A reading of Blood Meridian (Essay) and The Book Of War (Novel)
Date
2012-03
Authors
Whyle, James
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University
Abstract
Two separate texts are submitted towards the degree of MA in Creative Writing. The first is
this essay, A Reading of Blood Meridian. The second is a novel, The Book of War.
Essay
The general focus of the essay is the theme of free will in Blood Meridian and the techniques
with which the narrative elements of character, story, style and voice are deployed to focus
the reader's mind on this theme.
The central question: is the meaning, the final message, of Blood Meridian that as individuals
human beings lack agency and that as groups they are shackled to a common destiny?
The hypothesis is that Blood Meridian contains significant patterns, oppositions and
dialectics, designed to place arguments for and against agency in the mind of the reader, but
that the book's response to the theme is inherently and structurally ambiguous.
Novel
The novel was written before the essay. It was written in direct response to Blood Meridian
and to the realization that Blood Meridian was a text rooted in history.
Like Blood Meridian, The Book of War is based on, grows out of, first person accounts,
specifically Stephen Bartlett Lakeman's What I saw in Kaffir-Land (1880) and William Ross
King's Campaigning in Kaffirland: Or Scenes and Adventures in The Kaffir War of 1851-
1852 (1853). The novel takes characters devolved from Lakeman and places them in King’s
journey through the war. These characters create, around a child called the kid, the social
backdrop of a coming of age tale.
The novel uses its source texts as a lens through which to view, and tell the story of, the War
of The Prophet (Eight Frontier War 1850-53). Readers seeking to answer the question: Why is South Africa a violent society? might find at least part of the answer in the nature of, and
the relationships between, English, Xhosa, Dutch, Khoi and Mfengu cultures in the 19th
Century.
Description
Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2012.
Keywords
Violence in literature, War in literature, Colonialism in literature, Dissertations -- Afrikaans and Dutch, Theses -- Afrikaans and Dutch, Dissertations -- Afrikaans literature, Theses -- Afrikaans literature