Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West
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Who is the judge? Who is the kid?
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Lou
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Mar 31, 2011 03:45PM
I'm just curious what other people think the underlying themes are in this book.
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I remember seeing a lecture on this book from a class at Yale. It's on youtube. The professor goes through all the books and themes she feels this book alludes to. Real interesting stuff.EDIT:
Links:
(Part 1)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgyZ4i...
(Part 2)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZFmf4...
Just a note here (I've posted a longish review). The "discussion" format interests me. We had a turbulent discussion at my book club over this novel & I'm interested in conversation, but just now am mostly wondering about the dynamics of this mode (again, vs reviews & comments thereon.)
I watched the videos and quite enjoyed them. I think the prof misses the boat on moral content. Narrative has moral content, it is its nature. I think that moral content is a preoccupation of McCarthy and that he wants to pull discussion of morality into what seems unusual places and is, compared to the view from the ivory tower. Everything McCarthy writes argues for alternative understandings of moralilty. Perhaps the best example is Chigurh, who follows his own moral code with its own odd compass points. He seems so evil because of his disturbing morality and not because he lacks morality.
I think the Judge represents evil and the kid the potential for good. That's a bit of a leap, but in the end, when he's much older, the kid finds the remains of a woman that at first he thinks is alive. He offers to help her in anyway he can before he realizes she's dead. I think the kid reprsents the possibility of being good even in a world that is largely absent of good. That the Judge pays him so much attention throughout the book is the recognition of what the kid is; the antithesis of evil, albeit, only potentially. Despite his participation in attrocious actions in the early part of his life, the kid eventually becomes good.
Daniel wrote: "Is the Judge really the devil?"Cool! I listened to this on iTunes U (which is an amazing resource.) Didn't know there was Youtube coverage.
The Judge is the brute, he exists because evil exists. He also gives us an example of evil to compare the Kid against other than our own moral compass. We understand that the Kid's actions are evil, but is the kid evil? Do his actions make him evil, or is evil inherent? It has been two years since I read Blood Meridian and now I feel the urge to absorb it again.
My favorite of Cormac's books. I don't find that it is necessarily good and evil as much as pure will to exist versus the will to live within the bounds society has set as acceptable.
I've read: The Judge - a Gnostic Archon???????The Kid - a realistic Huck Finn. About as moral as one could be in that time and place. Detached...
The judge is a psychopath and the kid is a kid trying to find his way through life, taking the chances that he is given, not stopping to think about the morals of his actions because, well, he is just a kid and doesn't know better.
At times I've found myself seeing the judge as an embodiment of consumerism.
Humans continue to rape, torture, murder, wage war and destroy their own environment in pursuit of wealth/winning. As long as we are what we are the Judge "will never die".
I don't believe in good vs evil or even absolute good or bad, good and bad are always relative and in a state of flux. I think the judge embodies the very opposite of Taoist philosophy. The way he must control everything, nothing may exist that he is not aware of, the natural world and the world of men is to be manipulated for his benefit and amusement. The kid is consistent with philosophical taoism, he flows with the forces that he is exposed to and he does conform to his own sense of right and wrong although these do not conform to accepted moral standards.
I've gathered from his work that McCarthy believes existence itself of a dark and harsh nature. Things like violence and war aren't a part of life, but the stuff of its very being. What's interesting about McCarthy's work compared to others is that his VILLAINS extol the writer's beliefs rather than the heroes. The heroes are simple men caught up in something bigger than themselves and their minds' capacities.The Judge becomes increasingly phantasmal as the novel wears on. In the end, it seemed clear to me he doesn't actually exist as a physical entity. He is certainly the personification of SOMETHING. What that is is up to debate. You can find many interpretations on the Internet.
The simplest way I can put my opinion is that Holden represents the base will that drives every man individually to have dominion over all other things, beast, stone, and every other human alike. In McCarthy's world, everything-- every insect, every tree--is essentially constantly at war to exist. Nature itself is cruel and totally uncaring of anything's fate. It is in every being to not only fight the dying of his own light but further do everything possible to ensure its security. This is the origin of Judge Holden.
To put it bluntly, The Kid is by nature a pedophilic child-killer. But he is regretful of these grave sins, and that is what the Judge speaks of when he says that he alone was the deceitful one of the group. The others had fully embraced their natural wills and lived by them, through and through doing what they wanted, when they wanted. But for some reason, not the Kid. Perhaps due to the extremity of what his nature wanted.
In the years after his adventures with the gang, The Kid had managed to fight off his dark cravings, but always knowing they (The Judge) would return. In the end, the "Judge" magically reappears and embraces The Kid in celebration of him giving into the will of his nature, raping and murdering the missing girl from the saloon in the toilets out back.
What a happy ending, aye? 0.0
Thanks so much for these links Carlos, very helpful indeed! I never would have thought to look for this kind of thing i.e. lectures on you-tube.Cheers
Carlos wrote: "I remember seeing a lecture on this book from a class at Yale. It's on youtube. The professor goes through all the books and themes she feels this book alludes to. Real interesting stuff.
EDIT:
Li..."
Judge: "Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent."
See, I don't know that any character from any of McCarthy's books is meant to represent his views. I've seen some people say this about the Sheriff in No Country for Old Men, and I simply disagree. McCarthy obviously possesses a certain amount of interesting and esoteric beliefs (that violence is an inherent part of existence, and we shouldn't try to avoid it), but I don't think he spends his books moralizing about them at length. In my opinion, the surface-level takeaway of Blood Meridian is, simply, the inherent evilness of all humans, to in some way give in to our most violent urges and fantasies. But that's only one possible way to take in what are clearly complex thoughts on violence, masculinity, the nature of existence (is the universe friendly?) and how we view ourselves.In my opinion, within in the book little separates the Kid and the Judge. Both commit the same heinous acts, slaughtering the apaches in their tents, trapping the trade caravan at the ford, and scalping countless innocent Indians. What separates them is we never hear the Kid's rationalizations, never are told by him why he does what he does. He, simply, does, as far as I remember. The Judge, on the other hand, is all rationalization and ideology. He explains himself at length, discoursing at length about man and violence and the ultimate quality of experience. And it is precisely these beliefs that make him more terrifying, that make his actions more disgusting, than any of the other characters. So maybe actions aren't the issue, because we (as implied by the characters) all act pretty much the same, killing and stealing and pulling each other to pieces. It is our justifications that are the really evil things.
