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/lit/ - Literature

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3906253 No.3906253 [Reply] [Original]

loved it, but why did it have to go and get all ambiguous at the end

just looking for some of /lit/s personal interpretations of the whole last scene, the significance of the dance, what happened to the kid in the outhouse, and the epilogue in particular because frankly I'm at a loss

>> No.3906268

>>3906253
desperation bump

>> No.3906292

It was ambiguous because of the mythic nature of the book. The judge is a bad guy that is supposed to transcend the limits of a regular human.

>> No.3906298

>>3906253
The judge raped the kid and pulled his body apart

>> No.3906307

>>3906292
i get that bit, it's mostly the epilogue and the dancing metaphor that gets to me i'm pretty sure mccarthy intended for the kid to be murdered by the judge at the end and any interpretation otherwise is pretty much sensational rather than textual as far as i see it but i figured it might be good for conversation

>> No.3906311

>>3906298
this supposed rape thing is almost assuredly bullshit, sure the tone in the response to violence changes when the people look in the stall and all but the entire tone changes in those last few pages and there is no evidence of any sexual connotation aside from the judge being naked, which that nigga did all the damn time anyway

>> No.3906313

Yeah i had no idea what happened at the end when i read it either

>> No.3906314
File: 129 KB, 1120x812, Nietzsche_Olde_04_cropped.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3906314

>> No.3906317

I always thought there was some kind of symbiosis. There can only be one true dancer and what not, so in perhaps more than one the Judge consumed the Kid/Man, and thus the true spirit of War goes on.

Now, the epilogue... yeah, fuck me if I got it.

>> No.3906319

Are we human, or are we dancer?

>> No.3906323

The man in the jakes that night under the burning eye of the judge took a mighty shit and one so massive that the sheer magnitude of this the triple coiler which is no small feat in a jakes where the hole is as wide as a man's arms astounded all who looked upon his work and quieted their hearts with holy reverence. The judge's bear hug was needed for the loosening of the man's bowels so the excretion was both their child. Afterward the man was unable to walk from the exertion and so the judge left him to his accomplishment well pleased and danced in celebration.

>> No.3906324

>>3906319

We are Devi

>> No.3906327

>You will never get a bear hug from the judge because he's so happy to see you again

>> No.3906328

i dont have eyebrows like judge wtf

>> No.3906333

>>3906311

the judge's nakedness throughout the book was a symbol of his primal dominance over everyone else. The kid challenged his authority and was dealt with in a manner congruent with that primal pageantry. The rape is not explicitly stated but it is heavily implied, as it would be a complete annihilation of any threat posed to the judge's primal dominance.

>> No.3907934
File: 30 KB, 555x644, 1371125883034.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3907934

the judge raped then ate the kid.

it's a response to melville: instead of ishmael escaping moby dick and ahab, he's fucked and eaten.

>> No.3907956

>>3906317
>the epilogue

After the West is cleared of Indians, the land is being tamed and delimited by fences. The US' western border runs north to south - a meridian drawn in blood.

>> No.3907963

>>3906311
he also raped a lot throughout the whole book

>> No.3907995

Lotta scholars argue the judge raped and killed the Kid. Might be the case, but I kind of feel they're missing the point. The Judge extinguishes the only character who ever showed a modicum of restraint or empathy (maybe aside from the women who bathe the retarded guy), thus snuffing out the possibility that the United States might not be 24/7 conquest/war/expansion. Whatever physically happened in that outhouse is irrelevant, and I find it weird that people spend so much time thinking about it.

>> No.3908101

The epilogue is just about manifest destiny and how violent and horrible it was as a concept, which is the main theme of the novel.

>> No.3908117

>>3907956
The blood meridian is the West. Not just the Old West, but Western Civilization itself. The west is where the sun sets, which is red with blood and fire, hence the evening redness.

>> No.3908731

>>3906327
Exactly how I interpreted it to, anon.

