Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian isn’t the kind of work I’d normally choose to read, but as I was asked to see how a story structure approach might be applied to analysing the work, I thought, ‘Why not?’
In his blog on Blood Meridian, Kelly James, a member of The Unknown Storyteller Group notes the mirrored structure of the work. The question of whether a similar symmetrical pattern could be traced in the work at the level of story structure intrigued me.
The book, at first, promises to be a coming-of-age story for a child who become a kid, a pilgrim. Redolent with references to the Bible, to Tarot and heavy with brooding descriptive passages, the work trudges forward following story structures which are either tragic closed structures, or are left open-ended.
I’ve been applying a 13-step methodology outlined in my forthcoming book, The Unknown Storyteller: or Why Does Story ‘Story’? The first five steps are outline in my first post in this series; the next two in my third post; steps eight to eleven in my fourth post, where I introduce two key story structures that crop up pretty often in the work (the Quest structure and the Trickster structure) and identify examples of how these work in my fifth and sixth posts in the series. In this seventh and final post on Blood Meridian, I intend to address the last two steps:
12. Analyse the overarching structure of the entire story based on the dominant pattern which results using the 18 story structures currently identified as a guide.
13. Note any questions or variations that result from your analysis when compared to the 18 story structures currently identified.
I include a full-scale analysis of a complex folk tale in The Unknown Storyteller, in which I isolate each character’s story line and trace how it maps to particular story structures. Suffice it to say that one of the hallmarks of McCarthy’s use of story structure is the frequent lack of any clear problem in a sequence of events in a character’s story line. We’re not told why the kid sets out - nor are we told why he falls in with various groups. Even when he gets wounded in Chapter 20, he keeps going - unable to articulate any clear reason why, perhaps not having any clear reason.
Can you walk? said Toadvine.
I aint got no choice.
How much water you got?
Not much.
What do you want to do?
I dont know.
We could ease back to the river and lay up, said Toadvine.
Till what?
He looked toward the fort again and he looked at the broken shaft in the kid's leg and the welling blood. You want to try and pull that?
No.
What do you want to do?
Go on.
The kid’s not much of a talker at the best of times, so one can’t read much into the terse responses. As a result, what the kid feels about being wounded is anyone’s guess. But that relates to the reader’s story line, which we’ll get to in a bit. For now, I want to follow the kid’s story line for a bit longer.
When he ends up almost dying on the trail, the section of his story line follows yet another Creation Myth structure sequence. The Creation Myth structures typically flows forward unproblematically.
We’re told that he and the expriest he’s travelling with ‘would have died if the indians had not found them.’ There’s nothing in the writing, or in the characters’ behaviour to indicate this would have been problematic for them. The Dieguenos give them food, water, shelter, but don’t offer to treat the kid’s injuries, and the so-called ‘pilgrims’ move on.
When the kid eventually gets to San Diego, he gets arrested, thrown into prison, and released. At no stage are we told why. At no stage - not even when the kid calls a guard over to tell him of a ‘horde of gold and silver coins hid in the mountains’ does the kid seem to treat his situation as problematic. Is he delusional? He must have a reason for doing so: Does he want to bribe the guard? Does he simply want to pass the time? We have no idea. The guard leaves. The kid seems neither better off, nor worse off as a result. His story line flows forward again. The meeting between the two characters introduces a backwards step ( ↽ ) in both of the characters’ story lines. And yet, there’s still a sense of forward flow. The judge comes to visit him in prison (another meeting). During their exchange, both the kid and the judge follow their own lines of reasoning. Is there an intention to dupe on the part of the judge? Does the accusatory exchange follow a Trickster structure in his story line (which is tragically thwarted by the kid)? If so, is there any sign that the judge sees this as being problematic? Or does their relationship map another Perpetual Motion structure sequence - a rare story structure typically associated with the movements of planets, or the alternation of day and night, or the phases of the moon, and is a feature of cyclical songs or rhymes that touch on life and death - Where Have all the Flowers Gone; or Michael Finnegan, for instance.
