Luck is All You Need

Something I’ve found fascinating while reading Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian is how it deals with the concept of luck and how critical being lucky is to surviving in the world he creates. In a world where death is around every corner, every engagement or interaction with any person could result in your permanent end. There’s a scene where the kid enters a bar looking for a drink without any money, threatens the bar tender until he gives him a drink, then fights and kills the bartender. Later in that scene he kills two bystander who stood up for the bartender and declared him in the wrong. That concept, that luck is what one needs to survive, not skill, or diplomacy, is what makes the western setting the book takes place in so uniquely terrifying. There’s another scene where the kid joins a militia that’s continuing the Mexican-American war after the US Government already signed a treaty with the Mexicans. They attempt to attack what looks like a couple of men driving some stolen cattle, and end up getting ambushed by Indians. The kid survives again, purely through luck and not through any abilities or skills of his own, while hundreds of what were his comrades are slaughtered around him. This is terrifying to me, the idea that you can prepare for every eventuality, master every skill, execute every decision correctly, and still get snuffed out by some psychopath who’s lucky and seemingly unkillable.