Notes Works Cited The task of the translator consists in finding that intended effect upon the language into which he is translating which produces in it the echo of the original. McCarthy's nightmare world of death and destruction reflects little of what we have come to accept as the violence of the West. In Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West , when Harmonica shoots down Frank, we know that Frank has warranted his own death. In the traditional Western, those upon whom such justice is served do not get scalped or sodomized, roasted or skewer.
Death is a legitimate, tolerable, and rationalized part of the Western landscape.
Death in Blood Meridian , however, is different. McCarthy depicts death as neither honorable nor narratively tragic. In doing so, McCarthy's Blood Meridian breaks the boundaries of the Western as a genre. West is not accepted as part of some collective job, as it is shouldered by McMurtry's cowboys, but rather, death becomes merely fate, more often than not, bathed in gore. In Tompkins's analysis death brings a heightened awareness of life.