The Judge just struck me as a representation of the never ending circle of life and death: death feeds on life, and sometimes life feeds on death -- like Kali in Hinduism who destroys things so that they can be rebuilt. Destruction and War have to exist for peace to exist. Otherwise you wouldn't know the difference. One can't exist without the other. And with that being said, death, chaos, destruction, will never die. But so too will the other sides of that will never die either. In the end, the Judge killed the kid (man) in the bathroom probably because he could. But it's all extremely hard to tell for sure what happened since all you see is the Judge wrapping his arms around the kid, then two men open the door. But the Judge dances on and says he'll never die. Think about it: death Can't die, because anything living eventually dies.
But why would McCarthy wrap up his whole book with this kind of elementary principle? I don't know. Maybe it's how he really sees the world. Chigurh seems to go on living. The bad guys in Outer Dark never seem to pay for their murderers. And life is, in a way, like that sometimes. Bad people don't always pay for their crimes like in the movies or television.
This is kind of rant, but to close, the judge isn't really a person. He's more a supernatural force of nature. Purely evil and indifferent. But, like Chigurh, does have principles.
And kid just seems to be someone trying to survive and is taken under the wings of dragons (the scalpers). And what choice did he have. Seems to me, back then, you'd want to sail your boat to the closest dock in a storm. But the kid isn't a one note characters, he saw everything and had to decide for himself if things were right or not. Yet, he wasn't blameless just because he was an orphan. He killed just like the rest. So he had to pay in some way. I guess the Judge represented some kind of long-overdue payback to him. In closing, while I liked the book, I grew a little tired of the Judge's cryptic dialogue and the in-your-face violence of the book kind of grossed me out after a while. I actually had to take a break from the book because of it. I don't know. It was beautifully written and certainly a book to ponder. But it wasn't my favorite. Enjoyed The Road and No Country much more. Working on All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing now. Cheers!
Hey Chris your observation about the judge being like Kali is very interesting and it's not a connection I've heard drawn before. I've read the gnostic theory etc and haven't been much convinced but I reckon you are on to something with Kali. I'm always a bit suspicious of trying to read too much into a writers metaphors, symbolism etc but I do like this one of yours.
Dougal wrote: "Hey Chris your observation about the judge being like Kali is very interesting and it's not a connection I've heard drawn before. I've read the gnostic theory etc and haven't been much convinced bu..."Thanks Dougal. Something about his dancing at the end, and how he's very tall and almost giant like -- it reminded me of a picture of a statue Shiva (which I think is rather famous) in my Intro to Asian Religions class. And it seemed that The Judge thrived off death and destruction. I don't know. I may be way off. I'd love to just sit down with Cormac, you know? LOL There's A LOT going on in that book. The ending is just so incredibly haunting. Gave me shivers. Working on All The Pretty Horses now. ttyl friend
And your Taoist interpretation was very interesting too. I'd never considered that, though we did touch upon Taoism in that class, too. Man, that's going back like 7 yrs. Ha!
There's little doubt to me that the intended implication of the ending is that the kid/man finds the lost girl in the jack, and embraces the judge by closing the door behind him and locking it.The kid/man is the one relieving himself outside the jack afterwards. He doesn't look up, and thus matter-of-factly, tells the other two men they shouldn't go in there. The first man who does go in, reacts with horror and, even though he needs to relieve himself, immediately goes back to the bar. The guy pissing in the mud, though, apparently wasn't feeling that sort of urgency to report the calamity. He was just pissing. After he's done, he "latches himself up and buttons up his trousers". By comparison, the kid/man, after the dwarf whore incident, buckled his belt and buttoned up his trousers. These details are important. McCarthy wouldn't write by accident. McCarthy further highlights the pissing man by saying that one of the other two men watched him leave. There was something about that guy.
In the conversation between the Judge and the kid/man in the bar before the incident in the jack, the Judge explains in great detail that something important is about to happen, and it's not necessarily the product of any intentional action of any participant - in fact they'd not choose it if given an objective choice. But the judge plies the kid/man with alcohol throughout the conversation, to prepare him to make a choice in the heat of the moment to come.
The kid/man isn't even the one who shot the bear. The fact that the grieving girl was in the jack when the kid/man entered was of nobody's planning. But it presented the kid/man with a choice. And his choice embraced the Judge (evil).
The man pissing in the mud, who was apparently unphased by the incident in the jack, walks back to the bar, and then we see the judge dancing there. With his inexplicably small feet. (Earlier in the novel, we were told he had small hands, too.) Very strange for a 7' behemoth. The judge lived in every member of Glanton's gang, as made clear by the fact that he met all of them before they joined the gang. His physical features were those of a massive clean slate. But the protagonist gave some of his physical features to The Judge, as a blurring of the outline of who or what the Judge actually was.
When the Judge first met the kid, he projects the grave sin of pedophilia onto an innocent preacher, and the evil and social rejection of that sin is made clear by the reaction of the congregation. Thus establishing that the kid must fight against his nature. The Judge (the devil) knew what was in the kid's heart, and showed it to him, in the first chapter of the novel.
It is pretty clear what the ending in the jack meant.
Carlos wrote: "I remember seeing a lecture on this book from a class at Yale. It's on youtube. The professor goes through all the books and themes she feels this book alludes to. Real interesting stuff.EDIT:
Link..."
The last five or so minutes of the second lecture is a thinly disguised sneer at McCarthy. The professor makes it clear that she finds McCarthy pretentious and she absolutely hates that some important scholars accept his pretensions.
But then, in the '92 interview she referenced, McCarthy does say one interesting thing that she didn't reference but surely noticed. That teaching writing was a hustle.
One thing I believe the professor is categorically wrong about is her notion that the novel was devoid of moral lines. There was one moral line if one accepts my explanation of the incident in the jack. (Which I believe is obviously the intent of the author.) It's that the violation of children is prohibited by any civilized thought. Unequivocally. He shows it in the first chapter, with the reaction of the congregation against reverend Greene. He admits that in certain circumstances of isolated blood-thirstiness, even it can be abandoned, in the middle of the book when he describes the atrocities of the Glanton gang. And he re-establishes it at the very end, when the protagonist engages in it only at the provocation of a supernatural entity of evil. And when it is seen by what passes for civilization, the random two guys at the jack, it horrifies them. Every time violence against children is countenanced directly by random people, it is rejected unequivocally. To the extent the book has a moral line, that is it. And our window into a world in which that moral line is blurry, is the kid, who has that compulsion within him, and who always tries to fight it.
