Sichuan International Studies University Carnivalesque Violence Writing In Blood Meridian

Blood Meridian is widely regarded as the most violent novel of American contemporary writer Cormac Mc Carthy owning to the ubiquitous descriptions of slaughters and massacre.Mc Carthy’s preference to the carnivalesque violence glimmers throughout his book Blood Meridian,which has attracted widespread controversy.The thesis takes Bakhtin’s carnivalesque theory and the writing of anticonventional violence in the text as the key entry point,based on the research results of Mc Carthy in China and abroad.The grotesque characters and violent acts portrayed by Mc Carthy in Blood Meridian will be analyzed.In doing so,the thesis regards that Cormac Mc Carthy deconstructs traditional westerns on the writing model and manifest destiny.And the author’s extreme writing about violence aims to restore and recreate the real history of the bloody American west,thus affirming the novel’s important value.The thesis is divided into three parts.Brief information of the work and author,literature review,theoretical frameworks,and thesis statement and major contents of each chapters are included in the introduction part.The body chapters consist of three parts.Firstly,chapter one analyses the duality of carnival characterization including demigod-demon image of Holden;unitive-opposite paired images of the judge and the kid;and barbaric-civilized coexistence among Glanton Gang;these violent characters roaming the wild west are totally different from the cowboys in traditional western novels,thus recreating the image of violent people in the wild west which symbolized the reappearance of violators in the west.Chapter two asserts uncrowning in carnival ritual such as expansionary wars and racial slaughter by western tyrants under the effects of the doctrine of manifest destiny,which builds a lining bridge with reproduction of violent acts in the west.But in the end,they were all defeated.The third chapter proposes the subversive spirit of the carnival,which deconstructs the traditional heroic mode of writing and the deep-rooted sense of manifest destiny in the western novels,in order to recreate the real and bloody history of the west.To sum up,the focus of the thesis is on violence in Blood Meridian by Cormac Mc Carthy.With application of Mikhail Bakhtin’s carnivalesque theory,a conclusion can be drawn that Cormac Mc Carthy restores the bloody development history of the west to deconstruct traditional westerns on the writing model of traditional westerns and manifest destiny by rewriting the appearance of unconventional images of extreme violence and acts of violence,and to deliver suspicious criticism about hypocrisy of American myth with intense condemnation of westward movement dominated by America imperialism.