/lit/ - Literature

Hairlet

I could beat that fat faggot in a fight.

>>13712806
Archon most probably. The devil already rules over the world and Holden is expanding his dominion.

>>13712806
He's Max Stirner with a gun.

He's just a man. Nothing to lose sleep over.

>>13712806
Definitely the devil

He is simultaneously a manifestation of the darkest aspects of Enlightenment science and philosophy of the time, whilst embodying an otherworldly, inhuman, even satanic mystique.

He seeks knowledge only to conquer and destroy it, corrupts lesser men to his own ideals, and delights in his perversions knowing no one can stop him.

What's more, despite McCarthy basing him off the paedophile gang member of Chamberlain's account, Holden's intelligence obviously surpasses the average American man at the time. He is more than a mere reference.

The point is, is that he's undefinable. He eludes the concepts of time, morality and ultimately understanding. Many critics have attempted to pigeonhole him into definitions like the Gnostic Archon, Milton's Satan, etc. but McCarthy leaves it ambiguous. He is the darkest symbols of humanity personified, and at the end of the novel is left to dance into a new age, continuing his atrocities.

>>13712806
It's simply humanity at It's most free. The stronger impulses, the truest face of It all. He will never die.

>>13712806
he's progress

>>13712806
Haven't read the book, but i'm guessing he is the violence of the frontier man

>>13712806
He's Trump but bald

Herald of god (war)

>>13712806
I just finished it yesterday and I'm struggling with this question as well. I think >>13713247 is the most correct because while the judge has elements of a number of the characteristics of the motifs and concepts already mentioned, he stands out because he's not merely a representation of one or any of them.

To me I think what made the story and the judge so enchanting is that the book offers no easy answers. There are no justifications, no moralizing or clutching of pearls, its just raw and elemental.

My personal theory is that he is both a man and not a man. The judge represents the apex of premeditated human evil. He uses society's own fabrications against itself. He subverts religion by accusing the preacher, turning the supposed religiosity of the crowd into a vindictive madness. He keeps soldiers from arresting members of the gang for obvious and heinous crimes by using the law against the lieutenant. He corrupts economic exchange by overpaying for the puppies and then killing them, destroying both bargain and means. He renders centuries old cave art beautifully in his notepad, and then obliterates it so only he can have it.

The ending was chilling. I still haven't come to grips with it or the epilogue and what they mean. There are some good discussions on the author's website if you're interested OP.

He is a symbol for Manifest Destiny. The genocide of the Native Americans is one of the most unremarked upon crimes of history, despite its being one of the most total destructions of a people in all of time.

He’s Fedallah if he had completely subsumed Ahab

>>13712806
He's either literally the devil or figuratively the devil. It doesn't really matter which one, and that's part of the point.

He's the God of the Old Testament

>>13713233
I mean, yeah, you right.

Justice obviously

>>13716248
this is very important to remark, but also with everything these guys have said on top of it >>13713247 >>13716121 >>13716499

>>13716757
shroom stoned ape theory are asking for problems here.

I respect that

>>13717044

>>13713247
>corrupts lesser men to his own ideals

I remember a fragment where in a single sentence the narrator explains how in a span of an hour or fifteen minutes he dazzles a person with enlightenment and then reveals to them that everything is a lie.

It's overwhelming. It explains how it deceives ignorant people from the beginning, gives them hope and destroys them in an instant.

He is The Whale articulate.

>>13712806
McCarthy heavily implies the Judge is some kind of gnostic archon. The entire 'suzerain' speech about being a ruler among rulers is a huge wink and nudge. He's not really a satanic figure, he's not trying to tempt man or trick man out of his soul, in fact he cares very little to what happens to man after death.

The entire book is full of McCarthy namedropping gnostic concepts (like the ogdoad) that never get expanded on. Whether Blood Meridian is a book that references Gnosticism or is actually a book about Gnosticism depends entirely on whether you believe Jakob Boehme was a gnostic or just a Christian mystic. Not only does McCarthy directly quote Boehme, but the title of the book is almost lifted verbatim from one of Boehme's early works.

>>13712806
The point is that he could plausibly be both human or a supernatural, evil being.

