Cormac McCarthy
http://youtu.be/FgyZ4ia25ggJudge Holden and evil.
Is evil real ? What is evil
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Introduction to Nietzsche
Most of us at some point in our lives have lost someone very close to us. Whether it was a sudden death or one that you had time to prepare for, the pain is never easy to deal with. Though this pain may be hard, according to some 19th-century philosophers, this pain is actually a good thing. The pain and the feelings associated with that suffering assure us that we are alive, and those experiences are the only thing life is truly about. These ideas were first posited by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.
Nietzsche's early life was fraught with tragedy. His father, a local Protestant minister, died when Nietzsche was only five years old. His younger brother died six months later. Without his father's connection to Röcken as the town minister, Nietzsche and his mother moved in with Nietzsche's maternal grandmother and aunts in Naumberg an der Saale.
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Nihilism
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BLOOD MERIDIAN, the title is a little mystifying to me. As I read 'around' the novel and listen to class readings, I begin to develop bias. I am repulsed. Totally? Not yet but close.
Still 'struggling' with how to 'dive in'. Like jumping naked into a cold stream. Anticipating a shocking evil coldness?
I must stop 'skirting the edges', delaying the inevitable I must dive in!
Is any truth to be determined in the complex and confusing alleged plotlessness of this novel?
Trying to find some 'tools' with which to begin a 'critical' examination of the text I find some seemingly significant details about the author Cormac McCarthy. He had a son. He was thrice married. He lived in Texas, at least for a while. He is considered a recluse by some.
As I 'take the plunge' into McCarthy's BLOOD MERIDIAN I take the mindset not of a judge to return a verdict but as an advocate; examining his 'though stream' to discover purpose and meaning in the seeming violent madness of his novel.
I must carefully and dispassionately search for clues. Tracking allusions to their source. Noting and de-mystifying odd detail. I must get to the "historical kernel".
I must lay aside the simple notion that "books beget books". I must find "foundational thought" and the "cosmic structures" undergirding the novel. I must find some useful "truth". I must overcome my bias.
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