In the novel “Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West” he author ,Cormac McCarthy, follows the historical account of white scalp hunters, that in late forties and early fifties of nineteenth-century, where massacring Native villages on the border of Southwestern USA and Mexico. The main protagonist of this novel is the nature and the landscape that are a dark, devilish, nightmarish, world possessed by demons and devils. Those terms and it’s synonyms are the adjectives used by the author to describe the surrounding area. The main human protagonist of this novel, the Kid, does not even have a proper name. I think it is justified to say that because of that, McCarthy wants his readers to focus more on the world that is surrounding the characters, rather than just solely focusing on the characters. The way everyone speaks makes it known that many of them are uneducated and illiterate. All the characters presents themselves as grimy and barely any of them focus on their appearance. There was one mention in the entire book that I can recount that involved anyone in the gang taking a bath. They all seem to be focused on material things and they always want more of that said material …show more content…
The argument and main point of this book is very convincing, there is endless violence and death throughout each chapter, relly hitting it out of the park when it comes to how gruesome it was in the west in that time period. Violence represent the anarchy in the West in the 1840s with the bare minimum mention of the law in any way throughout the novel. McCarthy's often use of violence specifically takes a jab at the human condition and the want for bloodlust. It is the one constant thing in the book. The author uses rhetoric very often, he wants to persuade the reader that the west was a land of torment, constant death, and
It has been three years since humanity was still alive. The year is 2020; very few people are left in America. A great series of large volcanic eruptions covered the region. No one could have prepared for them, and not one person predicted these tragedies. The author, Cormac McCarthy, shows the enticing travel of a father and his son. They must travel south for warmth, fight the starvation they are facing, and never let their guard down. They will never know what insane people might be lurking around the corner.
With a self-confident tone, he refers to the American natives as “savage, devils” and compares their home to a devil’s home and their tactics to soldiers in Europe, all just to bring attention to the readers. Mary, on the other hand, represents natives as “ravenous beast” showing the typical symptoms from a survivor; anxiety and distress. She uses a prose with the absence of rhetorical ornamentation rejecting literary artifice, sending a clear message though with her own interpretation of things. With a clear binary opposition, good and evil can be found in the same human; she forgets that the Indian may have a reason for the attacks. Edward; however, writes his sermons in a crescendo tone presenting them from a negative point of view provoking a reaction using biblical allusions. Words such as “Hell” and “Torture” are used to awaken the congregation and to provoke a reaction. His sermons are full of imagery, similes, comparisons and metaphors which can be interpreted in different
...suppression, and incarceration. That ended up costing American an estimated 10,000 jobs. The government had complete control over the media, educational system, and any literature that was available. Books were illegal, and were burned in the novel by the government enforcers, the firemen. We saw the comparison with the time period in when the novel was written, and post September 11. It is great how the author's work still has great meaning in today's society.
McCarthy simply stresses imagery, setting, and conflict all of which show that effortless decisions can lead to great outcomes.
One example of The Crucible being an allegory to the McCarthy Era is the similarity in the way people were accused. In both instances “Habeas corpus” and “Innocent until proven guilty” are not present. In The Crucible the accused entered the courtroom with a decided fate. To Judge Danforth they were guilty unless they could prove themselves innocent or confess and give him the names of other witches. Even though this was unfair, people were afraid that if they stood up to it than they too would be accused. In John Proctors case this was true. John Proctor goes to the courthouse to free his wife who has been accused of witchcraft. Slowly, Danforth and Hawthorn turn it against him and accuse him of witchcraft. All hell breaks loose in the courtroom and Proctor has an outburst.
...ations were accused without solid information that could not be proved in any way. These events in history affected people by basically destroying their lives. McCarthyism affected people that were put on those black lists. Once they were put on those black lists it was almost impossible for them to get a job that would help support them and pay for all of their bills that they had. During the Salem witch trial the event destroyed john procter’s family and forced his children to live without a father. Although McCarthyism was mostly bad the good was that the idea of McCarthyism destroyed it self and ended the rise of communism in the United States of America. Due to hysteria in the 1950’s America and the Salem witch trials both resulted in corruption and the destruction of people’s lives. “The Crucible” was written in response to this hysteria in the 1950’s.
