Greenblatt’s Self-fashioning in McCarthy’s Blood Meridian

Abstract

In Blood Meridian, the formation of a violent identity can be traced by applying Greenblatt’s ideas concerning self-fashioning, in which a selfconscious character’s reaction to dilemmas, doubts, and beliefs are taken into consideration. In addition, any significant view offered or questioned by the character can enhance our understanding of the formation of identity. The role assumed, created, performed, or opposed by the character can also reveal the process of self-fashioning. In the confrontation between authority and alien, the way an individual or a group deals with opposing ideas and negotiates with the alternatives can result in a new mobility which presupposes constraints. Identities are shaped by negotiating with the alternatives through dialectical processes. In this paper, different characters are studied to discover whether they share the same tastes as those of figures in power or they are far removed from their tastes.

Keywords

• identity
• constraint
• self-fashioning
• culture
• authority
• alien
• confrontation