Culture of Cruelty

In Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy shares his vision of the vast and dry desert frontier of the Southwestern United States. He depicts it as a chaotic and violent land where the rule of law is merely a suggestion, and a suggestion that is rarely followed at that. The only true law in this land is nature’s law of eat or be eaten. The examples of this law being put into action are plentiful in Blood Meridian, as actions that most people in our current society would consider excessively, and often horrifyingly, cruel seem to be commonplace on the frontier. There are no exceptions to nature’s fundamental law either. Every single character on the frontier is affected in some way by this struggle for survival. By far, the most common response to this struggle is violence, which can be seen especially in Glanton’s gang. Not only does the gang essentially act as a death squad for hire by hunting people and taking their scalps for bounty, but there is also intense infighting. The two Jacksons exemplify the infighting through their constant bickering and insulting of each other; eventually one of the Jacksons kills the other. When this happens, the rest of the gang hardly even reacts and continues on as if the second Jackson had never even been with them. I believe that Cormac McCarthy wrote Blood Meridian as a way to explore nature’s law and how it still very much applies to humanity. Essentially, McCarthy shows how in the absence of manmade law, nature’s law prevails.