If it's one thing I like to think about once in a while, Its what I believe the ending was all about. And I'm still undecided. But the most favored theory I have heard (It might be in this forum, I'm not sure) is that what happened in the Jakes is, whatever you want it to be. The most sick, deplorable act you can imagine in your head is what happens. By thinking of a henious act, you have prooven McCarthy correct in the evil nature of man. One thing I noticed in the book that nobody seems to discuss. The story The Judge tells of (bear with me here, I'm very tired and the weekend is about to begin and ontop of that, it has been sometime since I have read it.) a man who was killed by a stranger and drug into the woods and burried. Killed with a shovel I think. Something along thoes lines. Then, when we meet The Man, he encounters a group of young kids (he tells them about his aborigonal ear necklace)and he ends up killing one of them. Or one of them ends up dying some how. But one of the kids said something like "he never did know his father, he was killed and burried in the woods" (something strikingly similar to the story the judge told earlier in the novel.) Perhaps I am over thinking it. Hopefully my comment is readable. I'd love to hear any other interpriation on that end. Also, bear in mind It has been some time since I've read it so I could be completley off the mark with that one.
I'm not sure exactly what The Judge or The Kid actually represent, if anything at all. I certainly don't think that the Judge is symbolic of evil, and the Kid of good. We tend to look for symbols in what we read to better understand them, but I think in this book in particular, the good and evil theme is too simplistic. In fact, I think looking for symbols in what we read often detracts from the reading itself. Not everything is something else, sometimes a derelict, insanely intelligent, morally circumspect character such as the Judge, is just that; not a representation of evil or the devil incarnate.
Hey all,I posted this over at www.cormacmccarthy.com. Thought I'd repost here. I wrote something similar on some other Goodreads discussion maybe two years ago, but I just reread the novel and very much refined my thoughts on the book. Hope someone finds it useful/interesting:
(FYI, all page references are to the Vintage 25th anniversary edition.)
My reading is that the end depicts the kid/man totally surrendering to the judge and becoming fully evil. I believe he resisted the judge for a while but eventually gives in completely. I do not believe that he is killed in the jakes; rather I believe he is the one raping and murdering the little girl who goes missing. I also believe that the judge is indeed supernatural and that he has contrived to bring about the corruption of the kid.
First, why the judge is supernatural:
There are a whole bunch of instances throughout the novel that coyly, playfully hint at the supernatural status of the judge. But by and large one can explain them away if one really wants to. (For instance, maybe his prediction in Chapter 12 of David Brown’s later hanging is a lucky guess or he just running his mouth (168, 323-324).) However: During his and the man’s last conversation, he asks
“Where is yesterday? Where is Glanton and Brown and where is the priest? He leaned closer. Where is Shelby, whom you left to the mercies of Elias in the desert, and where is Tate whom you abandoned in the mountains?” (344)
That gives it away. How does he know that the kid left Shelby alive? Reread the beginning of Chapter 15: The gang ride out before the kid and Tate even decide between them who is to kill Shelby and who the wounded Mexican. The judge certainly couldn’t know whether the kid killed Shelby or not. He couldn’t even know whether the kid was charged with Shelby or the Mexican.
Furthermore: How does the judge know the kid abandoned Tate in the mountains? He knew the kid and Tate were left behind and that Tate never returned to the gang. But he didn’t know that the kid and Tate even went into the mountains. And even if one speculates that Glanton or the judge asked the kid “offscreen” what happened, I can’t imagine him going into all the details. He could just say “Tate deserted.” or some such. It would require far too much supposition for me to imagine an entire scene which we are not shown wherein the kid details to Glanton or the judge the events of Chapter 15.
(Also, note how when he segues between things he should know (Glanton, Brown, Tobin) and things he shouldn’t, he “leaned closer”. To me, that signals that he’s about to reveal something. It makes him even more sinister here.)
So that’s it: As far as I’m concerned, the judge is demonstrably supernatural. He is not human. So then what *is* he? I think that the judge is the incarnation of evil/war. (As unoriginal as that sounds, I do believe it to be so.) I further believe McCarthy intends him to have ontology independent of man. He is not a manifestation of some “dark” aspect of man. He is that which corrupts man. As Peter says in Whales and Men,
“I still had not properly grappled with the problem of what evil was. It appeared to be something primal and monolithic and yet it now seemed it was our own invention. A paradox. We know what happens to the works of man. That we could have come up with something as enduring as evil seemed a bit grand for us.”
Peter goes on to say “Perhaps we were simply that which rendered the expression of evil possible. We were what evil had been waiting for.” Which surely recalls the judge’s “War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.” (259) (This association I crib from Giemza’s “Toward a Catholic Understanding of Cormac McCarthy’s Oeuvre” in the You Would Not Believe What Watches collection.)
Peter also says “the one thing that characterized all evil everywhere was the refusal to acknowledge it. The eagerness to call it something else.” Which recalls Toadvine, Tobin, and the kid watching the judge and the idiot approach the wells in Chapter 20: “[E]ven though there was no longer any question as to what it was that approached yet none would name it.” (294)
And we also have in Whales and Men: “Was evil the grand gestalt that could not be divided back into its origins?” Which clearly recalls the kid’s dream: “Whatever [the judge’s] antecedents he was something wholly other than their sum, nor was there system by which to divide him back into his origins for he would not go.” (322)
Given that the judge is supernatural and given these lines, I’m inclined to see him as the embodiment of evil/war. I do not think he is the manifestation of a dark aspect of man. I think he exists independent of man. And his goal is to corrupt man. (Why this is so I know not. Although the idea of not being able to divide the judge into his origins certainly recalls the doctrine of divine simplicity to me. I imagine this may well support those who read BM through an explicitly Gnostic lens.)
Now, getting back to the ending: First, in Chapter 23, the man is on his way to Fort Griffin from the beginning. The buffalo hunter he meets mentions having “pulled out from Griffin for a last hunt” two years ago (330). Does this plant a seed in the man’s head? Is it simply there to prime the reader for the eventual trip to Fort Griffin? I’m unsure. But then the man meets Elrod and the other bonepickers, and one of the boys asks him “Are you headed twards Griffin?”, to which he responds “I am” (332). They talk about how Griffin is “full of whores”, and one says that “It’s set up to be the biggest town for sin in all Texas”, to which another responds “It’s as lively a place for murders as you’d care to visit.”
