Blood Meridian, Lecture Four: He Never Sleeps (Chapters XXI-XXIII) (Patreon)

'He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die.'

Today we're riding on to the final paragraph of Blood Meridian, but not necessarily the ending of McCarthy's visionary narrative.

We're discussing what happens in the outhouse, riding through hell, nature's dominion over man, selling instruments of war in order to heal, mock rituals, true dancers, the blood of war, and much more.

Blood Meridian Series:

• How to Read Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
• Breaking into Blood Meridian (Title, Epigraphs & Assigned Reading)
• Lecture One: See the Child (Ch. I-V)
• Lecture Two: Judge Holden (Ch. V-XIII)
• Lecture Three: War is God (Ch. XIII-XX)

Lecture Timestamps:

• 0:00 the ending of Blood Meridian
• 1:53 the Judge is always following us
• 2:30 the Kid becomes the Man
• 3:50 Blood Meridian as vision of hell
• 5:00 how to escape from hell
• 6:00 “nothing to mark their progress”
• 7:00 “They went on.”
• 8:30 the empathy of the Kid
• 9:18 nature’s dominion over man
• 10:00 the illusion of progress
• 11:10 McCarthy’s Dostoyevksian strain
• 12:00 why doesn’t the Kid shoot the Judge?
• 14:00 the Judge’s grotesque parasol
• 16:58 the Judge knows the Kid’s heart
• 18:15 is the Judge hurt by the Kid?
• 19:40 Blood Meridian and the picaresque
• 21:00 Blood Meridian & Moby Dick
• 23:45 Shelley’s poem ‘Ozymandias’
• 24:54 the Kid’s arrest and confession
• 26:00 true witness vs false witness
• 29:00 “I spoke in the desert for you”
• 30:00 a Marxist reading of Judge Holden
• 32:40 sharing enemies vs breaking bread
• 33:30 selling one’s gun in order to heal
• 34:00 the theme of gun violence
• 36:20 wanting to forget one’s history
• 38:40 a panoramic view of hell on earth
• 41:50 the Kid is now the Man
• 42:30 extinction & other worlds
• 45:00 the Man kills his younger self
• 47:30 the Man meets the Judge again
• 49:00 what man wouldn’t be a dancer?
• 50:00 “order is not set aside”
• 54:00 mock rituals and blood-letting
• 59:00 true dancers & the blood of war
• 1:00:30 Epictetus, tyrants & “will or nill”
• 1:02:00 vast expanses and largeness of heart
• 1:02:50 examining the ending together
• 1:04:00 what happens in the outhouse?
• 1:07:00 the final paragraph of Blood Meridian
• 1:09:00 “he says that he will never die”
• 1:10:00 how does Blood Meridian speak to our century?
• 1:11:00 epilogue reading assignment
• 1:11:30 congratulations & questions for you

We will be holding the ending up against the epigraph in our next video, but I would like to say a huge congratulations to you for breaching Blood Meridian and managing to ride on through.

Some Questions:

1) What do you think happens in the outhouse? How does the novel end? Why isn’t McCarthy clear about what happens? And what is the epilogue all about?

2) Did you get a sense of “progress” over the course of your reading? If so, what kind of progress do we see? Have you ever felt like you were "riding on" through a desert?

3) Is Blood Meridian a personal or national vision of hell? Does it give us a prophecy?

4) What other book is Blood Meridian closest to? And where does it rank among the books you have read?

Bonus: Please share with us your favourite passages/lines from Blood Meridian.

Happy reading, everybody!