Blood Meridian Blog 8: A Similar Comparison

              Blood Meridian is a very unique book that is written in Cormac McCarthy's unique writing style with blunt, gory details and blatant language, no real hidden meanings. This combined with a host of other techniques make Blood Meridian a very interesting, (if not hard to get through) novel. The contents are hard to stomach and many of the details are hard to read simply because of McCarthy's blunt and brutally honest descriptions. This really gives it its sense of appeal (in a strange sense) and truly shows the uniqueness of the novel. However there is a similar book which is closely related to Blood Meridian. This book is another classic novel, Moby Dick. In Blood Meridian, the opening is with The Kid where we see how he begins his tale. He starts out as a constant character but eventually the story takes a turn with the introduction of The Judge. We then see The Kid fade back into space except for minor instances where he crops up again, but overall we can sometimes forget that he's there though we're actually seeing everything through his eyes. Moby Dick is much the same as Ishmael is introduced as the main character in the beginning giving us much information about him. The character even says, "Call me Ishmael." This simply yet effective statement adds mystery as we readers are left guessing about his mysterious past. Everything we see is through Ishmael's eyes such as the "savage", Queequeg. What we read is really Ishmael's interpretation of him. The book continues but then once the real major character arrives, Captain Ahab, Ishmael soon seems to fade back out of existence and we focus almost entirely on Captain Ahab and his undying obsession with finally capturing and killing the great white whale, Moby Dick. Captain Ahab is introduced as a interesting and even more mysterious character that we readers know little about. The book kind of explains a little about his past though not really enough to quench our thirst for knowledge. We don't know how Ishmael knows the daily schedule of Captain Ahab but neither do we complain since these observations show us more detailed information on Captain Ahab's mind which we are severely lacking. The Judge is much like this as once he is introduced, the main narrator, The Kid sort of sits on the sidelines and watches the Judge (Ahab) go about his business. There are startling similarities between the two books and two of the major characters.