Chapter 5

This chapter was probably darker than the ones before it, and the kid gets a new companion. A survivor of the chapter 4 massacre is a man named Sproule. He's a sickly fellow, that really didn't need to be mentioned because he dies pretty anti-climatically near the end of this chapter.

The first pretty disgusting thing in this chapter was the bush with hanging dead babies. The paragraph or two describing these dead babies was pretty graphic, and it adds to the ever so increasing lawlessness in this area. I think it's pretty amazing that neither the kid nor Sproule pay much attention to these babies as they walk by. I think that since McCarthy keeps adding these scenes it improves the "I'm a badass" feel of the kid. The Mexican town shortly after the babies is graphic too. Just having dead bodies murdered in various ways and all the animals are murdered brings about a sense of fear. Seeing all those people would make one think that they might be next.

I don't really understand the quote, "...the great sleeping God of the Mexicans routed from his golden cup," on page 60. I know it obviously has something to do with religion, but I'm not quite sure what McCarthy was going for here. Also on this page I thought an interesting quote was, "The murdered lay in a great pool of their communal blood."

I didn't really understand the part where the soldiers take the kid on page 69. Was the soldiers Mexican soldiers or Indians, because I don't think it said for sure. At first I thought it was Indians, but later on when they talked they talked in Spanish. Unless the people talking were other prisoners. Anyway, I wonder why McCarthy just killed Captain White off, without an epic death scene. All that McCarthy wrote was that he was beheaded. That's pretty lame for a Captain. Also, I thought it was somehow ironic that the kid survived that battle in chapter 4 and managed to live and all, and the Captain ends up dying although he definitely had more experience than the kid. I know the kid is the protagonist and all, but he wasn't even wounded.

All in all this chapter was really good. For all the lack of violence in the last couple of chapters, it was definitely made back up here.