/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.11963510]

What do you think happened in the jakes /lit/? What's your interpretation of the judge? The kid?

What a great, bloody read.

[Anonymous No.11963617]

>“The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.”

[Anonymous No.11963626]

okay I'm rereadong this book for the third or fourth time, I still don't get where all the child rape theories come from. can anyone enlighten me on where the theories come from?

[Anonymous No.11963633]

whenever authors put mysterious shit in books, i never spend time thinking 'OHH WHAT HAPPENED', i just think 'oh so the author wants me to think something mysterious happened, guess i'll never know' and move on

[Anonymous No.11963652]

>>11963510
Finished this book this friday, really liked it. The last chapters were intense as hell.

I think the judge killed both The Kid and the missing girl, which is what the other people then found.

>>11963626
There's young people who go missing here and there, when the judge is close at hand. I also think there was a time when they found the judge naked in his tent with a child.

[Anonymous No.11963661]

>>11963652
more to the theories about the Kid raping the organ grinder girl at the end. the Judge is a confirmed sadistic child murderer so it's not to hard to make that leap

[Anonymous No.11963691]

>>11963510
When The Man is going to his final destination he passes over bison bones and there's a hunter who tells him about the bison hunting that has destroyed the population. The culling of the bison is associated in history with the death of the American frontier. The Judge represents the force of nature that is so dominant above all else despite being a part of it - human nature, war personified. The Man is the Old West, he's aged. He was rebellious in his youth. He is dominated, raped, destroyed in a disgraceful manner. It is man's overthrowing of nature. The man at the end erecting fenceposts is fencing off the Old West, it's gone, man killed it.
>>11963617
>The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible.
In the context of Blood Meridian, this is such a powerful statement. It's gravity is elucidated only because it is so simply stated in relation to everything else. It cuts through the bullshit and bravado.

[Anonymous No.11963863]

>>11963661
Someone pointed out to me yesterday that The Kid (or, The Man) doesn't seem to 'get it up' when he meets with the midget hooker at the end. Since it's not exactly clear what happens between the Judge and The Man at the end, just that some people later find two dead bodies (The Man and the girl), you could argue that the Judge finally corrupted The Kid and got him to rape and kill the girl before killing him.

[Anonymous No.11964074]

chapter X is so goddamn good wtf

[Anonymous No.11964137]

>>11963863
they never find two bodies, they look into the jakes and see something that makes them not want to use it. the girl is missing and the Man was up with the whore when the girl disappeared (unlike the judge who is found by the Man naked in the jakes while people start to look for the girl)

[Anonymous No.11964312]

>>11963510
>interpretation of the judge

Some people wrote something about a gnostic archon, but IDK.

Maybe he was just a weird dude that was able to drive a lot of great dialogue?

[Anonymous No.11964982]

[Anonymous No.11965135]

>>11964982

[Anonymous No.11965175]

>>11963661
Kids go missing during the course of the story, it could be the Judge but it could be the Kid as well. The part with the midget hooker at the end was also weird.

[Anonymous No.11965218]

>>11964982
>as an author myself

[Anonymous No.11965306]

>>11965175
They're the same character though

[Anonymous No.11965310]

>>11965306
that makes no sense, there is so much about the book that doesn't work if they are the same person

[Anonymous No.11965314]

>>11963510
naked scrabble
cramped conditions
super awkward

[Anonymous No.11965351]

>>11963510
The Judge is the man who lives by his own means, without God.

[Anonymous No.11965363]

>They posted guards atop the azotea and unsaddled the horses and drove them out to graze and the judge took one of the pack animals 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.

[Anonymous No.11966560]

>>11965310
Think about it

[Anonymous No.11966579]

>>11964312
I think maybe taking him as an archon in a non-literal sense works. As in he's a 'demon' or figure that is evil BECAUSE the world is evil, that instead of being opposed to the just laws of nature like a traditional villain he thrives precisely because nature is evil.
Also, although this is a bit of a /leftypol/ reading I do see the argument that the Judge is a sort of 'super white' person, and that he's appears to the whites in the book as a white person would to a Native American: pale, physically large, incredibly intelligent but unempathetic and evil.

[Anonymous No.11966583]

>>11966579
>>>/reddit/

[Anonymous No.11966592]

>>11966583
I didn't say I agree with it, or even believe it, just that I see the argument. It very well could have been McCarthy's intention, just as likely it's a butthurt commie overreading.

[Anonymous No.11966596]

>>11966592
bye now.

[Anonymous No.11966858]

>>11966560
when the kid heard all those stories was he hearing about himself the whole time? obviously the Kid doesn't speak Dutch, so he must have just imagined all those conversations. in fact, the kids has to be the expreist and possibly the imbicile too or the whole chase scene makes no sense. did the kid pick up the howitzer? or was that made up too? is half the book just the kid imagining random conversations and shit happening? it might as well have all been a dream, every character was the kid and he was just hallucinating after fucking a midget

[Anonymous No.11966870]

>>11966858
It's a metaphor

[Anonymous No.11966889]

>>11966870
if the entire plot is a metaphor it might as well be a dream. the shit that happens in the book makes no sense if the judge is a 14 year old boy.

[Anonymous No.11966899]

>>11966889
maybe life is a dream

[Anonymous No.11966919]

>>11966899
thanks Borges