“Blood and time”: Cormac Mccarthy’s “Blood meridian” and historical memory of the Vietnam war

Abstract

“Blood Meridian” by Cormac McCarthy demythologizes the national myth of the American frontier by revisiting the events of the mid-nineteenth century. This historical distance defines the scope of the study and allows the text to be read as a meditation on later collective traumas in U.S. history. The article approaches “Blood Meridian” in light of the transformations of American historical memory of the Vietnam War as reflected in the novel. The study seeks to relate the novel’s demythologization of the frontier experience to the crisis of national identity triggered by the war and to the subsequent reinterpretation of that experience in the discursive strategies of Ronald Reagan. Methodologically, the analysis draws on trauma theory, which makes it possible to view the frontier not as a completed phase of expansion but as a recurring matrix for the legitimation of violence. The analysis shows that in “Blood Meridian” the image of the frontier emerges as a source of collective trauma embedded within the national myth. The novel establishes a historical continuum between the violence of frontier expansion and the experience of the Vietnam War, highlighting the persistence of moral inversion, the dehumanization of the enemy, and the messianic legitimation of aggression. McCarthy’s text thus challenges the notion of American moral exceptionalism and reveals the traumatic dimension of the frontier image within the structure of national self-consciousness.