/lit/ - Literature

>>13606940
>Why didnt glanton shoot the judge?
that passage haunts me
also, what is the judge really?

>>13607236
The judge is God without mercy

>>13607236
I really wish someone would've just gone and shot the judge at some point, but I think that's intentional. It's that part of ourselves that we want to get rid off. We feel like we can at any point, but in the end we can't. In the end, it owns us and consumes us.

>>13607236
The Judge is Western Civilization, his obsession with taxidermy should make that obvious.

>>13608248
I think you're probably right but even though Cormac is a great writer and everything I'm tired of these quasi-Freudian self-examinations in literature. I want something transcendant.

>>13608274
If I'm being completely honest I don't think Cormac had anything specific in mind with the judge, if he did actually have something in mind it was very vague. It's one of those "lmao just let the readers get out of it what they want to" kind of things, which it actually does very well.

>and they rode on and the bloody sunrise crept in over the flat plains and The Judge killed and murdered and raped another indian and spat on the ground
Holy.. so this is the power of american fiction? Is this the holy grail of american prose?

>>13608328
There's no way, he's too central to all of the characters and it's clear there's an expository element to his character. Writers tend to position the meaning in their most confrontational characters.

>>13607236
The devil

>>13608336
For a book that’s known for murder and rape, I was expecting more murder and rape then there is

>>13608336
good post
>>13608337
Yeah but what if the expository element is like - whatever you project on it (but unironically).

>>13608336
Just so everyone knows, this quote is made up

>>13608270
>obvious
see >>13608176
>>13608248
>>13608341

>>13606940
then the faggot spat then the dog spat then the horse spat then the n*gger spat then the indian spat in a blaze of wayward desert dust and then the kid spat then the juge spat

>>13607236

Mankind, pure and unfiltered. He is a giant baby. His desire to know, classify and understand is only matched by his desire to rape,murder and destroy. His wisdom and resourcefulness, only by his intense wicked ness. He sistematically takes notes in his notebook of everything he finds interesting or useful -and then destroys it.

The theme of McCarthy's books is what happens to mankind once man is rid of society/civilization/other men. See: Child of God, Suttree, Blood Meridian, The Road. The judge in Blood Meridian is like the necrophile redneck in Child of God or everyone the Man and his Child encounter in The Road: pure, unfiltered raw mankind free from the constraints of other men.

>>13608381
None of those pseuds can explain the epilogue. The Judge is Western Civilization.

>>13608399
Best answer ITT.

>>13608399
Babies don't desire to kill or rape or destroy, they do kill/destroy unwittingly, since they are innocent and without guidance. If an infant is raised with love, without attempting to bias its development in any way, then you get a human being who is innately compassionate, curious, idealistic, and kind, since the essential human beingness is there, unspoiled and matured.

The infantilized subhuman is a rapist, killer, etc. because he chooses to indulge in such things - cannot resist such compulsions - is genetically predisposed to these behaviors

>>13608404

Thanks anon.

Further ellaborating: The Judge is at once a baby and a very old man because that represents the gleeful freedom of man in its most base state (a freedom that also includes rape and murder) and man as someone who has taken upon himself to understand the universe. Understanding it means owning it -hence the Judge destructing what he understands. He owns it so there is no more need for it to exist.

Think of that bizarre, unconnected epilogue where two randos we haven't seen since go across the plain planting sticks. That is civilization, coming to contain the Judge's gleeful absolute freedom that he has just boasted to us, the reader, in the final paragraph of the last chapter of the book. That epilogue makes no sense otherwise. He says that he will never die -that is true, for those impulses of destruction will always be inside man. But he can be contained or harnessed -for there is good in him as well: his wisdom, his urge to understand, even his wicked and childish sense of humor.

>>13608433

>t.rousseau

>>13608402
I assume you mean the Faustian impulse to master nature/the universe through total knowledge?

>>13608434
>the judge is a baby with a wicked sense of humor

>>13608399
>>13608434
Why do you equate complete freedom with total surrender to vice, when that is when a man is most enslaved?

The highest expression of mankind is the spiritual aspirant, who is conqueror of himself, knower of hinself, lover and judge of the forces that animate him. Your interpretation is grotesque and lacking in vision. The judge is nothing more than a plot device to generate graphic acts. The judge is a villain, more akin to a demon than a fucking "pure human." The juge is a subhuman abomination, whose existence is attested to and engendered by the senseless chaos endemic to the setting. McCarthy wanted a gritty violent book, nothing more.

>>13608482
Idk why you would expect anyone to agree with you, you’re just moralizing

>>13608482
So what you are saying is that McCarthy was just a huge edgelord?

>>13608176
>>13608341
dogmatic
>>13608248
existential
>>13608270
/pol/-jocky
>>13608399
>>13608434
Essentialism
>>13608433
psych-evo essentialism

the essentialist take is quite convincing. Its a man v nature conflict
a man vs author reading implies coming to terms with our actions, not shooting the judge is a result of justifying his/our actions after, crossing lines, failures etc

whats everyones take on the ending of the road, bleak or optimistic

>>13608482

I don't, I have said there is good in the judge as well: his childish sense of humor, his desire to understand the universe, his resourcefulness, his musical talent. That is part of man's freedom too.

