The Antiheroes In Cormac Mccarthy’s Frontier Narration Blood Meridian

Blood Meridian is a substantial transition in Cormac McCarthy’s works, mainly unfolding the scalp-hunting conducted by a gang of filibusters in exchange for bounties in the borders between America and Mexico. As in his previous work, the author leaves no blankness in exposing scenes of violence and bloodiness, but the scenes shift from Southern towns to the Southwest border. Scholars and critics have interpreted the novel from multiple perspectives, but few have analyzed it from the angles of antiheroes. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the identity issues on the two characters, the judge and the kid, in Cormac McCarthy’s frontier narration Blood Meridian(1985) in comparison with fictional and biographical heroes in American frontier literature. It further goes to locate the connotations and symbolisms of the two characters in terms of antiheroes and anti-tradition in frontier narrations.On the one hand, under McCarthy’s depiction, the frontier was no longer a fertile land to nurture heroes. The kid ran away from home to follow the trajectory of frontier heroes, heading west. Yet, his growth was curbed and twisted. It seems to be a far cry from the western mythology created in traditional frontier literature, and a challenge to the stereotypes and consensus of American frontier history. The kid did not evolve to be a hero like protagonists in other novel of formation, such as Huckleberry Finn. Instead, he was gradually corrupted and ashen like Holden in The Catcher of the Rye. One the other hand, Judge Holden attempted to take on the role as a dominator, manipulator and destroyer under the disguise of justice and the excuse of civilization and wars. Yet, the motivation is perhaps horror of the unknown, because he only dared to befriend with the imbecile and the vulnerable kids. Besides, he was obsessed with colleting and destructing unseen objects in the nature for fear that one day they might be his undoing. Judge Holden could not represent justice. He would not win readers’heart like James Fenimore Cooper’s Natty Bumpoo who protected the nature legacy and maintain the balance between human races. Rather, he was the Frankenstein created by the extreme anthropocentrism.The antagonism and confrontations between the kid and the judge bring out the fatality of each’s defect. The kid and the judge desperately contain each other in the desert, resolutely refuse to budge in the Mexican prison and eventually settle their in the jake at the Griffin bar. Both end as nobody in the frontier. The conclusion is that both the kid and the judge were victims in a barren land incapable of the production of heroes. Despite the significances of the two roles in the entire narration, the kid lacked the judgment and guidance to select the path to the Shrine of fronter heroes, and that the judge was mentally broken and maimed by his obsession of dominance and war. Their defects could not conjure up tragical sympathy and compassion in readers. Instead, their fates arouse needs to ponder over the significance of the frontier narrations, to ask whether the portrayal of anti-frontier heroes bespeak the truth about the essence of the frontier expansion and genocide.