Inversions without end: hidden children in violent texts

Readers and viewers have shared an interest in violence and children through Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West (1985) and Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood (2007). These texts' narratives yoke together children, would-be fathers and brutal violence and, more specifically, forge inverted logics of children's acts of fathering men and men's nurturing a fantasy space in which they strangely father themselves. The inverted logic o f B l o o d Meridian is explored throughout this essay as it intertwines with the silence of children, with their shadowy presence, and with their distinct modes of characterization. The dynamics of children, fathers and violence again intersect as they form other, related inversions in There Will Be Blood. Overall, as Anderson's film clearly echoes McCarthy's obsessions in the novel, these texts resonate with and clarify a larger cultural fascination with children who are wrapped in violent narratives.