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Blood Meridian (or the Evening Redness in the West) is widely regarded as Cormac McCarthy’s finest work. Though he won the Pulitzer Prize for The Road, and The National Book Award for All the Pretty Horses, it is Blood Meridian that critic Harold Bloom boasts is “worthy of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick”. The novel is a rich work that addresses issues regarding perceived race, religion, colonialism, and the American notion of Manifest Destiny. Despite the sprawling narrative, and depth of plot and character, it is the epilogue included at the end of the novel that many critics have tried hardest to deconstruct. The brief, 207-word paragraph is like a legend on a map and gives readers a key that deciphers the spirit of what they have just read. Though it is unlike McCarthy to fix a closed reading on his work (which is likely why he makes the epilogue so ambiguous), the epilogue clearly places the narrative into a specific context. The mysterious man who is digging holes to build a fence, and those who follow him, serve as a metaphor for the nature of America’s western expansion, and offer an explanation as to the failings of America’s current social and political structure.

With a recent public debate raging about the Confederate battle flag, McCarthy’s epilogue is particularly insightful as it speaks to the ways in which the building blocks of the past lead to the contemporary divisions in America. McCarthy describes the holes dug by the unnamed man as existing within a “sequence and causality as if each round and perfect hole owed its existence to the one before it”. This observation speaks to the linear nature of history. One hole leads to another, and is therefore caused by it. The tension surrounding issues like perceived race, as manifest in the debate over the Confederate battle flag, is an extension of past wrongs, just as each hole is an extension of the hole that preceded it. Because America built the foundation of its society on the institution of slavery, and has yet to tear down that structure even after abolishing slavery, the country remains systemically flawed at its foundation. The violent nature of this conflict is alluded to with McCarthy’s references to bones, as the prairie upon which the fence is dug is host to bones, which are signifiers of death. Where these bones came from is not explicitly mentioned in the epilogue, but the preceding novel makes the source of these bones evident: violence. The novel speaks directly to the American conquest of Amerindians and the butchery that is associate with Western expansion, but these bones are likely also the product of the institution of slavery and multiplicity of wars that have taken place in North America, be it the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Civil War, or the Spanish American War.

Many current American social issues are tied to a societal foundation paved by the past. Issues of perceived race, for instance, persist because America continues to mythologize its past. The ‘Founding Fathers’, for instance, are viewed as heroic figures, and treated as though their concepts of government should be upheld today. But George Washington, the most celebrated of all the ‘Founding Fathers’, was a slave owner. Thomas Jefferson is likewise viewed as an American icon, though he was known to have taken up with enslaved women sexually in an act that would be described only as rape from a contemporary perspective. Yet both men are featured on American currency while the likes of John Adams, a founding father who opposed slavery, is not featured prominently on commonly used American currency. How, then, are Americans with African ancestry supposed to feel about a government that celebrates men who thought owning the children of Africa was morally acceptable? How is a woman of colour supposed to feel when the government puts the face of a man who raped her sisters on their currency? Germany wouldn’t dare to put Hitler’s likeness on their currency, in no small part due to the fact that he was responsible for the deaths of over six million Jews. Why, then, does America feel as though it is acceptable to put the likeness of Jefferson, Jackson, and Washington on their currency when they supported an institution that led to the death of over 8 million people of colour under the institution of slavery? Likewise, military leaders like George Armstrong Custer are mythologized, which is particularly appalling in Custer’s case given that he attempted to carry out the genocide of the aboriginal peoples of America. This would be like Germany writing folks songs about the glory of Himmler. So long as America continues to mythologize these men, the principles that they stood for will continue to stand. If America continues to see the principles of men who approved of slavery as the foundation of their political system, then that political system will forever be tainted, and every step forward will be a step backwards. Just as each hole dug by McCarthy’s fence builder determines the direction of the hole that follows it, America’s political system will continue on its crooked path.

