In this second lecture on Blood Meridian, Professor Hungerford builds a wide-ranging argument about the status of good and evil in the novel from a small detail, the Bible the protagonist carries with him in spite of his illiteracy. This detail is one of many in the text that continually lure us to see the kid in the light of a traditional hero, superior to his surroundings, developing his responses in a familiar narrative structure of growth. McCarthy's real talent, and his real challenge, Hungerford argues, is in fact to have invoked the moral weight of his sources--biblical, literary, and historical--while emptying them of moral content. Much as the kid holds the Bible an object and not a spiritual guide, McCarthy seizes the material of language--its sound, its cadences--for ambiguous, if ambitious, ends.

Reading assignment:

Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian (1985)