The Relationship between History and Violence in the Twentieth Century - Literature review Example

Discuss the relationship between history and violence in twentieth century and modernist literature using Cormac McCarthys “Blood Meridian” and John Betjeman’s “Slough” Literature, through the different periods, has reflected human history and the contemporary world situation, and the modern literature is one of the most effective ways to understand the modern human and world environment. World history in the twentieth century is especially noted for the various wars, bloodsheds, violence etc and the modernist literature, including fictions and poems, has attempted to represent this human situation. Significantly, there is obvious relationship between history and violence in twentieth century and modernist literature which is best illustrated by Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West and John Betjeman’s “Slough”. Both the works, in their specific ways, have been greatly successful in dealing with the specific context of the modern world, and the relationship between history and violence is greatly evident in the main theme of these works. The warlike nature of man is the most important theme of the celebrated novel by McCarthy, Blood Meridian (1985), and references to historical, religious and mystical themes, affairs and persons can be found on almost every page of the work. “Slough,” published in his collected works Continual Dew in 1937, “is one of Betjeman’s most famous poems and perhaps his harshest indictment of humanity: he rebukes us for our materialism, our insensitivity to our environment, our moral and sexual corruption and our indolent preference for the benefits of modern technology at the expense of traditional culture.” (Gardner and Betjeman, 162) Therefore, both the literary pieces significantly deal with the relationship between history and violence in the modern world. The novel by McCarthy has ever been acclaimed as one of the best modernist fictions dealing with violence and connecting it with history. “Blood Meridian (1985) is the alpha and omega of the novel of violence... It may not be the first novel to imply that violence is the nucleus around which all our genetic atoms revolve, but it is the first to promote that theory quite so convincingly.” (Shaw, 132) The novel has been considered as not one about violence, not one in which violence is subsidiary, not one in which violence is innermost; but the novel itself is violence and a period. If violence is removed from the novel, there is nothing remains. The novelist himself had a specific philosophy of violence which is evident in the following passages from the novel Blood Meridian: The murdered lay in a great pool of their communal blood. It had set up into a sort of pudding crossed everywhere with the tracks of wolves or dogs and along the edges it had dried and cracked into a burgundy ceramic. Blood lay in dark tongues on the floor and blood grouted the flagstones and ran in the vestibule where the stones were cupped from the feet of the faithful and their fathers before them and it had threaded its way down the steps and dripped from the stones among the dark red tracks of the scavengers. (McCarthy, 60) McCarthy’s novel is a dense and occasionally difficult narration of the contemporary global situation and violence remains a pervasive theme all through the novel. Judge Holden, the main antagonist of the novel, is the epitome of violence and he is absolutely committed to violence and conflict. Holden, illustrating his views on the warlike nature of human beings, argues that human existence is essentially about violence and this becomes the major themes of the novel. The presentation of the relationship between history and violence in the novel gained significant critical acclaim and the novel is praised to be one of the best twentieth century novels. “In Blood Meridian, McCarthy reached back a century, to incidents of such horrific violence that there can be no rational explanation for them... Blood Meridian elevates war to its most mythic power by reaching back to that time before gadgetry took the individual heroism out of skilful killing, before it became less the work of berserkers and more the work of machines.” (Ellis, 166) Through the novel, it becomes clear that war preserved its game-like qualities at that point in history, and Holden’s dual analogy and the its courtroom tropes best points to the specific historical time, which would be meaningless and ridiculous if applied to the realities of modern fights. War, according to the realities of the period, is the rule due to the fact that it completely makes use of the single typical ability of human beings, and, therefore, war cannot be the aberration of the human existence. It is relatable here that critic after critic has compared this outlandish but marvellously written adventure masterpiece by McCarthy with the greatest works of literary celebrities such as Dante, Poe, Melville, Faulkner et al. Harold Bloom is one of the important critics “declared it one of the greatest novels of the Twentieth Century, and perhaps the greatest by a living American writer. Critics cite its magnificent language, its uncompromising representation of a crucial period of American history, and its unapologetic, bleak vision of the inevitability