Reviews tagging 'Torture'

Blood Meridian, or The Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy

54 reviews

thetatteredowl's review against another edition

 Really enjoyed the book's hypnotic, poetic quality, but it had no speech marks, which is always a dealbreaker. Gave up as soon as I reached page 50. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Animal death, Blood, Bullying, Cannibalism, Child death, Cursing, Death, Emotional abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Gore, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, Misogyny, Murder, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Religious bigotry, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Torture, Violence, War, and Xenophobia

mmcloe's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional informative mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I first read Blood Meridian when I was just coming into my political consciousness at the end of high school. It's staggering to reread it many years later with a more advanced understanding of American history and ideology. Enough has already been said about this to fill a million books but I'll remark that the most fascinating new revelation for me is that the violence of colonialism isn't just physical violence but also anthropological violence. In western understandings of academics and scholarship, we cannot preserve without also destroying, claiming the cultural heritage for our own and leaving only scraps of art and nature and life for anyone else to cling on. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual violence, War, Ableism, Animal death, Blood, Child abuse, Child death, Alcohol, Gun violence, Racial slurs, Pedophilia, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Sexual assault, Rape, Racism, Colonisation, Adult/minor relationship, Hate crime, Slavery, Animal cruelty, Death, Genocide, Gore, Torture, and Violence

venusenvy's review

challenging dark slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? N/A
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Genocide, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Blood, Body horror, Cursing, Gore, Gun violence, Racial slurs, Racism, Torture, Death, and Child death

Moderate: Child abuse, Pedophilia, Sexual violence, and Rape

jakej's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark reflective slow-paced

• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

A towering achievement, so awe inspiring and distinctly McCarthian that it challenges the ideas of what a great book has to do. There is no character development and no protagonist (except in the superficial sense of occasionally being told from the kid’s point of view) and little plot. The purposes of the book are to remind you simultaneously of the necessity of violence to the world, and as a warning of what violence will do to it. More depressing and immersive than The Road, birthed by McCarthy’s archaic and cold descriptions.

The depravity hides a lot of complexity: there are a lot of unanswered questions in terms of plot that translate into unanswered questions about the characters' psyche's. However, the characters aren’t inordinately complex: the thematic treatment is through descriptive imagery and lacerating language, not through characters facing some internal struggle. It reaches near Biblical levels in the sheer amount that can be pulled from it.

Worth reading a dozen times.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Blood, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Excrement, Gore, Gun violence, Mass/school shootings, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Torture, and Violence