McCarthy’s use of biblical allusions help to create a setting in which all the characters have more complex parts to play than what it seems like at first glance. The allusions also create the tone, which is somber, and almost dream like. The protagonist had his “palms up” while sleeping, which could mean that he fell asleep as he was praying, or in other words pleading. Yet when he woke up “it was still dark”, this creates a hopeless ton because even after all of the begging, the world he woke up to was a dark one. When the wolf dies, the protagonist imagines her “running in the mountains” with different
Bad blood is a book that was written James H. Jones who is an associate professor of History. The book narrates on how the government through the department of Public Health service (PHS) authorized and financed a program that did not protect human values and rights. The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment which was conducted between 1932 and 1972 where four hundred illiterate and semi-illiterate black sharecroppers in Alabama recently diagnosed with syphilis were sampled for an experiment that was funded by the U.S Health Service to prove that the effect of untreated syphilis are different in blacks as opposed to whites. The blacks in Macon County, Alabama were turned into laboratory animals without their knowledge and the purpose of the experiment
On the basis of its statement that “a false book is no book at all” (147), Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian is a revision of antecedent literary tradition, mainly Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, as well as the Bible and Christian theology, thereby amounting to the creation of postmodern hybrid revisionist work. This paper will attempt to indicate Blood Meridian’s status as a counter-narrative, and thus, as both a neomyth and a neobiblical meta-narrative, meaning both a rendition of version of Twain’s novel, as well as a type of perverted Bible that presents both world of a barbarous God, but also, a secularly primitive and violent one. On the one hand, Blood Meridian stands a postmodern literary revisionist work, in that it deconstructs
The whole book is a symbol of two events that happened in history. The Red Scare and McCarthyism both serve as symbols of the Salem witch trials, which makes it an allegory. Although the play is based off of the witch trials during seventeenth century New England, the author meant for it to address his concern for the Red Scare in an indirect way. For example, just like the witch trials accusing people of witchcraft, Americans during the Red Scare accused others of being pro-Communist. The same widespread paranoia occurred as a result.
The primary content is a critique on the reader for she refers to “you” (“you” meaning the reader) witnessing the perils going on in society. The work makes references to a “nautilus shell”, a “spiraling hole to a watery well”, and a “midway carousel” to illustrate that there is a pattern to the peril of divide occurring in a revolutionary cycle. Furthermore, Gorman also references that us, the readers, watch the “creamed corn wrestling” in awe without intervention which splits the two wrestlers in two. Thus, the world “gives birth to monsters” which states that entertaining the peril is the equivalent of being a monster in society. Overall, the Mississippi River which divides the U.S. also served as a mechanism for hatred towards African Americans in times of slavery in which the issue ripped the nation in half resulting in violence and
The McCarthy era is very similar to the Salem Witch trials. They are both similar, because they both dealt with hysteria. Hysteria is an uncontrollable fear or outburst of emotion. Both things had to do with people accusing each other of people being communist, and people being witches.
In Red Harvest, in both his description of both “Poisonville” and it’s inhabitants, Hammett uses contradicting language, and often iconic reoccurring imagery to express the deterioration of American morals with the growth of underground crime, judicial politics, and the emergence of the femme fatal. The characters in the novel, including the operative himself are willing to lie, cheat, and kill in cold blood for their own personal gain. Although infidelity, greed, and self-preservation are expected from characters involved with the murders and inner crime ring; the story becomes more complicated when characters like the operative, and chief of police begin to get their hands dirty. Bringing the age-old crime ad punishment theme to a higher tier where the reader is unable to make an impulsive decision on who is a “bad guy”, and who is a “good guy”.
Events have played out in history that made people realize the inhumane acts of people and the Salem witch trials and the McCarthy era were two of them. The Salem witch trials in 1692 were almost 260 years before the McCarthy “witch hunts” in the 1950s yet there are similarities between them. The Crucible, written by Arthur Miller in 1953, is about the Salem witch trials and is an allegory to the practicing of McCarthyism during the Second Red Scare in the United States, which Miller was a victim of. Although there may be differences between “The Crucible” and McCarthyism, ultimately the anger, lack of evidence, and the people were alike in both events.
Kiahna Brown 12/2/2015 Grinder American Novel Literary Analysis II The Evil in War Blood Meridian was not simply written for the thrill of reading another gory and gruesome novel, but to show through a third person omniscient perspective the true and entirely evil reality of war and destruction. “The good book does indeed count war an evil... Yet there's many a bloody tale of war inside it” (22). This novel implies that the bodies of those in our way is the only road to expansion and progress.