The point is that a) Fort Griffin is a horrible, evil place, a ninth circle of sorts, and b) the man is headed there *before* he has any trouble with Elrod. I had long believed that he killing Elrod is what triggers the judge to come back into his life or what sends him to the judge. That is just not true. He’s headed towards the “biggest town for sin in all Texas” before any of that goes down. And then when he gets there, just before he enters The Beehive, he “looked back a last time at the street and at the random windowlights let into the darkness and at the last pale light in the west and the low dark hills around. Then he pushed open the door and entered.” (337) He looked back a last time? The last pale light in the west? He running into the judge isn’t accidental; he knows who’s in there.
Next, I think that much of the ending can be understood by considering the idiot: I discussed at http://www.cormacmccarthy.com/topic/t... (see the seventh post) how fire is used in BM and elsewhere in McCarthy’s corpus as a symbol of something divine/good inherent in people, perhaps God, Jesus “as that gold at the bottom of the mine” as Black mentions in The Sunset Limited. And I discussed at http://www.cormacmccarthy.com/topic/t... (see the ninth post) how the idiot is constantly fixated on fire and on his reflection, both symbols of goodness/self-awareness. And he is prevented from reaching either by the judge.
When the man enters the jakes at the very end of the novel, the judge “gathered him in his arms” (347), which recalls how the judge “saves” the idiot, i.e., prevents him from searching for his reflection: In doing so, “he gathered the naked and sobbing fool into his arms” (270). And in the very next paragraph, the scene cuts back to inside the bar, where “[a]ll the candles had gone out save one and it guttered uneasily in its grease like a votive lamp.” This sounds to me like the man’s fire, his “divine spark”, so to speak, being snuffed out.
Then there’s reflections: When the kid and Tobin leave the judge in Chapter 20 and get to Carrizo Creek, they are ambushed by the judge: “When the kid raised his dripping head from the water a rifleball dished his reflection from the pool and the *echoes* of the shot clattered about the bonestrewn slopes and clanged away in the desert and died.” [emphasis mine] (300) As when the idiot goes looking for his reflection in the Colorado River (see the second thread linked to above), we have a connection between a reflection and an echo, recalling both the myth of Narcissus and Echo as well as the very first chapter of Moby-Dick. It is important that the judge doesn’t shoot the kid (surely he could have if he wanted to) but shoots the kid’s *reflection*. And then when the man gets to The Beehive at the end, he gets a drink and notices a “mirror along the backbar but it held only smoke and phantoms.” (338-339) (And reflections/doubles are important and recur throughout McCarthy, from the “othersuttree” in Suttree to “[t]he candleflame and the image of the candleflame” that opens ATPH to Lester seeing the boy in the bus at the end of CoG, inter alia.)
(Also, note how when the judge pulls the idiot out of the river, he “carried it up into the camp and restored it among its fellows” (270), intimating that the same thing is being done to the rest of the gang, in particular to the kid.)
So: I interpret the judge’s hug as a welcoming, the antichrist analogue of the prodigal son returning. Perhaps simply the judge engulfing the man. Just as the judge was able to prevent the idiot from searching for his reflection, just as the idiot is always kept an “exile from men’s fires” (322), with his “dull eyes falsely brightened by the fire” (263), his “dead black eyes” (269) constantly searching for that thing of men which fire does contains within it “inasmuch as they are less without it and are divided from their origins and are exiles” (255), the man is likewise kept in the darkness. The judge shoots his reflection and at the last he has no reflection. And when the “last of the true” (340) goes into the jakes that last candle is going out. Consider what the judge says to the kid/man in Chapter 22: “It’s not for the world’s ears but for yours only… Dont you know that I’d have loved you like a son?… I spoke in the desert for you and you only and you turned a deaf ear to me” (319), and in Chapter 23: “I recognized you when I first saw you and yet you were a disappointment to me. Then and now. Even so at the last I find you here with me.” (341) Obviously there’s a question of whether to trust what the judge says. And I’m usually extremely distrustful of him. But here I half-believe him. I don’t know that he would have loved the kid like a son, but I definitely believe that the judge has some desire to have the kid turn totally depraved.
(Ran out of room... Continued on next post.)
A natural question that arises is Why does McCarthy choose to not show us inside the “jakes and what was encountered there” (329)? Surely this cannot be without meaning. My explanation comes from considering the structure of the novel as a whole. (This is a lot easier to see if you have a copy of BM on Kindle. Search the word “kid” and see what comes up. If you search on a Kindle for Android app, the search results are separated by chapter, and that makes what I’m about to say even easier to follow.) Look at how the kid disappears from the narrative in the middle. Specifically, he disappears when he is conjoined with the rest of the gang. He’s clearly the focal point of the narrative for the first six chapters. Starting in Chapter 7, we pretty much stop following him:In Chapter 7, he’s mentioned only twice in passing (90, 104) and is only “in focus” when it’s his turn to pick the Tarot card (98-99).
In Chapter 8, the kid is mentioned several times at the cantina in Janos (106-108) and again when the judge asks Toadvine about the veteran/Grannyrat/Chambers (110). But he does not speak in this chapter, nor does he do anything of importance.
In Chapter 9, the kid is mentioned in passing twice in the beginning, once before the Apache ambush (114) and once during (115), but again he neither speaks nor does anything of note.
Chapter 10 sees him return a bit to the fore, as his conversation with Tobin prompts the story of “[h]ow came the learned man” (128).
He’s never once mentioned in Chapter 11.
In Chapter 12, he is mentioned once during the slaughter of the Gilenos, when it seems that he is about to help McGill, but he is shouted down by Glanton who subsequently kills McGill (163-164). The kid is focal once again when he helps remove the arrow from David Brown’s leg (168-169).
In Chapter 13, he is mentioned in passing a few times, once at the banquet in Chihuahua City (176), once (notably) just before the massacre of the Tiguas (181), and twice at the cantina in Nacori (185, 187).
In Chapter 14 he is mentioned in passing exactly once, shortly after the battle at Santa Maria (204).
He is back to being the main character in Chapter 15, when he is separated from the gang. (I see this as very important.)
