Even the name of the novel illustrates this. A meridian is an imaginary vertical line from pole to pole that circles the Earth. When one thinks of the “blood meridian,” the reader imagines a single bloody line moving ever further westward, sweeping away everything in its path and bringing with it violence and chaos. McCarthy describes a Mexican man who believed in a blood meridian in his country: “Blood, he said. A lot of blood is given to this country. This Mexico. This is a thirsty country. The blood of a thousand Christs. Nothing” (McCarthy 102). The second part of the title, Or the Evening Redness in the West, echoes the first part. The red clearly symbolizes all the blood shed by violence. The novel suggests that all this blood was “nothing” because it was necessary for humanity to move forward. Judge Holden even claims that violence is moral. «And isn't the human race even more predatory? The world must flourish, flourish and die, but in the affairs of men there is no decline, and the noon of its expression signals the beginning of the night. His spirit exhausted at the height of his success. His meridian is at once the darkening and evening of his day” (McCarthy 146-147). Whatever the judge thinks, the violence has achieved nothing more than the production of more violence. The characters in the novel become so accustomed to brutal violence that death no longer even touches them. Being desensitized to violence does not make it more moral. Manifest Destiny was possible without any bloodshed. This senseless violence has done the opposite of “promoting human well-being and preventing