The violence inherent in American culture likewise owes itself to this structure. Western expansion, the by-product of Manifest Destiny, was built on the blood of Mexicans and Amerindians. The right to ‘bear arms’ was integral to this violent expansion, and continues to be viewed as an inherent right. This insistence that guns are necessary for self-protection has fostered a culture where everybody is viewed as a potential threat, and so when a conflict arises, lethal escalation is not uncommon, as demonstrated by the number of homicides committed by American police on an annual basis. This right to bear arms has fostered a culture of paranoia where people can stalk a stranger, initiate a hostile conflict, and then kill their stalking victim, only to claim ‘self-defence’ afterwards and get let off by a jury of their peers. So long as this violent path is celebrated, America’s violent culture will be perpetuated. Though Canadians likewise expanded westward, they did not rely on violence. Canadians signed treaties with the Native population, and though many aspects of these treaties were not honoured, and though they marginalized the Native population in a number of tragic ways, they did not embrace the overt violence incorporated during America’s expansion. Though the two countries share the same geography, and once expanded at the same rate, Canada’s culture is significantly less violent. In 2013, for instance, Canada only saw 505 homicides, while America saw 14,827 murders in the same year (and that doesn’t count homicides committed by police). Though America has a much larger population, this difference does not account for the fact that cities like New York, Chicago, Detroit, and Los Angeles have all posted higher homicide rates than the entire country of Canada in a given year. Worse yet, the state of Texas more than doubled Canada’s homicide total despite having ten million fewer citizens. These are countries that mirror each other in origins, demographics, and geography, yet America is far more violent, in part because they mythologize and celebrate their violent past. By mythologizing and celebrating the violence of the past, America perpetuates a violent culture and projects this same culture into the future, just as the holes that McCarthy’s fence builder digs determine the course of future holes.

These conflicts are fostered and enhanced by the imagined barriers that were created in the past and remain intact to this day, barriers that seem to be represented by the hole digger’s fence. Whether social divisions be based on gender, class, religion, nationality, or perceived race, each category is a fabrication. The novel deals almost exclusively with division of nationality, perceived race, and to a lesser extent, religion, and the building of the fence seem to be a physical manifestation of these constructed barriers meant to mark off unnatural property lines just as these categories mark unnatural divisions between fellow humans. Nationalist boundaries are challenged in the novel as the boy, the novel’s unnamed protagonist, joins a militia of filibusters who aim to attack Mexico, but soon finds himself finds himself hired out to Mexico under a mercenary contract to kill Amerindians. This demonstrates how easily one’s view of a category can shift as those who were at first viewed as enemies become allies, proving the impotency of constructed barriers. Categories based on perceived race are likewise challenged as the Mexicans, who are paying the marauders for ‘Indian’ scalps, ironically end up paying out bounties for the scalps of their own people, illustrating how barriers based on perceived race are so flawed that one ‘race’ cannot be differentiated from another and that these walls of needless estrangement only serve to facilitate violence. Religious categories are also challenged as the captain who first recruits the boy claims that there is not god in Mexico, but when in Mexico, the boy is paid to kill what the Mexicans refer to as heathens. Both the captain and the Mexicans view their opponents as godless, even when they share the same god or are attacking a people who hold a belief system. The creation of such categories are bound to create conflict, as demonstrated in the metaphor of the fence builder. With each hole he digs, his implement meets with stone, creating a spark. This is demonstrative of the resistance that arises when artificial categories are created. Because these fences are left standing, future generations inherit these divisions, and in turn, conflicts, only to perpetuate them.

Whilst this may sound deterministic, McCarthy alludes to more existentialist elements by pairing the phrase ‘sequence and causality’ with the phrase ‘as if’, hinting that this relationship between past and future is not preordained. This uncertainty is reinforced when McCarthy writes that those who follow the fence maker “appear restrained by a prudence or reflectiveness” (emphasis added), which he goes onto write “has no inner reality”. The future generations who follow the fence maker, then, are not in actuality restrained by the path laid out before them. The truth is, efforts can be made to change culture. America, for instance, has developed a love affair with oil, but that does not mean it must continue to use oil. A new future can be plotted out, as demonstrated by entrepreneur Elon Musk and his company Telsa, who have not only developed an efficient electric car, but has also developed the Tesla Powerwall, which can allow a home to operate on solar energy. As for America’s capitalist system, which has created unhealthy disparities in standards of living, it too can be transformed, just as Iceland did when it rejected its antiquated economic model during the financial crisis of 2011. McCarthy’s wording, then, defines the deceptively deterministic shackles of history as an illusion.

