What is the meaning of the epilogue in Blood Meridian?

Question

Cormac McCarthy is famously tight-lipped as to his own interpretations of his work. Nevertheless, there are some clear themes in his novel Blood Meridian: human propensity to violence and the efforts of religion and philosophy to make sense of that violence and develop something good in the face of overwhelming bleakness.At least, that was the message I took away up until the end of the book, before reading the one-page epilogue. On the surface the novel is a straightforward narrative of a gang of outlaws in the wild west. The epilogue, however, becomes suddenly esoteric. It described a figure moving across a plain full of holes and using an odd and un-named tool to make fire in the holes.The meaning and purpose of this epilogue appears to have puzzled a large number of readers. Is there any kind of academic or critical consensus on what it might represent?

Answer 1

The fire is progress and innovation, but the motives behind it still push an agenda of control over the earth and control over each other. The line of followers, like lemmings being led off the cliff. The digging of the earth, where the bodies are buried. This is all an allusion to the way violence is never eliminated, but only changing forms.