In the dawn there is a man progressing over the plain by means of holes which he is making in the ground. He uses an implement with two handles and he chucks it into the hole and he enkindles the stone in the hole with his steel hole by hole striking the fire out of the rock which God has put there. On the plain behind him are the wanderers in search of bones and those who do not search and they move haltingly in the light like mechanisms whose movements are monitored with escapement and pallet so that they appear restrained by a prudence or reflectiveness which has no inner reality and they cross in their progress one by one that track of holes that runs to the rim of the visible ground and which seems less the pursuit of some continuance than the verification of a principle, a validation of sequence and causality as if each round and perfect hole owed its existence to the one before it there on that prairie upon which are the bones and the gatherers of bones and those who do not gather. He strikes fire in the hole and draws out his steel. Then they all move on again.
This passage in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian has been bouncing in my mind for a variety of reasons. First-off, I have no idea what it means. Despite this, it evokes very strong feelings when I read it. I think that’s a testament to what McCarthy is able to convey in his writing. Secondly, I think that this relates in some ways to the way we view technology. In the passage, there is a technology mentioned- the “implement with two handles,” but the item is left very ambiguous. In the passage, we learn that small bit of visual information about the implement and we learn the result of this technology- perfect holes in the desert with fire inside them. As I reflected on this passage, I thought that maybe the technology presented in the passage doesn’t differ too drastically from much of the technology we experience today.
What occurs inside much of the technology we interact with is a mystery to us. A lot of technology to us is in some ways as magical to us as it is presented in this passage. We (the user) know what we do to it, and we know what happens as a result, but there is much in between these two events that we do not know. For example, few people are aware of how the mechanisms behind many of the applications on our phones today work. These dynamics are affecting how we interact with technology and with the world in ways we don’t understand.
Of course, we don’t need to be aware of the inner workings of every electronic device that we come in contact with. To understand all the technology around us would require a vast wealth of knowledge beyond any one person’s understanding. However, I think it is useful to keep these thoughts in mind.
I know that this is not by any means a new idea to this class. We have discussed it numerous times in our groups and in the full-class settings. I was just intrigued by the ways that this idea was reflected in this extremely unrelated text. I am pretty sure that McCarthy had no intention of making a statement about technology in this passage, but I think that it is an interesting lense to look at technology through.
Even if there is nothing to be learned about technology, it is a super interesting passage to read over and think about.