He is completely absent from Chapter 16, and he is mentioned in passing exactly once in Chapter 17 (254), once in Chapter 18 (268), and once in Chapter 19 (274).
Then, starting in Chapter 20, he’s back to being the main character for the rest of the book.
To recap: During Chapters 7-19, the main character of the novel only acts as such 1) when he’s selecting his Tarot card, 2) when he’s helping David Brown, and 3) when he’s separated from the gang in Chapter 15. And I suspect this is important: Consider what the narrator says of the gang in Chapter 12: “[A]lthough each man among them was discrete unto himself, conjoined they made a thing that had not been before and in that communal soul were wastes hardly reckonable more than those whited regions on old maps where monsters do live and where there is nothing other of the known world save conjectural winds.” (158) Their individual identities are subsumed by the gang. For me, this is why we’re not shown what happens at the end of the novel: When the kid is with the gang, we don’t see what he’s doing. At the end, he has rejoined the gang (i.e., the judge), which is why we lose sight of him.
Alternatively, it may be that we lose sight of him because to show what happens would be to give away the game. Given how coy McCarthy is regarding the judge being supernatural, given how subtle he is with showing how much control the judge has over various events of the novel (more on this in a moment), it surely seems important that the judge operate under cloak of night. Perhaps the judge is most powerful when people do not realize he is acting? Perhaps one of McCarthy’s goals is to depict precisely this? If at the end we were to see exactly what happens in the jakes, we would know that the judge had dominated him. Granted, this hypothesis is fully unfalsifiable (Karl Popper would have a field day here), but it’s still possible/interesting.
So if you’re willing to buy that the judge is supernatural, that he has (for some reason) an investment in bringing about the utter degeneration of the kid/man, what exactly is happening at the end? I aver that the man’s “initiation” fully into the dark side is the rape and murder of the little girl who goes missing: First, just the fact that the little girl has gone missing is troubling, given that several children go missing/wind up killed in the wake of the gang.
Before I go on, an aside: I am definitely of the mind that the judge is in control of just about every event in the novel. Who hits the kid with the “huge shillelagh” (10)? Who knows? But it needed to happen to prevent one of the kid, Toadvine from killing the other. Why do the Mexican soldiers arrest the kid in Chapter 5 (72)? I imagine it is ostensibly because he’s a filibuster, but Captain White’s men didn’t even have uniforms: “Among their clothes there was small agreement and among their hats less.” (46) So how do they even know who he is? And he’s been wandering all over Mexico with Sproule and is presumably quite far from wherever the handful of survivors of the Comanche slaughter ended up. Why do the soldiers arrest him in San Diego, without “even ask[ing] him his name” (317)? How in God’s name does the kid end up in the exact same prison cell with Toadvine (77), a total stranger whom he fought some months before in a city over 700 miles away? (Yes, that is the distance between Nacogdoches and Chihuahua City.) Note how the judge runs the Tarot scene (95-101). How he controls the “lottery” (213, 214). How he performs his “coin trick” (252, 256-257), during which he says “The arc of circling bodies is determined by the length of their tether… Moons, coins, men.” I do indeed see the hand of the judge in all things. The one thing he is not in control of is man’s free will: As John Western writes at the end of Whales and Men, “Choice is everywhere and destiny is only a word we give to history. To that which is accomplished and done with.” But he can try to get man to never realize his free will. To the extent he is able to do so, he even controls men.
Back on track: Then we have the dwarf whore: Note how she picks *him* out. Perhaps the judge sends the dwarf whore to the man to trigger this idea of sex with a child? Then it seems that the man cannot get it up: “You need to get down there and get you a drink, she said. You’ll be all right.” (346) It’s almost too repulsive to think of, but is it that he wants the “real thing”?
Also, notice how McCarthy describes how, leaving the whore’s room, the man “stood and pulled his trousers up and buttoned them and buckled his belt.” (346) And then, just before the bystander opens the door of the jakes, “[t]he man who was relieving himself… hitched himself up and buttoned his trousers and stepped past them” (347-348). The same detail of buttoning the trousers? I dunno. I realize that’s inconclusive, but that strikes me as a connection we’re supposed to make. Especially since it is “*the man* who was relieving himself”. One little comma, even tacit, changes the reading of that fully.
Finally: One part of the judge’s final speech that’s driven me mad over the years is:
“This is an orchestration for an event… The overture carries certain marks of decisiveness. It includes the slaying of a large bear. The evening’s progress will not appear strange or unusual even to those who question the rightness of the events so ordered.” (342)
Think again about the hand of the judge in all things. What if the bear were not slain? How could the little girl go missing? The shooting of the bear is what *allows* the girl to go missing. It truly is an “overture” for an event.
In all fairness, there are a few problems with my reading:
1) There’s the chapter heading “Sie mussen schlafen aber Ich muss tanzen” (329), or “You must sleep but I must dance”. I think that the most “obvious” interpretation of this is that it is written from the point of view of the judge and is saying that the man is going to die while the judge goes to dance.
My counterargument to this is perhaps tenuous, but I find it interesting nonetheless. Over the course of McCarthy’s oeuvre, so many of his works either begin or end with someone going to sleep or waking up: Outer Dark begins with Culla in a dream. The Border Trilogy ends with Billy going to sleep. No Country ends with Sheriff Bell recounting his dreams. “And then I woke up.” The Road begins with the father coming out of a dream. The first words of The Counselor are “Are you asleep? // Yes.” And in just about every book, dreams are a very, very notable, important aspect. And there’s a fair case to be made that, in McCarthy, when people are “asleep”, it’s a spiritual sleep. They are blind to any kind of goodness in the world or in themselves. They’re living chained in Plato’s cave. And so I would argue that’s what’s up with the chapter heading: The man is “going to sleep”, he is going completely over to the dark side.
(Although, I have a German friend who tells me it may be more appropriate to translate this as “They must sleep…”, because that “You” is a formal you. Presumably the judge would not address the man as one would a superior. Perhaps then it is the judge’s worker bees in The Beehive who are sleeping? I would certainly believe they are in such a spiritual sleep.)
