Essay about Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian

The second instance is when the Kid goes into the bar and asks the bar tender if he could work for a drink. After doing some work he came back to the bar and ask for his drink now, but instead of giving the Kid a drink the bar tender “brought up from under the bar an old-fashioned military pistol with a flint lock and shoved back the cock with the heel of his hand” and pointed it right at him (McCarthy 26). After that the kid flips out and kicks the crap out the bartender while stabbing him in the eye with a broken bottle. As the story goes on, we read about more and more bloody battles between the Mexicans, Indians, and the company. We also see that the kid starts to live up to his violent demeanor. This illustrates that the Kid was born with the taste for violence and now has been exposed to all of the violence going on in the west, and it shows us that he has changed. People tend to ignore the violent nature of the American expansion of the west in favor of the romantic notion of adventurous and hardy people braving the untamed west and bend it to their will. This vision of the expansion was pushed by popular stories, books, and even movies. Unfortunately, the reality of the American expansion in the west was a much darker story where Americans were killed and raped by Apaches, Apaches were killed by Americans, and scalps were taken by both sides. It is apparent that