>> No.3908758

>>3906253
After reading it seven times, here's what I've got, OP:

>the significance of the dance
The 'dance' is just life itself. The judge's monologue on dancing is pretty much speaking to the condition of being part of humanity. That each 'dancer' isn't significant, only the dance itself; that not all dancers will achieve or experience or be something of value, but still contribute to the dance regardless.

>what happened to the kid in the outhouse
The general consensus is that the judge murders the kid in the outhouse in such a way that it's indescribably horrific. The kid was the only character to stand against the judge both physically and mentally. The judge never could corrupt the kid, and was unable to win at his own game in that way. But, the judge still killed the kid. The question at the end is then, who won?

> the epilogue
The epilogue is the only counter-response to the narrative given by the judge through the entire novel. The judge claims that might is right, and that determinism and cause and effect create the state of war, and justify its existence fully. However, the epilogue (a series of holes for presumably fence posts being made across the ground in the West) features that same principle of cause and effect bringing civilization to the West. The same principle the judge uses to justify war through the novel is in fact reducing the relevance war has to the West.

>> No.3910346

>>3908758
bump, anyone else?

>> No.3912504

>>3906253
How do you feel about the answers given, OP?

>> No.3912538

wait, i've read it twice, but, uh, where is it implied that the kid is raped?

>> No.3912544

>>3912538
that's where the implication comes from
it's implied
how?
i don't fucking know

>> No.3912575

>>3912538
the judge is naked inside the jakes, as the kid opens the door he grabs the kid up in a bear hug and closes the door. go figure.

>> No.3912580
File: 155 KB, 1131x1600, judge+holden.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3912580

>you will never receive impromptu lessons on astronomy, philosophy, geology, archeology and any other discipline you could imagine from the judge at a campfire

>> No.3912637

>>3908758
>reading it seven times
holy autism

>> No.3912699

>>3912637
>not wanting reared one of the greatest westerns ever written

sevens times is alot, but this book is like 30 years old, maybe he is old too and just read it ove the years. I've read it twice and I've only known about it for 12 months. I want to read it again but I'm trying not to overdo it.

>> No.3912888
File: 956 KB, 634x821, john+joel+glanton.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3912888

>you will never happen upon a village of American Indians and be told by your gang leader to 'kill ever nigger here' and then proceed to kill every red nigger there

>> No.3913153

>>3912888
>Go on, you mean red skinned nigger
RIP in peace Glanton. We crie evrytiem.

>> No.3913234 [DELETED] 

Step aside simpletons, and let me explain the ending.

The end serves as a symbolic mirroring of how much European society has manifested into native american society.

The Judge takes on the archetypical native american warrior hero, who spouts esoteric and half sensical sophisms and rhetoric by the fire about life and the human condition. He is completely hairless, the native americans were also known to be completely hairless (apart from their heads), before the white man came.

The judge kills a "dancing bear" prior to prancing around a fire in the heat of his orgasmic self-expression. Dancing Bear sounds like the name of a rival native warrior doesn't it? Having a pow-wow like dance around a fire also seems like a native american thing to do.


In conclusion, the ending serves to show us as readers how native american culture has pervaded european culture, and it serves to bring that fact (even though we may have been blind to the fact) up until the end, where there is no denying it.

>> No.3913237 [DELETED] 

Why did this book have such a lack of male on female rape?

Was it Mccarthy pussying out? You'd think that a book with wholesale genocide and corpse raping would have a bit of male on female rape no? I think McCarthy didn't want to get labelled a "rape fetishist" or some shit, so he just didn't write about it in detail.

Jesus christ feminists.

I remember one person on /lit/ mentioned the only way you can write about women in a negative way now is if you are yourself a woman, or you are gay. Abandon all hope if you write about women in a negative light and you are white hetero.

>> No.3913245

>>3913237
>why wasn't there more gratuitous rape?
>it must have been the feminists!
>god i hate feminists
I think you might be the one with an obsession m8

>>3913234
you would have to show that the Judge is a symbol of "European society" or how native society pervaded European society as a whole for this to be a halfway compelling interpretation

>> No.3913252

>>3913234
The Dancing bear is symbolic of nature.

