코맥 매카시의『핏빛 자오선』

Revisiting the West(ern) and Violence of Art in Blood Meridian

Blood Meridian is an intriguing text exhibiting Cormac McCarthy’s appropriation of the Western genre. The classical Western depicts the confrontations between two contending forces—the East and the West, white settlers and native Americans, and civilization and wilderness—at the backdrop of the Wild West. On the other hand, the revisionist Western of the 1960s and the 1970s casts light on the unknown histories of the victims of violent suppression and genocide during the era of American imperial wars of the nineteenth century. Blood Meridian reveals the limits of both the classical Western and the revisionist Western with regards to characters, setting and theme. Set in the frontier, as the backdrop of the American myth of the West and Manifest Destiny, the novel severely criticizes American capitalism and imperialism, describing the Glanton gang’s merciless murders. It also blurs the boundaries between civilization and barbarism through its central character, Judge Holden, who incarnates universal evil and mindless violence. While Holden’s book represents knowledge and art that kills life through its aesthetic objectification, McCarthy’s novel ironically grants Holden an eternal life as a fictional character. Insinuating the intricate relations between violence and art, McCarthy demonstrates that art, including writing, creates life and thus makes redemption and regeneration possible.