2) Consider who survives the Yuma massacre: Besides the idiot and the judge, it’s Toadvine, the kid, David Brown, and Tobin. All people who’ve had animosity with the judge. So perhaps people die once they’ve fully given in to the judge? So if the man is fully giving in to the judge at the end of Chapter 23, doesn’t it make sense that he would die? That’s he’s not the man pissing outside the jakes? Ehhh… Maybe. I’ve been rather sympathetic to that viewpoint at times, but I think that a character has to *do something* to give in to the judge, not just do it mentally. Presumably this would be the man raping the little girl. So maybe he’s not long for this world afterwards? Also, the judge never kills anyone in the gang, so this would be a strange first.
3) The end scene totally has a Totentanz/Danse Macabre aspect going on. And in fact, in earlier drafts of BM, this is explicit: The judge’s “[C]an you guess who that might be?” (345) was once “Do you know who I am? I am the one who makes the dead to dance.” (Unfortunately I do not recall my source for this. I read it long ago somewhere and remembered it, but cannot remember where I read it. I feel like it was in a short biography of McCarthy written by Rick Wallach, but I cannot find that online any longer.) But whose death is it that they are dancing for? Wouldn’t it be the man’s? Perhaps. I would say it’s the little girl’s.
4) As discussed at http://www.cormacmccarthy.com/topic/t..., fire is not *always* good in BM. It is sometimes destructive, sometimes deceptive, and once linked with the judge. If I am wrong in my impression of what fire denotes, much of what I’ve written above may come crashing down.
(Slightly more in the next post.)
Finally, I feel I should mention two other interpretations of the ending I’ve had over the years. I no longer put much stock in them, but they’re interesting, and who knows, maybe someone else will see them and find them useful. They are by and large attempts to understand why we do not see what’s inside the jakes:1) Consider all the judge’s talk re “the witness”: his speech to black Jackson about Sergeant Aguilar (89), his riposte to Tobin after the gang discover “[t]he slain argonauts” (157, 159), and his speech in The Beehive at the end (344). He says that “the very nature of the witness” is “no third thing but rather the prime, for what could be said to occur unobserved?” (159) The judge, with his speechifying, lies, and destruction of artifacts, wishes to replace reality with his vision of it. He argues that reality isn’t real until someone witnesses it, and he manipulates what people witness. Thus, if we do not witness what happens in the jakes, how can we say what really happened? How can we say that anything happened? I have largely moved away from this interpretation because it essentially makes the whole novel the judge’s. There was a time when I seriously wondered if McCarthy was completely insane and was speaking through the judge, and I wondered if the novel was being secretly narrated by the judge and the end was reinforcing his point about “the witness”. I no longer believe that is the case, for various reasons most of which are outlined above.
2) It is well-known that McCarthy is a science buff. Knowing this, I have speculated that the shutting of the door of the jakes at the end makes the outhouse a Schrodinger box. Note how the judge is linked to elements of chance throughout the book: When the kid chooses his Tarot card in Chapter 7, “[t]he judge was laughing silently.” (99) When the kid partakes in the “lottery” in Chapter 15, he “selected among the shafts to draw one [and] he saw the judge watching him and he paused… He let go the arrow he’d chosen and sorted out another and drew that one. It carried the red tassel.” (213, 214) He performs his “coin trick” (252, 256-257), and coins are commonly linked to fate/destiny in McCarthy: the kid’s dream, the “cara y cruz” parable in ATPH, and Chigurh in No Country. I imagine the judge has control over chance events, that this is one way he manipulates people into doing what he wants. This may well explain what the narrator says after the Tarot scene (a notable “chance” event in the novel), how
“the ragged flames fled down the wind as if sucked by some maelstrom out there in the void, some vortex in that waste apposite to which man’s transit and his reckonings alike lay abrogate. As if beyond will or fate he and his beasts and his trappings moved both in card and in substance under consignment to some third and other destiny.” (101)
If man does not move according to his own will or to fate but to some “third and other destiny”, what is that other thing? Given that the judge controls chance events to manipulate people, it may well be the judge. And if he controls chance events and is fixated on the idea of the witness, this only brings to mind Schrodinger’s cat. What happens in the box (i.e., the jakes)? Until someone witnesses it, all outcomes are not only possible, but *extant*. Again, while I think this is a clever idea, ultimately it leaves me dissatisfied because it means the judge is right, that indeed, the witness does create reality. And I believe there’s a stronger case to be made that McCarthy is writing against the judge in BM.
Anyone who read all that deserves a medal.
Ed, I got the the part where you mention "At the end of the Border Triology.." working on the triology right now, don't want to get spoiled. But thus far, it was a great read from what I was able to read. Can I ask where you got a copy of Whales and Men?
Colonel,Depending on how stringent your definition of "spoiler" is, I don't think I'd consider what I wrote a spoiler. It's tantamount to saying that at the end of BM, the judge dances. It really doesn't say anything about the plot of the trilogy. But if you really wanna be cautious, understood. You made it damn far, though. Thanks.
As for Whales and Men: I'm sorry to disappoint. There does not seem to be any copy of Whales and Men circulating the internet. The only copy I'm aware of is at the McCarthy archives in San Marcos, TX. I can, however, recommend two good essays for getting some understanding of it: One is "Cormac McCarthy's Whales and Men" by Edwin T. Arnold in the Cormac McCarthy: Uncharted Territories/Territoires Inconnus collection. The other (ignore the name, it's excellent on Whales and Men) is "Toward a Catholic Understanding of Cormac McCarthy's Oeuvre" by Bryan Giemza in the You Would Not Believe What Watches collection.
These may be hard to come by themselves: Both books are out of print, and used copies (if you can find them) are quite expensive. You may have some luck on Google Books. Or maybe see if a nearby library can get them in from elsewhere.
Sorry I couldn't help more.
Agreed with most of your conclusions, Ed, including what are to me the most important two. That the Judge is supernatural, and that the man finds the lost girl in the jakes, and what happened in there afterwards is horrifying to witnesses. A careful reading really supports no other conclusion IMO.
That's alright, I appreciate your response. I'll look into thoes. But you have me convinced, I'll continue reading your post then if its not really a spoiler!
Carlos wrote: Links:(Part 1)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgyZ4i...
(Part 2)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZFmf4...
Thanks for these, Carlos. I've been thinking about listening to my audiobook of Blood Meridian (my papercopy is in another country (for old men)), but I'll certainly give them a watch before I start in on it.