of suffering and violence.” (Wallach) The novel deals with the adventures of the kid, a young escapee and the novel recounts many of the historical events including the Leonids meteor shower of 1833. The kid runs away from home and his alcoholic father in the 1980s and there is a taste for tedious violence in the boy in the character. It is also of paramount notice that the violence in the novel originates from the landscape which is presented in apocalyptic terms. According to the narrator, the land which has been the location of possibilities and opportunities traditionally is a vast ground of nothingness now, and this characteristic of the land extends to the characters as the novelist presents them as composed of the same mud and dust of the place. “Indeed nothingness and "namelessness" represent central motifs in the novel, McCarthy rejecting the traditional Westerns claims to quintessential American values and meanings. In Blood Meridian, life itself is repeatedly shown to have no value, the repeated descriptions of horrific, inhuman violence having the effect of desensitizing the reader.” (McVeigh, 152) The violence fortifies reality of Westward expansion and the novelist reflects it in the beautifully structured novel. In this attempt to reflect the violence of the historical time and location, McCarthy was specific and careful not to glorify it, and there is no touch of heroism even in the startling imageries of violence in the novel. The novelist is, considerably, effective in illustrating the relationship between history and violence through the novel and he disregards the traditional values of characters and themes in this attempt. “Clearly, McCarthy is seeking to present readers with an alternative version of the Western, an anti-Western, which challenges and ultimately destroys the romantic myths and code of the West. McCarthy presents violence as pervasive in this version... He also rejects the traditional binaries of good guy bad guy, white hat black hat.” (McVeigh, 152) Therefore, it is apparent that the novelist has been effective in representing the relationship between violence and history in the twentieth century context. A profound analysis of the character of Judge Holden in the novel is of paramount significance as this character takes in the relationship between violence and history in the modern context. Holden is indubitably a magnificent literary creation and he, being an archetypal Western man as well as a monster, resonates with the perspective of the New Western History. He represents the violent land and makes a history of his own. “The Judge is engaged in a process of inscribing his own version of history in a book he carries. In the book he records and sometimes collects the flora and fauna and artifacts he comes across and once he has sketched the thing, he destroys it, and sometimes even the sketch itself, in the fire.” (McVeigh, 153-4) The Judge’s book also offers appealing resonance with the New Western History and the knock over of the old history is the main characteristic of this new history. It is mainly because the new history is written by the oppressor and the process of selection and control is the main element of this history. The narrator seems to be engaged in disclosing the horrors connected with the process of creating the new history. Therefore, it is primary to comprehend that the novelist has a revisionist purpose in dealing with the various aspects of this new history. “The extent of Blood Meridians revisionist purpose is further revealed in the fact that McCarthy undertook extensive research in preparation for writing the novel.” (McVeigh, 154) In another convincing literary piece of the modern contexts, Betjeman’s ‘Slough’ presents the relationship between history and violence. The basic theme of the poem centres on the modern context of war and violence and the poet successfully illustrates the modern situation in a convincing manner. The poem opens with a magnificent and dramatic stanza which builds a specific tension that lasts all through the poem. The tension between the idea of cows grazing and the concept of death presents the modern situation and the conflict is also evident in the contradictory terms ‘friendly bombs’ which open the poem. Employing the literary tool of paradox and conflict, Betjeman introduces the idea of violence and warlike tension in the history. Thus, one finds that the poet brilliantly jots together the seemingly contradictory terms in the opening line, where bombs are presented as friendly. Through this specific literary tool, Betjeman is able to present the situation in the place and explains what a bad place means. Through the various images in the poem, the poet is able to convince the readers about the characteristics of the place he is referring to, and one also notices the poet’s rhythmic use of language as well. “Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough! / It isnt fit for humans now, / There isnt grass to graze a cow. / Swarm over, Death! / Come, bombs and blow to smithereens / Those air -conditioned, bright canteens, / Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans, / Tinned minds, tinned breath.” (Betjeman, line 1-8) The tension built through these opening lines of the poem illustrates the nature of warlike world where violence is the rule of the land. The