>> No.3913262 [DELETED] 

>>3913252
Dancing Bear sounds like an native name to me.

For example, in the movie Dances with Wolves, that's the name the indians give to the crazy white man "Dances with Wolves"--"Dancing Bear"

John Redcorn.

Running Bear? (from the book Green Grass Running Water)

See where I'm going with this?

>> No.3913264 [DELETED] 

>>3913245
>I think you might be the one with an obsession m8
nawh, you're just stupid.

This same topic (of depicting women being raped) was addressed in the book Disgrace and how "A man can never understand, so don't even try to" bullshit from his stupid ass daughter who is a dumb lesbian cunt.

>> No.3913266

>>3913245
There was plenty of male on female rape in the book. He just didn't go into graphic detail because the book was written when you could put murder and cannibalism on saturday morning cartoons but you had to only vaguely suggest the possibility of consensual sex. You guys don't remember the sixties very well, but the editors and publishers who set the standards for what would get published were trained then, and they would have allowed McCarthy a thousand massacres before they'd let in a single rape. This book is from eighty five, remember. Also, there are no female characters. For rape to work effectively in a novel, there has to be someone experiencing it that threader can identify with. It would probably be fair to say that there was pretty much no consensual male/female sex in the book by modern definitions. I really can't think of a place where I'd have stuck in a rape as more than an offhand reference anyway. They were all already doing a lot worse things. No point in saying: "Oh yeah, they raped some of the settler's daughtera and indian girls too. Also used strong language and didn't cover their mouths when they yawned."

>> No.3913270 [DELETED] 

>>3913266
So what you're saying is that you're an idiot with nothing to say?

>> No.3913282

>>3913270
Think of it more as an apostrophe, dimwit. And don't assume it's for you.

>> No.3913284 [DELETED] 

>>3913282
lol you're quite a boring idiot.

>> No.3913286

>>3913264
>Disgrace
The Coetzee novel? This is a totally different issue; you can't really compare South Africa with America. I don't even know what the fuck you're going on with "his stupid ass daughter who is a dumb lesbian cunt" but you're not sounding any less crazy.

>>3913262
Native names were taken from the first thing the mother saw after the child was conceived or maybe born. You can't just make shit up and expect people to go with it.

>>3913266
This is true, but I wouldn't blame it on feminists. I mean, you still can't get cunnilingus even alluded to in a film without an R rating or worse. People are just afraid of sexuality in general, though obviously alienated nerds are going to complain about feminists whenever they can.

>> No.3913288

>>3913284
your a annoying faggot
i'd fuckin pound uour ass if i saw you in pubic m8

>> No.3913287 [DELETED] 

>>3913286
So what you're saying is, is that you're stupid, have terrible reading comprehension skills, and have nothing to constructive to say?

Yep /lit/ is full of people just like you! lol

>> No.3913290

>>3913287
this is what I said:

>>>3913264
>>Disgrace
>The Coetzee novel? This is a totally different issue; you can't really compare South Africa with America. I don't even know what the fuck you're going on with "his stupid ass daughter who is a dumb lesbian cunt" but you're not sounding any less crazy.

>>>3913262
>Native names were taken from the first thing the mother saw after the child was conceived or maybe born. You can't just make shit up and expect people to go with it.

>>>3913266
>This is true, but I wouldn't blame it on feminists. I mean, you still can't get cunnilingus even alluded to in a film without an R rating or worse. People are just afraid of sexuality in general, though obviously alienated nerds are going to complain about feminists whenever they can.

>> No.3913295

>>3913288
Hey don't be so harsh on dimwit: this is probably the best he can do. Also he might be into the whole "ass-pounding" thing..

>> No.3913292 [DELETED] 

>>3913288
lol

>>3913290
You're unworthy of my time simpleton. lol

>> No.3913297

I suppose there is technically male on female rape in the book. There's a scene where the Judge is in a tent with a a little girl and they're both naked, that's a heavy handed hint that the Judge is a child rapist.

>> No.3913307 [DELETED] 

There is a point in the book where a native sodomizes a dead body and it is explained in relatively clear detail.