Robert wrote: "...Both commit the same heinous acts, slaughtering the apaches in their tents, trapping the trade caravan at the ford, and scalping countless innocent Indians. What separates them is we never hear the Kid's rationalizations, never are told by him why he does what he does. He, simply, does, as far as I remember. The Judge, on the other hand, is all rationalization and ideology. He explains himself at length, discoursing at length about man and violence and the ultimate quality of experience. And it is precisely these beliefs that make him more terrifying, that make his actions more disgusting, than any of the other characters..."
This strikes me as an important distinction.
Hi Mort,Thanks for the vote of confidence. To be honest, I had seen your post on here a ways back and started writing in support of what *you* had written. And I kept writing and writing... And before you know it I had what I wrote above. Perhaps I should've given you an acknowledgement lol. Well, here it is. Your post is definitely what catalyzed mine. And then it just went off the rails.
And I agree: For the longest time I was convinced the man gets killed out there. But there were just too many pieces that didn't fit. And honestly, the clincher for me is my reading of the bear getting shot. The bear gets killed *so that* the little girl can go missing. And that's what the judge means, it's an "overture" for an event that "includes the slaying of a large bear". After I noticed that, I could see the end no other way.
And Colonel,
Yeah, to the best of my knowledge I have no real spoilers in my post except on the end of BM. But you make a good point: On Goodreads, where there're liable to be people who've not read all his stuff, I should keep it in mind to put up spoiler alerts if need be on future posts. Thanks.
You're welcome Ed and that's quite alright, no acknowledgement necessary. The ideas certainly weren't original to me. It's just surprising to me that the majority opinion still seems to be that the Judge kills the man in the jack. The Yale professor from the lecture above in fact only cites that interpretation and doesn't seem inclined to think about it any further than that.
Ed, that was a really interesting read. I don't need the medal, keep it for writing it.Ed wrote: [The Judge] argues that reality isn’t real until someone witnesses it, and he manipulates what people witness. Thus, if we do not witness what happens in the jakes, how can we say what really happened?
I know you say you don't like to consider the novel as being "the Judge's", but I consider this to be a very interesting point. This discussion has me very hungry to reread, but since I've been stalled right in the middle of The Border Trilogy for about a year (and for no good reason, I think it's great) maybe I should finish that before I get stuck into BM again.
Yeah, Mort, I agree. It is a bit strange how little variety there is in the interpretations. And that Yale lecture is quite bad IMO. I remember really cringing when she mentioned the whole "nor was there system by which to divide him back into his origins" as code for some kind of postmodern, this-is-a-riddle-with-no-solution type of reading. It just strikes me as very lazy, at best, or very blinded by personal prejudice, at worst. Very little in the rest of the novel or in McCarthy's work at large reads like that. And then there's the quote from Whales and Men I gave above, which puts that line very much in perspective. I'm an amateur. I'm not a professor. If I can ferret that out, she should have been able to as well. Obviously, there's a question of how seriously to take it, given that it's an unpublished work. But still: It needs to be grappled with on some level.
Hi Andrew: I fully agree. I honestly think that is one of the biggest weaknesses of my reading. That the judge talks so much about "the nature of the witness" and there *is* no witness at the end seems to be a big problem. I tried two different ways of getting around that problem above (one, that the kid disappears when he's "conjoined" with the rest of the gang and two, that to show the ending would give away how the judge operates under cloak of night), but I really imagine there must be a deeper connection than that.I must say, it is virtually impossible for me to view the novel as "the judge's". Those Whales and Men quotes I gave above just shatter that for me. There are a few other things that I wrote about on other posts at cormacmccarthy.com that reinforce the idea that the narrator truly is opposed to the judge. I'm just gonna copy-past them below, in case you're interested:
1) Most important for me is the burning tree in Chapter 15: There are the dual Exodus references, with the burning bush and the pillar of smoke in the morning. Then there’s the “precarious truce” among the various animals, as if the fire nullifies or at least suppresses the mutual antagonism among them. Then when the kid sleeps, lightning strikes the ground all about him, and he is kept safe (224-225). And also, as I posted at http://www.cormacmccarthy.com/topic/b... (see the fourth and fifth posts), unless McCarthy accidentally left a very bizarre coincidence in the book, the burning tree scene takes place on Christmas morning.
2) The narrator seems extremely particular about when the word “God” is capitalized. Usually when the judge says it, it is not. (Like “War is god.” (261) A notable exception is in Chapter 20 when the judge says "Yonder son is like the eye of God" (296). During this scene, the sun is doing the judge harm: He’s naked and burnt and wearing that ridiculous “little mud cap” against the sun. He “laved water over his burnt and peeling skull… His mouth was cracked and his tongue swollen.” (294-295)) Whenever there is mention of the gods of the Indians, it is not. Anytime “a god” or “some god” is mentioned, it is not. But it is when it is the Christian God. It is when Reverend Green or Captain White or Tobin mentions God. And “Christ” is always capitalized, even if “Christian” is not.
3) The narrator refers to Tobin as “priest”, and not “expriest”, exactly twice in the novel: First is right after the war speech. We have the following passage:
“The judge searched out the circle for disputants. But what says the priest? he said.
Tobin looked up. The priest does not say.
The priest does not say, said the judge. Nihil dicit.” (261-262)
That first “The priest does not say” must be spoken by the narrator, right? It would make no sense a) for the judge to repeat himself here or b) even if he did repeat himself, for the repetition to be split into two separate paragraphs. Furthermore, the relevant chapter heading on pg. 252 is “The priest does not say”. So even if one insists that it is the judge speaking both times, the chapter heading ensures that the narrator does it, too.
Second is at the end of Chapter 20: The judge starts declaiming regarding the slaying of the horses. “Then he spoke of other things”, and we have the following passage:
“The expriest leaned to the kid. Dont listen, he said.
I aint listenin.
Stop your ears.
Stop yours.
The priest cupped his hands over his ears…” (305-306)
Thus, the only two times the narrator calls Tobin “priest” and not “expriest” come when Tobin is refusing to engage the judge. The first time he refuses to respond to the judge (“Nihil dicit”) and the second he refuses to listen to the judge. I see great importance here. It is reminiscent of The Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov: How does Jesus respond to The Grand Inquisitor? He doesn’t. He simply gets up and kisses him. And how does Dostoevsky respond to the arguments in Ivan’s narrative? He doesn’t. He simply segues almost immediately into the Zosima section and lets Zosima’s goodness be the kiss that doesn’t respond to, doesn’t refute, but simply sets aside Ivan’s charges.