second stanza especially relates to the specific capture of warlike lives, and the poet ingeniously compares the ‘minds’ and ‘breath’ of human beings to tinned materials, thus arousing a feeling of sanitised lifelessness, without fresh air to every element in the world. The poem is written immediately before the war and the poem refutes the modern city of Slough the comfortable fiction of cleanliness. In this poem written just before the war, Betjeman saw the town of Slough as not merely an excrescence of arresting ugliness and mundanity but a moral morass if modernism that rendered it unfit for the human occupation. ‘Slough’ is one of Betjemans most famous poems and perhaps his harshest indictment of humanity...” (Gardner and Betjeman, 162) Thus, the poet admonishes his reader, the modern men, for our materialism, our selfishness to our environment, our moral and sexual dishonesty etc. In his poem ‘Slough’, Betjeman apparently connects the events in history to the concept of violence and it is in this relationship that the poem attains its specific meanings. Therefore, the poet gives a reality based account of the life in the particular land which also links history with violence. The poem presents the vandalism of culture and the landscape as complete and permanent and indicates that only a total destruction can be desired in the specific context. It is, therefore, for the purpose of cleansing the land that the poet desires a complete destruction of the land and a meaningful reawakening of the entire world. Thus, the poet is expressing the righteous resentment in the opening of the poem when he asks the ‘friendly bombs’ to fall on the land. “Only complete decimation can purge and purify the England represented by Slough and prepare it for a reawakening... The poem feels like a jeremiad yet ends with a hopeful image in its depiction of the post-apocalyptic aftermath.” (Gardner and Betjeman, 162) Therefore the poet feels that the bombs are powerful in making the place more attractive and suitable for habitation. The bombs are expected to expunge the evils of the land so as to restore its traditional and agrarian country life. In short, the appeal of the poet may be related to the historical realities of the land and violence makes meaning to the specific context of the land. The poem ‘Slough’ published was in 1937, at a time when John Betjeman noticed that the town was ever more becoming industrialised to disturb the natural and traditional values of the land. The historical context of war gave him the exact tool to express the need for total reconstruction of the land and violence is employed as the tool to suggest the necessity of an immediate change to the ways of the land. Therefore, the poet connects history and violence for a consequential purpose and this attempt of the poet provided meaning and relevance to the themes in the poem. The poem apparently seems to be in favour of violence and war, but a close analysis of the themes indicates that violence is treated as a means to bring about evocative results to the specific context of the land. Thus, the poet makes use of the image of ‘friendly bombs’ to symbolize violence which in the treatment becomes friendly as well. The total violent situation, which the poet desires for, has an important function of cleansing the problems of the land and the violence means restorative function to the poet. “Mess up the mess they call a town- / A house for ninety-seven down / And once a week a half a crown / For twenty years.” (Betjeman, line 8-12) Therefore the poet presents the relationship between history and violence through the entire lines of the poem and this relationship has significant function to the purposes of the poet. In conclusion, the analysis of the Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian and John Betjeman’ “Slough” presents the relationship between history and violence in twentieth century and modernist literature. There is apparent connection between history and violence in the modernist literature which is primarily realistic in nature. The two literary pieces by McCarthy and Betjeman best demonstrate this relationship, and the underlying themes of both the works significantly draw the attention to the nature of modernist literature. Both McCarthy and Betjeman have demonstrated the relationship between history and violence in their attempt to reconstruct the warlike nature of the land and people at a specific moment in history. Works Cited Betjeman, John. “Slough.” Faith and Doubt of John Betjeman: An Anthology of Betjeman’s Religious Verse. Kevin Gardner and John Betjeman. Continuum International Publishing Group. 2005. P 183. Ellis, Jay. No Place for Home: Spatial Constraint and Character Flight in the Novels of Cormac McCarthy. CRC Press. 2006. P 166. Gardner, Kevin and John Betjeman. Faith and Doubt of John Betjeman: An Anthology of Betjeman’s Religious Verse. Continuum International Publishing Group. 2005. P 162. McCarthy, Cormac. Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West. New York: Vintage International, 1992. McVeigh, Stephen. The American Western. New York: Edinburgh University Press. 2007. P 152. Shaw, Patrick W. The Modern American Novel of Violence. New York: Whitston Press. 2000. P. 132. Wallach, Rick. “Blood Meridian (1985).” Cormac McCarthy.com. 1996. 14 Dec. 2008. . Read More