I didn’t think he was any worse than any other character. Possibly even the most “good” of the characters, since he had a moral framework and didn’t just act on savage impulse

He's the personification of the collective evil of the gang.

>>13716248
Most natives were dead from disease by the time Columbus arrived.
There was no native genocide. It was a territory war, and one side had to win.
The idea that Euros showed up with smallpox blankets and shit before germ theory and basic sanitation knowledge even existed is modern fiction.

>>13716248
>bunch of indians die from disease
>crime of history

Yeah get rekt, here's hoping Judge Holden rapes you.

>>13717406
¾ way through the book imma agree with this fella, so long as nothing major changes. I don't see why he's seen as some especially cruel or evil character other than he has the intellect to analyze what he and the scalphunters are doing.

>>13717420
>Most natives were dead from disease by the time Columbus arrived.

Stopped reading there

>>13717445
>¾ way through the book
Oh darn, you should probably leave this thread before somebody spoils the part where The Judge kills Abraham Lincoln

>>13717467
>Kills Mexicans, savages, puppies and nigger-lovers.

Dude seems pretty alright not gon lie

>>13712806
He’s working as intended in delivering post modernist bullshit.

>>13717451
They were though weren’t they? That’s not even a disputed fact by you equality dogs. This npc needs a tune up.

He's from the future.

>>13717488
I'm not your buddy, pal.

>>13717488
A more accurate statement would be that European explorers inadvertently introduced smallpox to the natives who had no resistance for it. This began AFTER Columbus, not before, as how would Smallpox have gotten to the new world? The cure for smallpox didn't come until the 1800's so if it wasn't the Conquistadors who introduced it to them, it would have been the Chinese or maybe Japanese etc.

>>13717443
>bunch of indians die from disease
>deliberately poisoned by colonists

>>13712806
He is a physical manifestation of mankinds underlying violent and belligerent drives.

>>13712806
Fester Adams

>>13716499
>tfw i look like that

I reckon he was a nephilim hybrid

>>13717488
No, dingleberry, Columbus was the first western european to get there. The conquistadors found that as they expanded north and south a lot of places had been decimated by disease (like the mound builders in Mississippi) but that was still decades after columbus

>>13712806
He's a dumb character from tryhard edgy faggot writer.

>>13716248
Lots of people have been totally destroyed before, we just don't hear a lot from them.

>>13719099
have you ever had a critical thought in your life? Serious question.

>>13716248
>The genocide of the Native Americans is one of the most unremarked upon crimes of history
Are you fucking high or just not American?
In the USA, the American Indians have received the most flattering cultural sugar coating in history. For the past 30 years, entertainment/literature has gotten lambasted just for showing them as doing anything other than sitting around and painting with the colors of the wind until the white man shows up to murder them. If anything, the book is aimed more toward showing that these people, while victims in one sense, were also fucking terrifying savages. Blood Meridian is one of the only things I can think of that shows Native Americans acting like real, nuanced human beings and not just the one-dimensional little victims you see elsewhere, conjured up out of a revisionist sense of white guilt and the information age's inability to maintain the illusion that savages is all they were. While the essence of the Judge definitely had a part to play in the execution of Manifest Destiny, you're not giving McCarthy enough credit by limiting him to that. Stop listening to you professors and listen to the actual text.

>>13717068
>They posted guards atop the azotea and unsaddled the horses and drove them out to graze and the judge took one of the packanimals and emptied out the panniers and went off to explore the works. In the afternoon he sat in the compound breaking ore samples with a hammer, the feldspar rich in red oxide of copper and native nuggets in whose organic lobations he purported to read news of the earth's origins, holding an extemporary lecture in geology to a small gathering who nodded and spat. A few would quote him scripture to confound his ordering up of eons out of the ancient chaos and other apostate supposings. >The judge smiled.
>Books lie, he said.
>God dont lie.
>No, said the judge. He does not. And these are his words.
>He held up a chunk of rock.
>He speaks in stones and trees, the bones of things.
>The squatters in their rags nodded among themselves and were soon reckoning him correct, this man of learning, in all his speculations, and this the judge encouraged until they were right proselytes of the new order whereupon he laughed at them for fools.