Given these, it's really hard for me to imagine the narrator is in league with the judge. My own view is that the narrator and McCarthy are identical. One and the same. The narrator is McCarthy in "artiste" mode. Hence the ellipticity (which trait, btw, is *very* Faulknerian). And I believe that McCarthy is of the mind that we must know evil, stare it in the face if we are to have any hope of avoiding it. And I would say that's why he seems (only "seems") to take such perverse pleasure in showing us all that sick shit. (Obviously this is all speculation. I have no idea what in the world is in McCarthy's head. But it's a plausible rationale for some of the aspects of the novel that may lead one to think it's being narrated by someone else.)
This doesn't, however, explain why we are not shown the ending. If you or anyone else has any thoughts as to how it may fit in with some things I've said above, believe me, I'm all ears.
Andrew-One other thing that I had in mind about why the narrator doesn't show the ending is the following (I don't love this idea, but it's something, at least):
I wonder is if he's making a larger point: Like, "See, I'm not showing you the ending, but clearly *something* has happened." And that would be part and parcel of refuting what the judge says: "[W]hat can be said to occur unobserved?" And this is reasonable to me because of what McCarthy does in other books. ***MILD SPOILER ALERT FOR THE CROSSING*** In The Crossing, e.g., there's a dad whose son crashes his plane in the mountains. And the dad goes looking for it. And it turns out that there are *two* planes crashed right next to one another. And the pilots' bodies are sufficiently decayed and the planes are sufficiently damaged that no one can tell them apart. Well, presumably it's ridiculous to say that *both* are his son or that neither is. Clearly one is and one is not. Our inability to distinguish does not make the world conform to one possibility or the other. And someone says something like "Things separated from their stories have no meaning", or "One could even say that what endows any thing with significance is solely the history in which it has participated. Yet wherein does that history lie?" (I forget who's speaking.) I.e., one of those planes has a history of containing the son. The other does not. And that is sufficient to distinguish them, at least at a metaphysical level. Our inability to tell the difference is irrelevant.
Perhaps there's something like this going on? But again, I'm just spinning my wheels here.
I skipped your reference to The Crossing, as I've not finished it, but regarding the rest..:I think the kid's identity being subsumed into that of the gang, both times you mention, is a rock solid point. However, as for Tobin the ex/priest, I think the first instance is nothing to do with the narrative voice. It's simply Tobin's dialogue responding to the Judge's question, minus any tag (or punctuation, of course. The line could be given as:
The judge searched out the circle for disputants. "But what says the priest?" he said.
Tobin looked up. "The priest does not say."
"The priest does not say," said the judge. "Nihil dicit."
I should say, I agree with you that the text isn't "the Judge's", that he is the adversary and not owner; but that doesn't mean the narrator can't take the adversarial side, have the force of "evil" win out to some extent over he who would otherwise be the hero. I'd say No Country... hints at the same.
Dammit, again I forgot a spoiler alert. Sorry about that. Post edited to include one regarding The Crossing.As for Tobin speaking that line: I suppose what you suggest is possible, but I'm not really sold: First, Tobin never refers to himself in the third person throughout the book, and it sounds rather awkward to my ear to imagine him doing so there. More importantly, he rankles at the judge calling him "priest". The judge calls him "priest" four or five times at the end of the war speech, to which Tobin responds "[I]n truth I was never a priest but only a novitiate to the order." (262) Really hard for me to imagine Tobin referring to himself as "the priest" given that he says that.
And regardless, even if it is Tobin saying it there, surely the chapter heading at the start of Chapter 17 means that the narrator is also calling Tobin a priest there.
As to your last comment: I partly agree and partly disagree. My entire reading of the end is that the judge "wins". So of course the narrator is "hav[ing] the force of 'evil' win out to some extent over he who would otherwise be the hero." I think that's a very important aspect of the book, that the side the narrator is opposed to wins. But: That's very different from the narrator capitulating to the judge, admitting that the judge not only wins but *is right*. And the fact that the narrator doesn't show the ending strikes me as very judge-like: "[W]hat can be said to occur unobserved?" And I'm really trying to understand how this fact fits into my very firm belief that the narrator is opposed to the judge philosophically. That's what I'm really stumped on.
Ed
I don't see how "The priest does not say" can be considered narrative text. For a start, it's in the wrong tense; "The priest did not say", maybe, but then why would McCarthy use two different labels (Tobin/the priest) for the same person in such close proximity? It would read as if T and tp were two people, not the same one (but I think the tense issue makes this irrelevant).
As for the tone of what is said, I'd take it in an almost ironic tone, like someone tired of engaging a provocateur. "Hey, numbnuts, come 'ere!" Tom said for the tenth time.
Bob looked up. "Numbnuts is busy."
Hmm.. That's an interesting point. I still think it's strange for Tobin to refer to himself in the third person. And I don't buy for a second the idea that it's somehow weird or inappropriate for McCarthy to alternate between "Tobin" and "the priest", because he does that throughout the book, alternating between "Tobin" and "the expriest" from one line to the next. But I agree the tense change is very strange. I can't really account for that. So I can at least agree I think your point has merit, even if I still prefer mine.However, you should note that there are a few other points in the novel where McCarthy's narrator lapses into present tense for no apparent reason that I can discern. One is the very opening of the book, up until the kid arrives at Nacogdoches. Two is the very end of the book, back inside the bar when the judge is dancing. Three is the very end of Chapter 3, when the kid and two of Captain White's men meet the Mennonite in the bar. There may be one more I'm forgetting. So maybe there's something like this going on? Maybe also McCarthy is commenting broadly that to be a holy man, not just in the scene after the war speech but in general, in the present in our own lives, one must refuse to engage evil? That's tenuous of course.
Also, there's still the chapter heading. I can only read that as the narrator. (The tense change argument holds no water here, since the chapter headings are frequently in the present. See "Runs away" and "Is shot" in Chapter 1, for instance.) And the main point I was making is that, to the narrator, Tobin is acting is as a man of God at only two points in the novel, and they both come when Tobin refuses to engage the judge. I think that is quite telling.
Debating minutia - that's what the internet is for, right?
Ha, my thoughts exactly. Although, it was nice to learn about the tense change. Never noticed that before. And this is definitely a book that revels in minutiae.Cheers, dude,
Ed
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