America’s political rhetoric has also been hypocritically duplicitous, and McCarthy’s epilogue refers to this as well. He writes that the ‘prudence and reflectiveness’ that the followers of the fence builder seemingly display, have no grounding in reality. This is reflective of the sharp contrasts that exists between the rhetoric of American politicians, both past and present, and their actions. The American War For Independence Revolution, for instance, was fought on the basis that Americans were being taxed while not being given parliamentary representation: taxation without representation. The Founding Slaver Owners, though, had no intention of giving representation to working-class men, any woman, or any free American with African heritage; they were, however, very much intending on taxing all of them. With only a third of the country behind the war, American leaders pushed the conflict forward, not to end Britain’s tyranny, but merely so that the landowning class could replace the tyrant. Likewise, Jefferson and Washington boasted that ‘all men were created equal’, but they not only failed to extend this equality to men of colour, but also to working-class Caucasian men as well (not to mention women). Only property owners were given the right to vote. The appearance of ‘prudence and reflectiveness’ continues today, and is especially prominent among Republicans, who claim to uphold Christian values, yet takes xenophobic stances on issues like immigration and freedom of religion, despite the fact that the Bible offered multiple lessons on the importance of tolerance and acceptance in The Book of Ruth, Exodus, and The Book of Daniel. The Republican Party also has strong ties to big business, as demonstrated by their relationship with the Koch family, despite the fact that Jesus would have framed such posturing as being analogous to the behaviours adopted by the Pharisees. This is particularly apparent in his famous assertion that it would be easier for a camel to walk through the eye of a needle than it would be for a rich man to enter the gates of heaven. This hypocritical duplicity is, and has always been, at the core of the American identity; its apparent prudence and piety are performative and propel personal profits impelled by imprudent appetites.

The tragedy of this duplicitous rhetoric is that, like the wanderers who follow the fence builder, the American people seem to follow their leaders without any significant discourse taking place. The followers of the fence builder watch his process, but no words are exchanged. They move, McCarthy writes, ‘haltingly’, stopping when the fence builder stops, and when he moves, “Then they all move on again”. These wanderers, who would be better described as followers, are described by McCarthy as “mechanisms whose movements are monitored with escapement and pallet” and whose actions “seems less the pursuit of some continuance than the verification of a principle”, suggesting that rather than trying verify the validity of the direction and divisions created by the fence builder, they simply seek to continue his work. Like American patriots who blindly praise the Founding Slaver Owners and defend America’s imperialist actions in conflicts such as Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, not because they seem ethically justified, but because they are moved by platitudes like ‘Support Our Troops’ or ‘If you can’t get behind our troops, try getting in front of them.’ Like the pundits on Fox news whose reporting rejects reason and relies on reactionary sensationalism, the wanderers seem only interested in following the path that has been laid out for them, rather than creating one of their own.

In can be difficult to frame the violence of the novel, and not merely the indifference, but elation in regards to that violence. The epilogue, though, acts as a key that gives the reader access to the spirit of the work. It is not merely a work of historical fiction; it is a diagnosis of contemporary America. Though McCarthy does not offer a prescription to the problem, he effectively traces it back to its roots. There is far more to the novel of course, not the least of which is its Biblical links, or the ecocritical reading, both of which are woven into the epilogue. One could likewise write an entire monograph on how McCarthy’s narrative speaks to constructs of race as it pertains to the aboriginal peoples of America (a topic which is too seldom addressed in American literature). This history of violence, though, and the shadow it has cast onto contemporary America, are at the heart of the novel, and speaks to not only how it has impacted a given category of people, but more importantly how it has infested the entire nation. The mythologizing of American history is akin to simply to ignoring the symptoms of a gangrenous infection, but feeding that infection. The path that was laid out is clear, and it is not one that will foster any kind equality. Rather, it has promoted a survival-of-the-fittest mentality and placed it in a context that will ultimately allow not even the fittest to survive.

If you enjoyed this post and would like updates on my latest ramblings, be sure to follow me on Twitter @LiteraryRambler, on Facebook, and add me to your RSS feed. For those who would like to read or re-read Blood Meridian’s epilogue but do not have it handy, all 207 words can be found below:

In the dawn there is a man progressing over the plain bymeans of holes which he is making in the ground. He uses an implement with two handles and he chucks it into the hole and he enkindles the stone in the hole with his steel hole by hole striking the fire out of the rock which God has put there. On the plain behind him are the wanderers in search of bones and those who do not search and they move haltingly in the light like mechanisms whose movements are monitored with escapement and pallet so that they appear restrained by a prudence or reflectiveness which has no inner reality and they cross in their progress one by one that track of holes that runs to the rim of the visible ground and which seems less the pursuit of some continuance than the verification of a principle, a validation of sequence and causality as if each round and perfect hole owed its existence to the one before it there on that prairie upon which are the bones and the gatherers of bones and those who do not gather. He strikes fire in the hole and draws out his steel. Then they all move on again. (McCarthy 337).

Works Cited

McCarthy, Cormac. Blood Meridian (or the Evening Redness in the West. New York: Vintage. 1992.