Blood Meridian Essay

Americans look back on the western migration as a period of growth, referring to the movement as America’s “Manifest Destiny” to claim the untamed western land they viewed as their God-given right. Americans viewing western migration as a mission to take the land that God wished them to have, resulted in a brutal war against the native Mexicans of the area and vicious, detrimental colonization of the Native American tribes that lived in the country before. The religious journey of westward expansion was, in reality, acts of war and violent colonization. Cormac McCarthy’s anti-Western novel, Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West, about a young man who ends up with a gang of men on a mission to hunt for American Indians following
Framework from Harry S. Stout’s article “Religion, War, and the Meaning of America” will lay out the deep seeded connection between war and religion; following this, analysis from Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West will show how McCarthy uses the presence of religious violence in order to challenge the American ideals that condone murder as a religious tool. This examination will shed light on the religion of war and violence that has imbedded itself as part of American consciousness. Whether it be wars in the name of religion, a prayer before entering battle, or targeting Native Americans with the supposed goal of trying to enlighten them to Christianity, violence is perpetually linked to religious faith (Stout 275). This is particularly notable in America, a county which establishes itself as a super power due to economic power and the ability to triumph in a majority of it’s ever present wars (Stout 278). This topic is closely addressed in Harry S. Stout’s article, “Religion, War, and the Meaning of America,” in which Stout writes about the history of both war and Christian religion in America to show how these two entities intertwine with one another. He writes,