Blood Meridian Chapter 15 | Chapter by Chapter Read Along
transcript
show notes
Chapter 15 shifts the focus back toward the kid as Glanton's gang is scattered, exhausted, starving, and on the run.
In this episode, I look at the kid's encounter with the wounded Shelby and his refusal to kill him, raising a difficult question we've encountered before: is refusing to kill an act of mercy when it leaves someone behind to suffer?
We also get one of the most striking scenes in the novel so far as the kid encounters a burning tree in the desert surrounded by animals. For a brief moment, he seems to enter a world outside Glanton's gang, a natural world that doesn't know who he is, what he's done, or how he should be judged.
The birds we've been tracking also return in interesting ways: doves appear around Shelby, an owl appears near the burning tree, while buzzards remain associated with death and human remains.
And when Tobin asks whether he's afraid of Judge Holden, the kid simply says no.
Does he mean it?
Next up: Chapter 16.
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