gnosticism and mccarthy's blood meridian

[peter_mclachlin]

The (in)famous and gnomic epilogue of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, or The Evening Redness in The West:

In the dawn there is a man progressing over the plain by means of holes which he is making in the ground. He uses an implement with two handles and he chucks it into the hole and he enkindles the stone in the hole with his steel hole by hole

Comments

[ext_384674]

I have just finished reading the novel for the fourth or fifth time. Your essay has illuminated much of what I already have felt but your reading of the epilogue has added greatly to my own thinking on the meanings within.
I just wish to offer my thanks for your work here.

[peter_mclachlin]

thanks for your comment -- and your twitter page is great. i went through your links and saw that david hare is on twitter!

[ext_384674]

You could also add to Blood Meridian as a Gnostic Tragedy, the fact “The Man” kills a 15 year old kid in the year 1878, his orphaned brother is 12 years old. Born in 1866, the year of the next Leonids meteor shower, making the orphaned child also a child of the stars, a spark of the alien divine.

[peter_mclachlin]

i think you must be right on that. i didn't think of that. as well, if i recall correctly, the child in The Road is variously referred to by his father as having the light, carrying the light or being the light

acai berry au

[anonymous]

A man reserves his true and deepest love not for the species of woman in whose company he finds himself electrified and enkindled, but for that one in whose company he may feel tenderly drowsy.