In San Diego, we finally have a hint that the kid sees the arrowhead embedded in his leg as a problem - but it’s a subtle hint: ‘The doctor that he found’ - this doctor, he went in search of. He’s told the operation will cost $100. The kid sells his pistol for $40 Finally, a sequence of Quest structures that makes sense, one thinks. The kid buys enough whiskey to get himself drunk. We have no idea whether he pays for the whiskey out of his $40. We have no idea what he ends up paying for the operation - if anything - and we’re back in open-ended story structure territory.
Does this sequence mirror in some way the Trickster/Quest structure sequence I touched on when I first described how the Trickster structure works in relation to the time he was shot and cared for by the tavernkeeper’s wife? I’ll leave that to you to work out for yourselves. My view is that it may do on the level of narrative and plot pattern - at the level of story structure, it doesn’t and I found the way in which the tavernkeeper’s wife’s story line is left open-ended deeply unsatisfying.
If one is going to criticise a literary work, one should have clear criteria - and the treatment of story structure is one tool in the critical arsenal - it’s a pretty powerful one. I found little mastery in the way in which Cormac McCarthy treats story structure - although it did make me reflect on the story structure that superstitious practices follow.
In Chapter 6, the kid and Toadvine find themselves in a chain gang. While performing their civic duty of picking up rubbish in the unnamed city they’ve been taken to, a religious procession passes, ‘taking the host to some soul. A fat priest tottered after carrying an image’ heralded by the sound of a bell. We’re told that at the sound of the bell, the prisoners ‘stood along the curb and took off their hats.’ Later, we find out that only some of them defer to the host. As a result, ‘The guards were going among the prisoners snatching the hats from the heads of the newcomers and pressing them into their infidel hands.’
In this rare instance in Blood Meridian where the presence of metaphysical / spiritual power is depicted, I noted the presence of a Call and Response Variation 1 structure playing out like a musical canon in the various characters’ story lines, uniting them in a rare harmonising way - despite the negative behaviour of the guards and the ‘infidel’ prisoners. It’s a compound structure which typically links metaphysical and physical dimensions of being. It shifts from one character’s story line to another’s, and features a dynamic sense of mounting tension which usually underpins a Quest structure.
The structure typically starts out with a state of excess - either an excess of good, or an excess of evil. Here, there’s a soul in need (excess of evil). The response from the church is to administer the host (Quest underpinned by a Revelation structure). This condenses to a single impetus - the sound of the bell (Transformation - excess of good). The response from the devout prisoners - doffing their hats (Quest + Revelation) had me puzzled - until I worked out that their story line starts long before. It’s based on a prior belief - a fear of evil and a wish to avert it. The lack of response from the ‘infidel’ group is perceived as an excess of evil by the guards. They snatch and press - but why? Is it to save their own souls because if they didn’t ensure that sufficient respect was shown, their souls would be damned; or is it to save the souls of their prisoners?
There’s a fine line between a writer leaving things open-ended and a writer getting their readers to do their work for them. I’d hoped for light. All McCarthy gave me was darkness.
While I’m all for tragedy, I came away from Blood Meridian lacking any sense of catharsis, which is the whole purpose of tragedy. There’s a whole chapter on this in The Unknown Storyteller - which puts tragedy in the larger context of story and the reason why story ‘stories’ (as the subtitle of the work indicates).
There will probably be as many fans of McCarthy’s work as there are detractors. For me, literature that has narrative quality is not enough.
Form and content have to relate in some way. The Unknown Storyteller is all about story structure - a very important aspect of writing, but that’s only half the story. This spring, starting in March, I’m planning to explore the other half in a series of posts about writing - I have a big surprise in store for you!
If you enjoy story, find out more about The Unknown Storyteller project. It maps 18 distinct story structures (excluding comedy and tragedy) identified so far using only 6 simple basic visually intuitive symbols that will enable you to find out more about how story ‘stories’ on my website at leonconrad.com — not to mention some very cool writing exercises that will help you tell the stories you want to tell more effectively.