First off, I’ll get the obvious out of the way: This book deserves the praise it gets. I get it.

However

Maybe this is just an age maturity thing (I’m 23, thought I was relatively smart until I saw people dissect this book in ways my tiny mind could ever comprehend) but so much of this book, particularly the writing itself, has gone completely over my head. And yet I can still see how jaw dropping some sections are. I just don’t totally get them.

The violence really hasn’t bothered me all that much. In fairness I have about 100 pages left, but I really can’t see it getting much worse than I’ve already read. Sure it’s totally brutal and horrible and gross to read such senseless violence, but it makes sense. The Wild West was an absolute inhumane time in history, and this book portrays that very well. Maybe I’m numb to it at this point.

But I’d be lying if I said I gave a shit about the characters. I don’t. And maybe that’s the whole point, but being true to myself, my favourite part of stories is the characters. These are underdeveloped (again, maybe on purpose) names on a page. Glanton and the Kid are the names I know most, and of course the Judge. The Judge is the only character in this book I could even call a character. And a fucking creepy one as well. His monologues that I can hardly decipher? Amazing.

Blood Meridian is a draining book. The prose is bleak and brutal, people die constantly in horrible ways, the language is so hard to follow, and yet I do, despite everything I’ve said, look forward to seeing how this ends. Maybe I would “get it” if I was 20 years older, but it has been a reading experience I won’t forget for a long time.

  • porktorque44@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    I’d read the cliff notes of the book before I read it. I’m not sure if I could have gotten through it without having done that first.

    There’s one particular line that I think sums up the theme of the characters not being fleshed out:

    fire which does contain within it something of men themselves inasmuch as they are less without it and are divided from their origins and are exiles. For each fire is all fires, and the first fire and the last ever to be.

    The reason I think the judge is more fleshed out is he supposed to be a challenge to the readers sense of morality; asking the question “can your sense of right and wrong survive in the face of the existence of the judge, and people like him?”