When I first read Blood Meridian, the bar scene (22-26), even more than the introduction of the Judge, is where I got a feeling that the book would live up to its billing.
I can easily slip into envy of earlier readers, say, the people who first read Moby Dick or As I Lay Dying, who experienced discovering a new thing before it was handed down and branded a classic. This is mostly empty romancing--similar to the general notion people have of the West, I suspect--and forgets the benefit I have over my predecessors: replacing discovery, I have verification.
The bar scene invites many readings--structural, pychological, political--and rewards each fully. As a device, the scene functions akin to an atlas key or a translator's cipher, providing the rules that the novel will work under when placing characters in the plot. Chief among these is to undermine the reader's expectation of action and consequence.
In short, the kid's trek through the desert takes him to a small tavern in search of a drink. Without money and unable to speak the language of the locals, he pantomimes his offer to work for a drink by sweeping the bar's floor. The barkeep, unmoved by this gesture, refuses the kid a drink, which leads to a confrontation, a fight, and a murder.
If you were a traveller and the world of Blood Meridian a culture, the bar scene lays out guidelines for accepted behavior while on your visit. First, you are on your own. Everything in the scene's set-up leads the reader to see the classic "stanger comes to town" story in the kid's plight: his inability to speak Spanish, his lack of a firearm, the patrons dismissive attitude toward him, the inhospitable bartender. The kid, rightly, sees a threat in his surroundings.
But the surprise of the bar scene is not the barkeep's murder but his abandonment by the bar's patrons. The fight between the kid and the barkeep is a mismatch--we were introduced to the kid as having "a taste for mindless violence" (3) and know he survived a number of pit fights in New Orleans. The narrative revels in the kid's fighting skill, highlighting his "roadagent's pass" (25) of a bottle so that he can bring down a fluid backhand on the barkeep's noggin.
Three consequences come of the barkeep's murder. The first is literally nothing: "Some of those men wore pistols in their belts but none moved" (26). The perceived threat was just that, a perception. In truth, none of the patrons were willing to avenge the barkeep's murder by an outsider because this was never an "us against them" scenario. There is no "us."
Another consequence of the scene amounts to almost nothing. The kid grabs more bottles from the bar, having used his first two as weapons, but he awoke the next morning with "his tongue swollen with thirst" (26). The barkeep's murder had been utterly pointless.
The third consequence arrives in the next chapter in the kid's recruitment into Captain White's army, when he his told by his would-be recruiter that the Captain "seen somethin in me worth savin and I see it in you" (30). That "somethin" is apparently killing Mexicans, which is good enough for Captain White.
Also, on page 23, notice how often characters are shown looking around at one another or looking away from each other. Sightlines and recognition are important in this scene to mark each character's unwillingness to leave their personal world and acknowledge another person's presence in it, especially once the kid begins his sweeping.
Lastly, although it is not the sum of the scene or perhaps even a pivotal reading, politcal and historic comparisons are almost unavoidable in the bar scene. The kid, the American, enters the Mexicans' property out of desperation but engages them with hubris. The motivating anger for the barkeep's murder is entirely manufactured by the kid's perception that he's been jipped of a drink for his labor. But who is he to even offer a deal for things that don't belong to him, much less become enraged when this imagined deal is broken?
More likely, this is all pretense. Just as the kid was thirsty for a drink, he was also hungry for his "taste for mindless violence" and would have sated it regardless of what the bartender did. Characters in Blood Meridian don't so much have reasons as they have purposes.
The larger historical interpretation of American indulgences during westward expansion is also present, and reinforced by Captain White's policies in the next chapter. The American destiny to reach from east to west is fulfilled by the calveryman, not the pioneer. When we "speak american," we speak the language of violence. The kid, like many other characters in the book, is fluent.
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