Yet not one description of a man raping a woman. WUT?

Murica needs to get its priorities in order.

>sexually humiliating corpse
>AOK
>Raping a woman then letting her live
>BAD! NO! NEVER! DON'T YOU DARE WRITE ABOUT THAYT!!!

>> No.3913316

>>3913307
But just because there's a scene of man on man rape doesn't mean there has to be a scene of man on woman rape. Bedsides, there's hardly any females in the book.

>> No.3913318 [DELETED] 

>>3913316
lol moron.

>> No.3913341

>>3913307
the weird thing is, we can sort of blame Barbara Cartland for it. It was her conventions of romantic narative that sort of filled in the spaces in the american mind involving what could and could not happen to women in popular novels.

Even as late as the nineteen seventies, male on female rape was usually reserved for cautionary tales and young adult novels. The implication in all of these, either in text or subtext, was that rape was something that eveil men do, and that the women who have it happen to them have associated in some way with evil men.

Originally, the rape itself was what made it okay to ostracize and be contemptulous of the victim, then it became a failing in the woman's character that put her in a position to be raped. Rape victims were never the wise, canny, no-nonsense heroine, but always the naive or dissipated or daredevil types who while not asking for it, were at least not taking the appropriate precautions which would certainly, invariably have saved them. Oddly, the villains seemed to agree to this: they would blackmail the woamn into marriage at the very worst. Coercing consent seemed to be okay but force or the treat of it seemed to be out, even in the books of the most dastardly melodramatic monster. These conventions held a lot of sway among writers because it's what editors would buy, and what the public was used to. Anyone who's read even a few dozen novels of the pulp or mainstream of the fifties sixties and seventies has seen this stuff imbedded in the starta of the pages like fossil monsters of the bygone victorian ages. It's a hard habit to break, especially when you are, like McCarthy, writing essentially a pastiche of an established form,, he would have had to violate genre conventions in a much more jarring way to drag that sort of thing in, and I beleive it would have distracted from the narrative.

>> No.3913349 [DELETED] 

>>3913341
You are verbose as fuck. Use less words you idiot.

Also pretentious as hell, you're vaguely relating things that are vaguely related to each other.

"Barbara Cartland is not to be blamed for anything you stupid parrot squawker. What other things did your "Gender through literature" prof tell you to repeat?

>> No.3913365

>>3913349
Oh, dimwit. If you didn't exist it would be necessary to invent you I think.

But, as dimwit in his clubfooted mumbling way points out, It can't all be laid to genre conventions. Consider the rape naratives in the works of Nathaniel West for instance. We have a weeklong gang rape of a journalist-writer that may or may not be a wish-fulfillment fantasy of a petty gangster, we have the naive and innocent heroine becoming the sex slave and depraved villainess in that order precisely due to the reliance of her would be savior on conventially virtuous behavior. The rapes are used for satiric comment, but they unarguably involve woemn who would have been the heroines of more mainstream works.

McCarthy has always gone beyond the rape metaphors of fiction to where every indiviual in society can be seen as the rapist and the victim. The sorts of assaults and the effects of these assaults undergone by the people in his novels are much more diffuse and hard to codify than the ones used as place-filler motivating and crisis events in other writings. His violations are ongoing, systematic, and built into the fabric of the narrative and into the social strutures elaborated by the people in the stories. As such they tend to resonate a lot more, and embody a lot more horror because of how off hand, mundane and matter of fact they have become.

>> No.3913370 [DELETED] 

>>3913365
wow, you took the time to write out all the shit. lol

>> No.3913376

>>3913370
Just shoot yourself in the head, you absolute pleb.

>> No.3913380 [DELETED] 

>>3913376
I'm the pleb because you write nonsense?

lol you just talk about nothing, throw in a lesser known author that never influenced the literature world at all, then say a bunch of unsubstantial things in between. Who the fuck is Nathaniel West? A nobody who never wrote anything good ever. You merely bring him up in your meandering to seem "well read". But you're not. He was probably some guy on the syllabus of your "gender through literature" course.

