You know, I've been thinking. The Judge isn't always exactly consistent in his demeanor or opinions. For example, one time he says that man can theoretically discover the secrets of the world but at another time (during nighttime, the coin monologue) he goes on to tacitly deny cosmic uniformity. Then I'm thinking, he's sometimes described as an oversized infant and he does not seem to age, and every night he seems to just wander about naked as the day he was born. So now I'm thinking that during those scenes, like the time we see him circling the caldera reciting epic poetry, he might be in some process of redefining himself or experimenting, like the ubermensch figure that he is. In a sense, being reborn. Maybe that's deliberate symbolism, maybe not.
>>24749694>Mandatory Blood Meridia-"No!"
>>24749694>>24749695>third blood meridian thread currently on the board
>>24749694I thought it was literally a 6/10. A western version of neuromancer. Butchers Crossing does everything better.
>>24749706Rookie numbers>>24749716Like what?
>>24749811>Like what?Insisting upon itself
The only part of BM I liked was the ending because it was over and the judge playing the violin in a throng of people while hardballing the kid was kinda cool.
I like how nobody here is actually engaging with what the OP is saying.
he's just a big white guythe fact that retards get so hung up on the mystique of his appearance shows what happens when dumb fucking retards that never read before come to literature from a lifetime of videogames and netflix
>>24749837 the book begins with the Dipper stove and ends with the slaying of a large bear. That image is completely the wrong way to look at BM
The book is consistent. The kid starts off having all sorts of wild bar fights and then just kinda hangs out and people watches for the rest of the story he kinda just shrugs his shoulders and goes back to sleep after a hermit tries to help himself to some bussy too.
>>24749694>It is the way it was and will be. This way, and not some other way. The book is memed to hell and back, this thread is proof of that. But that phrase in of itself genuinely freaked me out. I know people take him to be satan sitting on earth, or a manifestation of war in the mortal realm or something similar. But considering Judge Holden was based on a guy in My Confession by Samuel Chamberlain, I look at it more that he was just a man obsessed with warfare, domination and ownership over everything as a result of being educated. Self educated or schooled or took up reading as a hobby and got too obsessed. I've seen a few people I know learn history beyond WW2 as history buffs and just turn into complete "history is all war and times preparing for war" types that end up nihilistic after reading too much and not doing anything but thinking themselves to death with a half baked Nietzsche-esqe view. Something that I've only noticed in Americans specifically but I don't have a large sample size so I can't say for sure. And I don't think it has to do with the politics of the person themselves since the three examples I have vary wildly.
>>24749881>The Judge is just whatifalthist born in 1825
>>24749857*is inconsistent
>>24749852Ok. And what do they symbolize?
>>24749881I think you are right. In fact I fully believe that "Blood Meridian" is a Christian rant against a pantheist war-obsessed intellectual who preaches Nietzschean amorality ("moral law is the invention of the weak against the strong") and mastery over the Earth.But ironically, just like the Devil, the Judge is condemned to suffer from the emptiness and wickedness of his quest and the inability of his will to fully command other men, illustrated by his utter failure to corrupt the Kid to his cause. (He is practically seething at the Kid not selling his guns to him and at its minor acts of mercy).I dislike all of this and believe it insists upon itself as >>24749816 noted, but it must be granted to McCarthy that:>He wrote it in such an obscure way that the majority of readers are hopelessly filtered, possibly including me if my interpretation is incorrect.>He did not fall into the temptation of making "good win in the end", at least in the physical world. In the final chapter the Judge is exposed as spiritually pathetic and condemned, but he is still the ruler of this world.
>>24750007That's not what BM is about. McCarthy was not really a christian
>>24749694>homunculus (avatar of abstraction, cunning of reason, technics, scientism) the product of a defilement and sorcery>baby face and physique: willful Ignorance>Third Man: the watcher of the unconscious, 'the hat man', the bare animal will to persist through indignities and even evil-- the one who appears to people in extreme survival situations time and again>Mystery of Iniquity: the problem of evil incarnate
>>24750007>He did not fall into the temptation of making "good win in the end"The Kid sanctifies all he did and saw in the ending giving Frontier Mercy to the Dancing Bear girl, whom is being stalked by drunks to be importuned serially To the extent The Judge is an Old Testament God, all the depredations of Glanton's Gang were the necessary predicates to produce that good, which the notionally 'civilized' townspeople in the final scene would hang him for (while actively pursuing child rape).
