in the precise sense of pitting two irreconcilable metaphysical options against each other. I will conclude in the last section by suggesting a possible way of identifying a Homeric trajectory in McCarthy’s work that begins in Blood Meridian and culminates in the Border Trilogy.
