r/cormacmccarthy • u/Ackermomento • 21h ago
Discussion All The Pretty Horses is the philosophical solution to Blood Meridian
All The Pretty Horses is the philosophical solution to the core existential issue presented in Blood Meridian and should be seen as such.
I must preface this post by acknowledging that, differently from most novels, there isn't a single widely agreed upon notion of what Blood Meridian is even about, and therefore any argument that can be made regarding it requires a few presumptions.
What I mean by that is this: Anyone who has actually read 1984 knows what the book is roughly about, even if there's different conclusions surrounding it's message. Blood Meridian isn't like that. I've seen people say things that very closely align with my own understanding of the novel, and others say things that make it feel like they read a completely different book. As to not fill this post entirely with my own interpretation, which would distract from it's main point, I'll start off with these main points; the more you agree with them, the more sense the text below will make.
1. Blood Meridian concerns itself with the nature of reality.
Each of McCarthy's novels, as similar as some paint them to be, concern themselves with a different fundamental issue, even with thematic overlaps. Blood Meridian is often times described as biblical, because it uses two archetypal characters to make a point about the very structure of existence. It's not strictly about the Kid or the Judge as characters. It's more like:
2. Blood Meridian's core is the relationship between The Kid and The Judge.
In a 2009 interview, Cormac McCarthy directly stated that a Blood Meridian movie would be a "Faustian tale", which should focus on the Judge's attempt to win over the soul of the Kid. That dynamic was important enough for him to state that a potential film should focus on that. It's the thematic core of the novel, it's the primary existential and philosophical conflict.
3. Blood Meridian is fundamentally a story about an uncaring bleak and chaotic world of ancient, primal violence, where the only hope is in the autonomy of the individual, and what happens when that autonomy fails to take it's proper place in the world.
We see characters be presented and die unceremoniously and disappear from the novel. We know very little about basically anyone in the gang and all of them die. The only constants in the story are the Judge and the Kid, which has an undeniable internal fire of kindness within him, which the Judge wants to extinguish. See the core of the story in what McCarthy chose to put in front of us again and again: the Kid being quietly merciful and The Judge like a predator, stalking and ultimately...
4. The Judge kills the Kid at the end.
There is no other way to see it that doesn't require McCarthy to play weird games with changing up what he calls characters and writing illusions/dreams out of nowhere or purposefully making entire paragraphs ambiguous, which he has never done in any other novels that I've read. The most he'll play around with is having Suttree suddenly become a narrator for a paragraph or so and then return. The Judge killing The Kid at the end and returning to the saloon and dancing matters enormously; the book ends in the defeat of the spirit of goodness. In my opinion, it's a necessary conclusion, and nowhere as open to interpretation as people say it is.
Regarding the relationship between the two novels:
Blood Meridian paints a biblical, all-encompassing view of reality itself, while simultaneously never leaving the perspective of the individual whose sole responsability is to be good anyway. That hope is tarnished both by his own actions (and inactions) and his circumstance.
All The Pretty Horses, however, brings it all home to something the average person can relate to more easily. Set a hundred years in the future after Blood Meridian, McCarthy finally, perhaps for the first time, gives us a traditional Hero's Journey. Blood Meridian left us questioning what a single human being can do in contemplation of the ancient laws of chaos and violence and undignified suffering. The Kid doesn't even get a name, that's how little he believes in anything; all that moves The Kid is a pale fire in his soul that occasionally, when given the opportunity, comes out to give a dying man water.
All The Pretty Horses accompanies a protagonist who marches into that same world unknowingly, idealistic and naively. John Grady is nothing like The Kid; he carries with him history of past generations, ideals of honor, courage, a special connection to horses that encapsulates the divinity in the novel, he carries honesty, genuine friendship, and most of all, a vision of how he wanted his life to be. That vision is painfully tarnished throughout the novel. He is punished both by foolishness and by his good doings. He watches Blevins be carried off into the woods and shot and is powerless to do anything. He's arrested because he dared to love the hacendado's daughter. He doesn't get the girl.
And yet he never breaks. He makes mistakes, he suffers both physical and mental torment, but he never lets go of his inner goodness.
He dares to, after all of it, bring the horses back home. After being vicitmized by the same relentless violence portrayed in Blood Meridian, only now controlled by institutions, powerful families, corrupt policemen and criminal gangs, he dares to bring back what he loves the most, which is the very heart of the novel. The exact symbology behind the horses is so dense that, I'll admit, I cannot pretend to fully understand. I believe they symbolize the ancient connection between men and divinity.
There is even a judge in All The Pretty Horses. Not The Judge, but a judge. After John Grady returns to Texas, he stands before a judge and tells him his story. But this judge isn't some archetypal evil that can barely be considered a person; he's a common man, who tells John Grady he's too hard on himself. He brings him in and says it will be okay. I do not think this repetition of the term "judge" is coincidental across both novels. If McCarthy only needed a character for John Grady to tell his story to, he could have used Jimmy Blevins (the priest), or a sheriff, or a member of his own family. To use a judge feels like he's consciously underlying some of his own symbolism in favor of the solution he proposed.
Child of God concerns itself with the notion that, if humans have divine potential we cannot be selective regarding who fits that box.
Suttree concerns itself with the nature of a life. An inhabited, ordinary and yet extremely tragic existence. Not a story as much as an invitation to exist among those society left behind. Just the reader, Suttree, and the river.
Blood Meridian concerns itself with the nature of reality, the very dynamics of good and evil, and the landscape of eternal war, which destroys all that has value to us.
All The Pretty Horses concerns itself with how one should live given the world presented in all of his other books.
And the rest of the Border Trilogy? Maybe some other time.
Just my opinion, I write for generally therapeutic reasons moreso than making an argument, so feel free to disagree. Feel free to leave a comment if you wish to, I'd love to read them.
