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Omission is an extremely important part of style. Often what is said is actually less important than what is left unsaid, sometimes referred to as the subtext. Hence the critical importance of the oft-repeated advice to "read between the lines." One particularly brilliant use of this stylistic device occurs in F. Scott's Fitzgerald description of Gatsby ...

I interpret the sentence as meaning, “the Apaches are so frightening that they would give even a watermelon a feeling of intense fear.” Elrod’s grin and the man’s reaction suggest that the sentence is meant sarcastically. The watermelon has long been a stereotypical crop of the Southern United States, and the phrase “pure fit” (meaning “intense feeling or ...

I know this question is old, but... Yes, the businessmen who hired Chigurh also hired other hitmen to track Moss down. Chigurh finds this insulting and infuriating and it's one of the reasons he goes back and kills the businessman in the high rise (the other reason was because that guy had hired Wells to kill Chigurh). But to answer your question directly: ...

More than likely the tool the man was using was a post hole digger. I'm speculating but I've used one and I can't think of what else it could be. He was probably digging post holes for a fence. When you strike rock with the blades of the digger it creates a spark. Barbed wire fencing fundamentally changed and tamed the "wild west" and the North American ...

Rereading Blood Meridian after about a dozen years and this is something I just thought about the Epilogue: Could the author have meant simply to refer to the spread of the telegraph in the West, a civilizing influence which would make it harder for "Bad Men" like the judge to thrive? We know that he is a creature of mystery and lies, someone that everyone ...

Wallace's answer is definitive, so this answer is merely in way of commentary on the issue. Hidden information is not only a stylistic choice, but a strategic choice Viewed from the standpoint of information theory, meaning is created by an author's choices. In some cases author's want to "spell things out" in an unambiguous way, but great literature ...

I had always taken this to be questioning whether the ears had, in fact, come from live Apache warriors. As in: the "Apaches" in question were so feeble they would only frighten ("give .. a pure fit") a fruit. There is some support for this in a PhD thesis I uncovered: Elrod calls into question the provenance of the kid’s scapula of human ears, ...

I think striking fire from the earth is a reference to nuclear weapons, uranium. McCarthy describes in detail how gun power was made from, things from the earth. He also describes weapons and what they are made from: again, thing from the earth.