Blood Meridian: Allusions 5 key examples

By beginning the novel with a description of the kid's birth, the novel's coming-of-age element is revealed, especially considering the fact that the kid's death occurs at the end of the novel. "Thirty-three" appears to refer to 1833, the year the kid was born. But the diction and syntax are ambiguous, refraining from mentioning the full year. Thus the number itself is highlighted, standing alone in an incomplete sentence. Importantly, 33 is a classic allusion to Christ: Jesus died on the cross in approximately 33 B.C.E., at the age of 33, and elohim, or God, appears 33 times in Genesis's opening chapter. The line "god how the stars did fall" (emphasis added) reinforces this allusion to Jesus and the Bible. 

This allusion figuratively establishes the kid, born in '33, as a Christ-like figure, which in turn marks his eventual death as to some extent fated. The rest of the quotation gestures towards the impotency of religious faith, with the stars "falling" out of the sky in the moment of astrological wonder that is a meteor shower and the kid's father looking for "holes in heaven." The presence of sin in the novel, specifically as it relates to the kid, is then foreshadowed by this opening description, with heaven itself seeming to collapse as the kid is born. The stage is also set for the future allusions to religion which come later in the story.

This scene is the Judge's entrance into the story, and it immediately establishes the Judge as a purveyor of lies and mistruths. Indeed, the Judge later admits that everything he alleges about Reverend Green, from his lack of divine knowledge to his rape of an 11-year-old girl, was entirely made up. The Judge takes the place of the preacher in this scene, standing in front of the pulpit and turning to face the congregation while stealing their hearts and minds with his silver tongue. The Judge, however, preaches a religion of violence, inspiring a man in the crowd to shoot the reverend dead. This act foreshadows the Judge's personal religion, which he later makes explicit in claiming "war is god." 

The Judge's supplanting of Reverend Green foreshadows the role of religion in Blood Meridian: the novel will be full of sin and violence. To a certain extent this foreshadows the ultimate ending of the novel, where the Judge—a figure who embodies violence above all else—murders the kid, who in the Judge's eyes represents mercy and innocence (although all members of Glanton's army are incredibly violent figures, the kid included).

The Reverend Green claims the Judge is "the devil," and throughout the novel there are numerous suggestions that this claim is an accurate one. This moment in the story then becomes a twisted perversion of the story of Judas and Jesus, where the Reverend is betrayed and subsequently dies for sins he did not commit, and mankind receives no benefits for him doing so. In fact, the Devil simply continues to propagate more sin throughout the rest of Blood Meridian, ending the novel dancing in celebration of all he accomplished.

The Argonauts were a group of Greek heroes who accompanied Jason in his quest for the Golden Fleece. McCarthy's allusion to mythology transforms his goldseekers into the mythological goldseekers of epic poetry, evoking parallels between Blood Meridian and epic poems. While the Greek heroes were larger-than-life figures questing for a divine and powerful relic, McCarthy's goldseekers are "degenerates," a harsh juxtaposition that underscores the meager appearance of the goldseekers and their doomed quest for wealth.

The term "goldseekers" underscores these peoples' greed, portraying those who travel westward for gold in a negative light. Indeed, the simile comparing the goldseekers to a disease suggests westward expansion is natural yet perverse, an illness and also an inevitability that infects and destroys as it advances. The fact that these "itinerant degenerates" gift tobacco and coins reveals a generosity that is nevertheless damaging: giving both an addictive drug to the prisoners and the exact thing that they quest for in coins, which is a symbol of their greed. McCarthy, as he does throughout Blood Meridian, suggests in this simile the damaging consequences the pursuit of wealth has on the characters who are willing to go to terrible lengths to acquire it.

The name of the rifle is an allusion to a Poussin painting of a pastoral shepherd scene. The painting includes a tomb marked with the latin inscription Et In Arcadia Ego, translating roughly to "even in Arcadia, there I am." The "I" in the inscription is often interpreted to be referring to Death, which matches the claim made by Tobin in Blood Meridian that the name is a reference to the "lethal" in the gun.

While it is "common enough for a man to name his gun," it would have been highly uncommon for a man of this time to name his gun in Latin, especially a Latin name that refers to a Baroque painting from the mid-17th century. The above quotation then establishes the Judge as a learned figure of otherworldly proportions, someone who has an unsettling breadth of knowledge. His multilingual nature, revealed at other points in the story, has the same effect. 

The inscription also makes the Judge, the wielder of the gun named not just after Death but specifically after the notion of Death's omnipresent nature, akin to Death himself. In fact, the Judge himself is somewhat ever-present: as Tobin explains a page earlier, "every man in the company claims to have encountered that sootysouled rascal in some other place." And yet, Death isn't the subject of Poussin's painting; actual people are. The painting is just as much about life as it is death, just as the novel itself is about a life of death and violence, and what such a paradoxical life results in. 

The burning tree is an allusion to the burning bush from Chapter 3 in the Book of Exodus. The description of the tree as "heraldic" as well as the simile comparing the sandvipers to "seemly gods [...] in Babylon" further evidences this quotation as an allusion to the Bible. The fact that this allusion takes place after the kid performs an act of mercy, which is rare in Blood Meridian, makes this allusion to the Bible particularly significant.

The burning bush is unifying, as the deadly forces of the desert—the kid as well as the sandvipers, tarantulas, mygales, and vinegarroons—come together, drawn by the warmth of nature. "Small sandvipers like seemly gods" is both an instance of alliteration and simile, with "s" sounds that sonically mimic the sound of a hissing snake. Although the snakes are "silent," the reader is still exposed to the sound of snakes through McCarthy's diction. The warmth of the burning tree is in many ways an act of mercy from God directed at the deadly creatures being snowed on in the desert. Even vicious animals like the kid require mercy, just as Shelby required mercy from the kid. In fact, the kid's pilgrimage is full of unlikely moments where, in his most desperate state, the world provides for him in a way that is almost divine, and the burning bush allusion highlights this facet of his journey while rewarding one of his most mercy-ladened moments.