Skip to content

Far side Quote by Cormac McCarthy

“Now driving in a wild frieze of headlong horses with eyes walled and teeth cropped and naked riders with clusters of arrows clenched in their jaws and their shields winking in the dust and pu the far side of the ruined ranks in a piping of boneflutes and dropping down off the sides of their mounts…” quote by Cormac McCarthy
Download Open image
““Now driving in a wild frieze of headlong horses with eyes walled and teeth cropped and naked riders with clusters of arrows clenched in their jaws and their shields winking in the dust and pu the far side of the ruined ranks in a piping of boneflutes and dropping down off the sides of their mounts with one heel hung in the withers strap and their short bows flexing beneath the outstretched necks of the ponies until they had circled the company and cut their ranks in two and then rising up again like funhouse figures, some with nightmare faces painted on their breasts, riding down the unhorsed Saxons and spearing and clubbing them and leaping from their mounts with knives and running about on the ground with a peculiar bandylegged trot like creatures driven to alien forms of locomotion and stripping the clothes from the dead and seizing them up by the hair and passing their blades about the skulls of the living and the dead alike and snatching aloft the bloody wigs and hacking and chopping at the naked bodies, ripping off limbs, head, gutting the strange white torsos and holding up great handfuls of viscera, genitals, some of the savages so slathered up with gore they might have rolled in it like dogs and some who fell upon the dying and sodomized them with loud cries to their fellows.””

Cormac McCarthy

About This Quote

Source Novel: Blood Meridian, 1985

The passage depicts brutal, chaotic warfare where humanity is reduced to savage, animalistic violence.

In simple terms: War can become grotesque and dehumanizing.

Key Takeaway

Recognize the cost of unchecked aggression.

Themes

war violence humanity chaos

Mood

grim intense

Type

literary historical

When to use this quote

  • Studying war history
  • military ethics training
  • peace advocacy

Key Concepts

Moral decay psychological trauma historical brutality

Questions to Reflect On

  • Why does the author use such vivid gore?
  • What does this say about human nature?
A Different Perspective

The graphic detail may desensitize readers to real suffering.

5.0 out of 5 (10 ratings)

More by Cormac McCarthy

Explore all 927 Cormac McCarthy quotes

More Far side quotes

Browse all 135 Far side quotes