/lit/ - Literature

>>15114712
So the Judge, the only man that can't be scalped in a world full of scalpers, is Satan or some god of war, right? Cannot die, never sleeps, doesn't get old, has no clear origin, considers the blood spent in battle sacred, everyone knows him and he's everyone's favorite, the only one worthy of dancing on the stage.

>"He never sleeps, he says. He says he’ll never die. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die."

>"Whoever would seek out his history through what unraveling of loins and ledgerbooks must stand at last darkened and dumb at the shore of a void without terminus or origin and whatever science he might bring to bear upon the dusty primal matter blowing down out of the millennia will discover no trace of ultimate atavistic egg by which to reckon his commencing."

Maybe the Judge is Death. The sentence "Et in Arcadia Ego" on his rifle, after all, is traditionally intended as pronounced by Death itself, and can be translated with "Death is omnipresent in time and space".

Or is the Judge the personification of War? Violence made sentient flesh?
Is this why he's called the Judge? Because, as he says, war is the only activity that can truly test and expose the real worth of men? Is this why he can seemingly speak every human language and is an expert in every science, because, as he says, "war comprises every science", and because every man practices war regardless of country or language?
Is this why his violence is seemingly so insensate, at times (the lynched preacher in the beginning, the pups bought and immediately drowned), and why he kills, tortures and rapes without pause and without needing a specific reason? Because war is exactly as relentless and as senselessly cruel, as unapologetically depraved?

This would make sense: everyone in that bloody era and in that specific place (the border between three hostile cultures: mexicans, americans and apaches) rode with War every minute of every day, metaphorically. McCarthy just made it literal. This would explain why The Kid was left unnamed and why when he got older he simply became The Man: he represents every man. Man just can't get rid of Violence regardless of where he wanders and how old he gets, and is eventually killed by it. Once again, the metaphorical made literal.

In the very beginning, The Kid is described as having an affinity for mindless violence, and the Judge later tells him that he had immediately recognized him the first time he saw him (as somebody with a strong connection to him, violence incarnate). War, after all, is "the ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner". But the Judge in the end will claim to be disappointed by him, because The Kid ultimately tried to get away from war instead of joyously surrendering himself to the most sacred activity (he held "clemency for the heathen" in his heart).