Who's the pleb now? You, that's who.

Fucken moron lol!

>> No.3913388

>>3913365

fuck if I'm gonna read that

>> No.3913390

>>3913380
>I haven't heard of him so he's shit! lol XD
That's why you're a pleb.

>> No.3913400

"Notes On Blood Meridian" is back in print. Anybody got the e-book?

>> No.3913403 [DELETED] 

>>3913390
lol nice cherry pick/red herring!

>> No.3913408

>>3913403
>Who the fuck is Nathaniel West? A nobody who never wrote anything good ever

>> No.3913412

>>3913380
>Who the fuck is Nathaniel West? A nobody who never wrote anything good ever.

I highly doubt you've ever even read anything by Nathanael West.

>> No.3913413 [DELETED] 

>>3913408
NICE! YOU DID IT AGAIN!! GOOOOD BOY!! Want a treat? Now if you can address the rest of the shit I said, I'll be impressed. lol idiot.

>> No.3913419

>>3913341
>>3913365
I'm glad you wrote these, I learned more than a few things
sorry some children are trying hard at being edgy on a board that will barely reward their most incessant attempts at shitposting

>> No.3913424

>>3913413
>You're only mentioning West to seem intelligent and well read
That's basically the whole point of your post, and I don't need to address it because it's simply untrue and retarded. West isn't even that obscure, so even your main point is flawed.

I'm not even the guy who made both of the posts, it's just spastic like yourself annoy me.

>> No.3913430

The Day of the Locust is /lit/core.

>> No.3913435

>>3913370
Well, I write because I'm a writer, and on a literature board in a literature discussion dimwit. And Nathaniel West is a little known and not influential? I'm starting to like you dimwit.
There's something refreshing about your imperturbable Babbitry.

The thing about Blood Meridian that makes it greater than just the prose and narrative strength is the subtlety of the storytelling in the way it shows the kid growing into his cintext and assimilating it, then eventually rejecting it as he sees the inevitable consequences. His adoption of the judge, and adoption by him, followed by his rejection when he sees how destructive following the judge is to people who adopt the judge's viewpoints, or at least his license. The idea that the judge is the only awake person in a society of sleepwalkers is one that the judge seems to be selling hard, and the idea that his manifestation of hios ideals as an aspect of his personality is what all men would do if they weren't afraid is one of his appeals, but its a dangerous appeal, since it leads to terrible consequences unless one is as lucky and as amorally opportunistic as the judge. If as dylan said "to live outside the law you must be honest", it might equally be true that to live without regard for the consequences of your actions, you must always be contantly aware of them and take steps to avaoid them.

>> No.3913438

>>3913435
>inb4 lol u r stupid

Don't waste your time on the idiot.

>> No.3913471

You could also look at Blood Meridian as a sort of anti-Huckleberry Finn. Wehn the kid "lights out for the territories" he immediately encounters a world much worse than the one he left, but he adapts to it because he has never had the experience to realize that it, and the people in it, are by no means representative of anything human or ordinary or civilized. They are the world of adult men to the kid, by default, and to the judge by choice and inclination. The kid is wandering through purgatory as an innocent wayfarer, doing as they do because he thinks its normal. The judge is a tourist in hell, there because he likes it, and also because his own nature is too much trouble to conceal within civilized places and the consequences harder to avoid. He and the kid are basically the only starngers in the situation: they both have the understanding that they are not of this place but only in it. The judge chooses to rule in hell because the real world is stultifying abnd artificial. The kid has no other context, and as his adult consciousness exerts itself he beomes more and more alienated, and thus loses the characteristic that pprotects him somewhat from the judge. And no, i don't hink the judge kills the kid, anymore than the joker would kill batman. beating him in some way is more the point:

>> No.3913483

>>3913430
I read Miss Lonelyhearts and didn't really like it.

>> No.3913515

>>3913234
Nah. Just nah.

