Grotesque and Southern Gothic in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian

Abstract

This article offers a
 post-southernist reading that challenges and problematizes the impacts of
 haunted past of the American South with implications of violence embodied by
 Judge Holden in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood
 Meridian, or The Evening Redness in
 the West. In order to present a moral compass to the reader, the text
 presents good-evil dichotomy and the world of human through the uncanny and
 grotesque characters of “the kid” and “the judge.” Through this dichotomy, the
 reader acknowledges the possibility of alternative narratives that escape from
 the control and totalizing gaze of dominant power and discourses. The counter-
 narratives complicate any types of subjugation, mythologized history, and
 refuse to approve the violence that the prevailing power practices against
 innocent people. This paper aims to analyze the struggle between the good and
 evil and the degree of insanity performed by the evil depicted through southern
 gothic and grotesque scenes. Thus, the paper contributes to grotesque reading
 of the selected text through a number of elements: “exaggeration, hyperbolism,
 and excessiveness,” generally considered fundamental attributes of the
 grotesque style (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 303).