Cormac McCarthy is known for his dense literary style and heavy use of metaphor, both of which tend to make his writing difficult to interpret. The passage I have chosen for explication comes at the beginning of Chapter 14 of Blood Meridian just after the disbanding of the Sociedad at Chiuaua because of the massacre of the unnamed city and soldiers. The men have just started westward and there is a price of eight thousand pesos on Glanton’s head. A majority of the passage is taken up by descriptions of the weather. As they start out the men are bombarded by rain, so much so that the reflections of the men and horses combine in the pooling water with the sky and mountains above. McCarthy uses mirage like imagery, “skeptic of the shimmering cities
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He uses the word “serried” to describe the rimlands, a word meaning rows of people or things standing close together and often used to describe ranks of soldiers and the word “adamantine” or unbreakable to describe the ranges in the distance that are “rising out of nothing like the backs of seabeasts in a Devonian dawn.” Devonian refers to a geological period stretching from 405-345 million years ago. During this age fearsome, armoured, predatory fish dominated the massive seas, whose backs rising out of the water would look much like the mountain ranges McCarthy is referring to. He describes Glanton’s crew moving along under the rain as “cowled in primitive skins” meaning they were wearing hooded garments made out of hides and looking like “wardens of some dim sect sent to proselytize among the very beasts of the land.” Proselytize is defined as the conversion or the attempt to convert from one religion, belief, or opinion to another, and its use within this scenario seems to bare implications of the Christian attempt to convert Native Americans from their beliefs. He foreshadows the impending difficulties the men may face, “the country before them lay clouded and dark” through the weather looming in front of the
He uses the word “serried” to describe the rimlands, a word meaning rows of people or things standing close together and often used to describe ranks of soldiers and the word “adamantine” or unbreakable to describe the ranges in the distance that are “rising out of nothing like the backs of seabeasts in a Devonian dawn.” Devonian refers to a geological period stretching from 405-345 million years ago. During this age fearsome, armoured, predatory fish dominated the massive seas, whose backs rising out of the water would look much like the mountain ranges McCarthy is referring to. He describes Glanton’s crew moving along under the rain as “cowled in primitive skins” meaning they were wearing hooded garments made out of hides and looking like “wardens of some dim sect sent to proselytize among the very beasts of the land.” Proselytize is defined as the conversion or the attempt to convert from one religion, belief, or opinion to another, and its use within this scenario seems to bare implications of the Christian attempt to convert Native Americans from their beliefs. He foreshadows the impending difficulties the men may face, “the country before them lay clouded and dark” through the weather looming in front of the