Blood Meridian Blog 4: Rhetoric Study

In McCarthy's book, Blood Meridian, he uses a variety of literary terms, adjectives and rhetoric to get across his points very effectively. For ex:

                 "The dead man lay in a sandy wash. He was... calamitous advance of the sun." Pg. 116-117

This specific paragraph talks about a dead Native American that gang had killed during an Apache attack. McCarthy uses different types of rhetoric and descriptions to emphasize the appearance of the dead man both before and after death. He's old and most likely experienced in the art of war as he has many healed battle wounds. McCarthy also goes into a lot of detail about the different types of war paint he has on his body. Later The Judge comes over a searches through all his belongings and finds some items made out of natural resources. Once he is done, he scalps the Indian in descriptive detail and then the whole group rides out yet again. It would seem that McCarthy wanted to get across the point of how this was a man, killed by his foes, only different in a few ways from the very ones who ended his life was scalped and desecrated as if he were inhuman, an animal. This section further shows the dilapidation of human conscience and society at the time.