Fuck I oughta try to read Blood Meridian again, shouldn't it? I got about 1/3 through it my first attempt and realized I didn't really care about any of the characters and the prose was neat and everything but didn't seem to be going anywhere.

>>13608517
Just enjoy the prose

So what do you chaps think happened at the end? What did the guys who came to the toilet see?

Did the Judge murder-rape-cannibalize the man or did the man murder-rape the child at the behest of the judge aka the devil?

>>13608507
He represents war in the form of its destructive nature. That he draws everything he finds and destroys the original object is his defying of the "graven images" commandment, for to copy an image of any of God's creations, even a bird, is presumptuous and downright rude.

>>13608517
Legit the first 2/3rds of the book is basically prose porn then you are actually given something resembling a plot in the final 1/3rd once you get to the part with the ferry. It's worth sticking around for. Also consider the first 2/3rds a character study for The Judge. There is a flashback chapter where Tobin (The Priest) talks about the gangs first encounter with The Judge and it's very memorable. Everybody that has read the book remembers the volcano chapter.

>>13607236
I always interpreted Holden as a stand-in for the Old Testament God (YHWH) and the Glanton Gang was meant to represent the wandering Israelites. The desert that McCarthy renders in such vivid detail is the empty promised land. Holden is their god-like guardian/mentor but ultimately he breaks his covenant with them and abandons or destroys them.

>>13607236
why would you kill the best character in the book?

>>13606940
and then the feld spat

>>13608500
It's obvious he's an edgelord. That whole 'violence is inherent in the human heart' bullshit is just what white suburban warriors tell themselves to justify their fear of black men and their ownership of an AR-15.

>>13610187

It's funny you should say that, since everyone focuses on his destructive impulses and ignores the creative ones, god knows why.

>>13608883
I wouldn't say the first 2/3 are just prose porn. Even the parts that are just that are still great

ah, blood meridian, monsieur? that novel is the sark and chaparral of literature, the filament whereon rode the remuda of highbrow, corraled out of some destitute hacienda upon the arroya, quirting and splurting with main and with pyrolatrous coagulate of lobated grandiloquence. our eyes rode over the pages, monsieur, of that slatribed azotea like argonauts of suttee, juzgados of swole, bights and systoles of walleyed and tyrolean and carbolic and tectite and scurvid and querent and creosote and scapular malpais and shellalagh. we scalped, monsieur, the gantlet of its esker and led our naked bodies into the rebozos of its mennonite and siliceous fauna, wallowing in the jasper and the carnelian like archimandrites, teamsters, combers of cassinette scoria, centroids of holothurian chancre, with pizzles of enfiladed indigo panic grass in the saltbush of our vigas, true commodores of the written page, rebuses, monsieur, we were the mygale spiders too and the devonian and debouched pulque that settled on the frizzen studebakers, listening the wolves howling in the desert while we saw the judge rise out of a thicket of corbelled arches, whinstone, cairn, cholla, lemurs, femurs, leantos, moonblanched nacre, uncottered fistulas of groaning osnaburg and kelp, isomers of fluepipe and halms awap of griddle, guisado, pelancillo.

>>13608380
It's accurate though, and a good line on its own. would stand out in the book though.

>>13608843
Judge killed the kid, seems obvious.

>>13610187
>no no NO NO NONONO you CANNOT protect yourself from violent niggers!

>>13612438
And raped him in the ass.

>>13612443
t. white suburban edgelord

>>13608274
Dostoevsky

>>13612516
t. white urban white-hater

>>13612445
>>13612438
Maybe I'm retarded but it seems pretty clear to me that the Kid and the Judge were joined at the hip (Kid is scrawny but with large wrists, hands, Judge is giant with tiny hands, there's kind of a juxtaposition there of the boy striving to become a man and a giant baby almost mocking his efforts at maturity). So I take the view that the Kid is the one that did the heinous thing.

>>13607236
An archon

>>13611124
golf clap

>>13610867
It is easier to destroy than to create; creation demands far more energy than destruction does.

>>13614321
The urge to destroy is also a creative impulse

>>13607236
You are basically as powerless as the characters to decipher what he really is.

My favorite line is near the end when the kids says to the judge "you ain't nothing" and the judge says "you speak truer than you know"
But it's maddening as a reader because we could still interpret the kids words to two totally different meanings as in you are nothing or you are not nothing.

He's totally enigmatic and I've never seen a theory that even approaches satisfying

>>13607236
i thought the judge implied that the aggression of man was more essentially human than our kinder sentiments, compassion and mercy are actually archaic structures and the violence was the fullest form. it's usually presumed at the violent are less human, but perhaps it is only the merciful who are so. hobbes' state of a nature versus rousseau's

>>13614321
destruction is a force to be resisted, creation is an impulse that requires genesis. thus it is destruction that is eternal and creation a perversion thereof

>>13606940
i mean this guy was a real jerk

spitted*