/lit/ - Literature

>>16417763
From the way the book plays out, it appears to be an indication that all of Glanton's men are tethered to the Judge as their executioner.

>>16417763
How far they go and come around. There is a concept in economy called "velocity of money", which is about how fast the money you spend comes back to your hand (actually it's about how people spend money after obtaining it). The moon also goes and comes around cyclically. The Judge is implying that men are like coins and moons, they can go but they inevitably return to where they start.

>>16417763
The harder you pull on someone's leash the smaller the arc he can circle
Basically, the more you can circle (either literally e.g. a moon or metaphorically e.g. a man) the more free you are

>>16417763
He's suggesting a new theory of physics where gravity falls off linearly with distance. The Judge was clearly an alien Blood Meridian is a scifi masterpiece

>>16417763
Kepler's 3rd law as metaphor for fate, I guess. Corny in any case. Is McCarthy autistic? He writes like a 19th century satirist but is dead serious about it. Does he even know that a thing called satire exists, or has he taken all his reading dead seriously? Looks like he used to have fun, what with his pet monkey and all.

>>16418178
The Judge is supposed to be scholarly and intellectual, and for the time period and setting, to know such thing is an indicative that one is very attuned with the sciences.

>>16418213
Still reminds me a narrator from Thackeray or Fielding, or a character from Sterne, where they half-assedly extrapolate the philosophical concepts known to educated men into some rigmarole.

>>16417763
the tether are the limitations of a man maybe?

>>16417763
Its a metaphor for a persons life. The tether is the lifespan and the arc is the persons literal character arc, the content of their lives. Thats my interpretation anyway. Btw the book is nothing special, deliberate on something more worth your time.

Yes, Blood Meridian time! I'm writing something right now. Please be patient Anons, and tell me what you think when its done.

>>16417763
>>16417889
>>16417954
>>16418063
>>16418105
>>16418178
>>16418213
So far, awesome interpretations and takes on this spot of dialogue here tonight lads. I take mine from a different perspective field, esotericism.

>Minor Arcana
The symbols noted by Judge Holden in his phrase "Moons, coins, men." brought back to me visions of the tarot deck, both in the book and in the western traditions of mystery, specifically the Minor Arcana. These cards, are four suits of miscellaneous objects numbered in tens that presided over the elements, human faculties and the social classes of medieval Europe; these objects are: wands, swords, cups and pentacles. But what the catch is, is that pentacles can and have been switched with coins before and the symbolism stays the same. This is what the suit of coins represents: element of Earth, social class of merchants, and the faculty of possessions or the material body. What other anons have supposed here tonight is that the Judge holds chief precedence in terms of metaphorical and ranking/commanding possession of the Glanton gang entire, and the symbolism of the tarot confirms he holds metaphysical possession too.

>Chapter VII, Fortunes Read
What else there is to analyse is the scene towards the end of the seventh chapter, wherein certain members of the gang have their fortunes read by the family of magicians, here are their cards, according to my interpretation of the text, the google-translation of Spanish and my source of the cards meanings: 'The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, By Arthur Edward Waite' [1911]

>>16419146
>Cards
Glanton - the Knights (Suit unknown, possibly Swords, or all of them simultaneously)
Black Jackson - the Fool
The Kid - Four of Cups
Judge Holden - Death (possibly)

>The Knights - Glanton
As the text gave no specifics on what suit Glanton drew from to be called 'The Knights', the best fitted suit to describe Glanton I could gather from my source is the Knight of Swords, described as thus: "Graceful, but not warlike; riding quietly, wearing a winged helmet, referring to those higher graces of the imagination which sometimes characterize this card. He too is a dreamer, but the images of the side of sense haunt him in his vision. Divinatory Meanings: Arrival, approach--sometimes that of a messenger; advances, proposition, demeanour, invitation, incitement. Reversed: Trickery, artifice, subtlety, swindling, duplicity, fraud."

>The Fool - Black Jackson
"…In his Manual of Cartomancy, Grand Orient has a curious suggestion of the office of Mystic Fool, as apart of his process in higher divination; but it might call for more than ordinary gifts to put it into operation. We shall see how the card fares according to the common arts of fortune-telling, and it will be an example, to those who can discern, of the fact, otherwise so evident, that the Trumps Major had no place originally in the arts of psychic gambling, when cards are used as the counters and pretexts. Of the circumstances under which this art arose we know, however, very little. The conventional explanations say that the Fool signifies the flesh, the sensitive life, and by a peculiar satire its subsidiary name was at one time the alchemist, as depicting folly at the most insensate stage."

>Four of Cups - The Kid
"A young man is seated under a tree and contemplates three cups set on the grass before him; an arm issuing from a cloud offers him another cup. His expression notwithstanding is one of discontent with his environment. Divinatory Meanings: Weariness, disgust, aversion, imaginary vexations, as if the wine of this world had caused satiety only; another wine, as if a fairy gift, is now offered the wastrel, but he sees no consolation therein. This is also a card of blended pleasure. Reversed: Novelty, presage, new instruction, new relations."

>Death - Judge Holden
"There should be no need to point out that the suggestion of death which I have made in connection with the previous card is, of course, to be understood mystically, but this is not the case in the present instance. The natural transit of man to the next stage of his being either is or may be one form of his progress, but the exotic and almost unknown entrance, while still in this life, into the state of mystical death is a change in the form of consciousness and the passage into a state to which ordinary death is neither the path nor gate. The existing occult explanations of the 13th card are, on the whole, better than usual, rebirth, creation, destination, renewal, and the rest."

>>16419163
Its also noted, that the Magician's wife, whilst in a trance of divination and blindfolded, she predicts the happenings at the ferry and other things:
>"La carroza, la carroza, cried the beldam. Invertido. Carta de guerra, de venganza. La ví sin ruedas sobre un rio obscure …"
(The float, the float, cried the beldam. Invested. War letter, from revenge. I saw her without wheels on a dark river …)

>Perdida, perdida. La carta está perdida en la noche.
(Lost, lost. The letter is lost in the night.)

>Perdida, perdida, he whispered.
(Lost, lost)

>Un maleficio, cried the old woman. Qué viento tan maleante ...
(A hex, cried the old woman. What a mean wind ...)

>Carroza de muertos, llena de huesos. El joven qué ...
(Chariot of the dead, full of bones. The young man what)