Alienation in "The Heart Song of Charging Elk"

Charging Elk struggles against Alienation of many different forms in "The Heart Song of Charging Elk." The rational that was made to justifies this in the dominant culture was that Charging Elk was fundementally different from them. It's an idea that Charging Elk seems unable to out run. Even in the whorehouse, he is viewed differently because of his race. Two forms of this racism are present, one more "benelovant" than the other. The first form of racism that Charging Elk encounters is while he is still in America, and is held by almost every American in the novel. This form focuses on his "savagery" and views him as an incongruous member of society, thus using this as a justification of the systems that were in place in the reservations. This American racism within the novel is definitely the most malevolent, because it justified culture war as well as genocide. The next form of racism that Charging Elk encounters is in France. This racism focuses on the exoticness of Charging Elk and was a continuation of the idea of the noble savage. Though, many of the character who held this opinion of Charging Elk treated him much better than the Americans, it still did not allow Charging Elk to be a human and ultimately, at the trial when push comes to shove, he was still viewed in essentially the same light.

The Latino Reader and the Southwest

Of all the borders that we have examined this semester, I think the border, physical and cultural, between the U.S. and Mexico has produced some great art. It is interesting and exceptional for several reasons. For one reason, there was not only a clash between Old World and New World, but there was a clash between Old World and Old World. We see this in works such "The Squatter and the Don" and "Blood Meridian." Many of clashes, interestingly enough see to be the opposite, class wise, of what we are use to in terms of who is forced out of a region. Rather than the upper classes forcing the poor and uneducated out of a region, in the Southwest the old Aristocracy of Spain was forced out by the Westward expansion of poor and middle class Northern Europeans. It seems that the literature from the Southwest, much as the literature from the Southeast does, focuses on subjects that often strays into the occult, the strange and the violent. "The Mexican Village" and "The Rebel" hinted at this, as does "Blood Meridian." It seems the Southern clime tends towards expressions of the strange and grotesque.

Racism within Race

One of the most interesting and shocking idea that runs throughout the reading we've done in The Harlem Renaissance Reader is that of racism within the African American community. As we have seen in many of the works (Such Passing, Cane and The Blacker the Berry), beauty, which was defined by the white hegemony within the United States, had become based upon the pigment of your skin, even among African American communities like Harlem. To me, reading these works a hundred years later, this seems to be the most futile thing ever. A carry over of the ugliness of racism into the very communities that had suffered under that discrimination. It testifies to the level of hate that many suffered under. A form of Stockholm syndrome that forces the victim to engage in the same acts that the culprit is involved in.

The Last Pale Light in The West

As I reread Blood Meridian, I am reminded of McCarthy's other works and the interconnectedness that we as careful readers find between them. We've spent some time in class discussing the book's the enigmatic epilogue and recently, having finished The Road for a second time, I have been thinking about this last portion of the novel in the context of McCarthy's body of work (or at least the three novels that I have read). What I find in common between The Road, No Country For Old Men and Blood Meridian is the recurring image of the fire or the flame that is being carried or set. In The Road, the man and the boy seem to be carrying the fire of humanity in a post-apocalyptic world. Sheriff Bell in No Country For Old Men meets his father in a dream, carrying the fire on up ahead. And now, in Blood Meridian, a nameless man progresses over the plains, striking fires enkindled within the shallow ground. As we look for meaning within this, we, or maybe I should say I, inevitably look to these later works to somehow lend some meaning to this mystery. In the other two works the fire appears to represent humanity in a way (I say humanity in the sense of being humane, which we all know you can be human without being humane). The protagonists in The Road and No Country For Old Men seem to be moral, or upright men who believe in the goodness of mankind, but yet are confronted with the horror of what man can do to his fellow man. The hope that they find seems to be in family, particulary paternal, relationships. In The Road, it's the relationship between the man and the boy, and in No Country For Old Men, it's between Sheriff Bell and his father. So what does this have to do with Blood Meridian? The Kid is set adrift in life and like many of the characters in the novel has no family or can never return to his family. This raises the possibility that the Kid's own moral depravity is owed to his near orphan status, as he has run away from his drunken father, though ultimately I am unsatisfied with that explanation. I think the Kid, instead of grappling with other people's evil actions, as in the other two novels, is forced to deal with his own crimes against humanity. I think this provides the reason for the necklace of ears he wears around his neck, not as a trophy, but like the Ancient Mariner's albatross, as a reminder of his own depravity. And then we have the fires being struck across the plain. I think, if we go with the way fire is represented in the other two novels, that the fire represents humanity. It's bright and lights up the night sky, but then, burning out when most satisfied, is smoldered under the impenetrable darkness that surrounds.

Design and Ceremony; Underlying views of humanity

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white, On a white heal-all, holding up a moth Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth -- Assorted characters of death and blight Mixed ready to begin the morning right, Like the ingredients of a witches' broth -- A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth, And dead wings carried like a paper kite.  What had that flower to do with being white, The wayside blue and innocent heal-all? What brought the kindred spider to that height, Then steered the white moth thither in the night? What but design of darkness to appall?-- If design govern in a thing so small     -Design, by Robert Frost

  
This poem by Robert Frost speaks to us of the chaos within the world we inhabit.  I chose this poem for multiple reasons.  For one we see in it, like we do in the poems on pages 133-138 of "Ceremony", a reversion of the traditional association of white with good and black or dark with bad.  Like the fish bellies that the white people are compared to in Ceremony, white is representative here of something disgusting and terrible.  But I think this is where the similarities began to break down in the world-view's of Frost and Silko.  Tayo throughout "Ceremony" seems to be guided by some "higher" power.  Their seems to be some design, if you will, in his actions in the mythical way in which he encounters the hunter, finds the cows and restores balance to himself and arguably to the world around him.  I found myself unsatisfied with this unrealistic ending.  This design, to which the witchery of the white people belongs, that has governed Tayo's world up to this point must also have sent the soldier to crush Rocky's skull.  It must of also allowed for the dropping of the atomic bomb and the horrors of Auschwitz.  It seems this power that rules within the design of Tayo's life is either ineffectual or evil to allow the injustices in the world.