>> No.3913524

Alright, I read (or skimmed) most of the discussion here, and I didn't see it brought up, but I have a question about this novel. I've read it twice, and each time after I finished, I couldn't help but wonder if the Judge is even human. I've asked others who have read it, and they all think I'm crazy.

So my question is, does anyone get the idea that the Judge is maybe not completely human? And yes, I believe there are specific clues in the book that lend themselves to this idea.

>> No.3913526

>>3913471
>And no, i don't hink the judge kills the kid, anymore than the joker would kill batman. beating him in some way is more the point:
What was in the outhouse at the end then?

>> No.3913530

>>3913524
That's a question a lot of people ask. I'm still not sure. As you said, there's some evidence supporting your claim.

>> No.3913538

>>3913524
well, inhuman i could grant. I don't think you could say superhuman though. subhuman would fit. He could be seen as a cultural atavism. Think of him as satanic: his flaw is that he cannot see his own flaws, or as grendel: hating simply that over which he has no influence or control. A primal Ego.
If you mean an avatar of some godlike force, I'm sure he'd like to project that, but I don't see him do anything that an oridinary human being couldn's accomplish except in that he seems to be free of, or at least understand the nature of, the traps and rituals of conventional behavior. He is free of ordinary human vices because his own are simulateously more rarified and more primal. But subhuman in that he cannot subvert his own and rationalizes that he does not choose to.

>> No.3913537

>tfw I still have no fucking idea what the epilogue meant

>> No.3913545

>>3913524
>So my question is, does anyone get the idea that the Judge is maybe not completely human? And yes, I believe there are specific clues in the book that lend themselves to this idea.
There is nothing in the book which EXPLICITLY states that the judge isn't just a mortal human. That's the trick McCarthy uses. However, there are plenty of things hinting that hint he might be more: 'flames seemed a native element to him' and that 'he didn't seem to age at all in 20 years', 'he never seemed to sleep at all', etc. Also:
>You aint nothin.
>You speak truer than you know.
He in many many ways is a parallel to the devil in Paradise Lost. I don't see him as strictly a demon or Satan though. The demonic personification of Manifest Destiny in human form, maybe.

>> No.3913547

>>3913537
see>>3908758

>> No.3913551

>>3913538
I understand what you saying, as not-human or something as other than human as an idea, so to speak (if I am correct), but I'm referring to evidence that the Judge does things that seem physically impossible. At different times in the book, he appears in two places at once, and seems to travel vast distances much too quickly to be explained. It isn't heavily brought up in the novels, but I believe there are specific instances where other characters talk about this, even if it is briefly. There are other examples, but these are the first two that come to mind.

>> No.3913553
File: 96 KB, 520x638, exaliftin.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3913553

>dem last 60-70 pages

>> No.3913555

>>3913545
Yes, this is what I'm talking about. Thank you. I felt very much the same way after reading.

>> No.3913576

Some scenes from BM will stay with me for a long, long time. The final scene or the volcano scene are probably most prominent in my memory.

>> No.3913591

>>3913551
I think those were sort of implying that he is sort of a composite character, like the heros of classic literature, and i think this sis sort of why he never sleeps and can never die. It's not that he's not human, it's that he's not real. or not one single human. the gunpowder scene is clearly a myth in the making, in that the chemistry of what he's doing just won't work that way, though that could be due to an unreliable narrator leaving out important bits. Anybody that's made gunpowder or even read a detailed description in how to give it explosive propulsive force instead of just burning off in smoke too slowly to work would be able to call you in it. It seems more like something that really did happen, but being shorthanded and magnified in retelling, which is exactly what a legend would be.

It makes a hell of a lot of sense from a narrative perspective that the judge might be a personality being manifested by a lot of different people at a lot of different times being merged in story into one guy, like robin hood. That could easily explain why everybody had met him before, and why he shows up in odd places and odd times.that don't fit the rest of the narrative.

>> No.3913610

>>3913483
Read The Day of the Locust. It's much different and much better.

>> No.3914788

>>3913610
It is one of the better books of the period and an easy read. you'd think people would read it more.

>> No.3916882

>>3913153
>Hack away, you mean red nigger.