Was it rape?
>>7524906
I have never read the book, but after 4 years in college I can safely say that yes it was almost probably rape.
>>7524909
"rape"
I don't know where people got rape from. It could be just as likely it could have been a horrible murder so violent even the narrator, who's been fine with describing all the previous atrocities in the book, couldn't explain it.
>>7524906
Boy I hope so. Jacked off to that scene enough times.
>>7524959
>naked embrace
>the judge has a particular interest in "the kid"
>the judge has three incidents of pedophilia in the book
>all three incidents are left up in the air, despite the violence of the book (is it too horrible for the narrator?)
>the only time someone reacts negatively to violence it is a) because the judge has killed a child, b) the person that is closest to the kid (Toadvine)
>the narration implies whatever is happening is still going on and can be heard (probably grunts)
>the whole last chapter is about the kid becoming an adult (and killing a child himself), i.e. losing his innocence
>>7525021
Okay, that makes sense.
How do you people even get good at reading books like this? Will it just come naturally to me or what?
>>7525029
Read analyses and pay attention. Try to put the things you're reading anout* into a larger context, draw parallels.
*this doesn't exclusively to reading
I think the judge literally absorbs the kid into his body and all thats left is some kind of ectoplasmic goo and his clothes.
Yes, but it's not about the rape. Rape is an emblem of the Judge's ghoulishness. The crucial thing happening is that the Judge is collecting on the Kid's soul. He wanted it very badly because the Kid had a much more valuable soul than any of his comrades had.
>>7525029
that was someone else's analysis, it's on wikipedia
>>7525101
god, that's fucking terrifying
I'm pretty tolerant of violence/gore/spooky shit, but that book is probably the only one that really creeped me out, like, to the bones
>>7525080
That's what I got from it too.
Actually I read a convincing essay written by a professor at Rutgers that the Judge actually gets down on his knees and begs the Kid to absolve him for all the bad things he'd done. Let me see if I can find the link...
>>7524906
When will people realise that we must teach Cormac McCarthy not to rape through his writing about rape?
>>7525101
>He wanted it very badly because the Kid had a much more valuable soul than any of his comrades had.
Is not that it's more valuable per se, it's that the kid won't let him in as easily as the others. The judge isn't some demon, he's not an alien thing, he's an aspect of the human condition; he's that part of us that wants to control everything, that wants to put itself at the top of the game.
The judge aims to know, own and introduce himself into all of existence. Why is he fond of children and mad men? Because of their innocence. Why does he look like he does? Because that physique is the ultimate man: his coloration, baldness and size make him impenetrable, unscalpable, irresistable, pure, domineering, completely masculine but devoid of any animalcy. He's described as not having a mother; he is only sperm and no egg, yin but no yang. He's brutal, but not like the others; he has delicate hands (unlike the kid), he's capable of delicacy and dexterity, so his violence is always calculated. Everything within him has been disciplined and become subordinate to his will, down to his words; likeso everything without him.
If you judge Holden to be satan, you missed the point of the book. The judge is something that is in all of us. He is the drive that pushes us constantly against others and the other, he's the spirit of every homicide and genocide. He's the ghost of the ego, an illusion for which people kill and escape death, he himself says he's nothing. He has in himself all of history and science. He says he will never die; that's not his opinion, that's not a promise, that is his essence, he is the thing in you that says he will not die.
The book starts with the kid leaving home and his father; he doesn't know his mother. He's out to encounter the judge, which is what he wants to be, he aims not to replace his father, but to leave him behind. Over the course of the book the judge gets to everyone else in one way or another; the kid remains unspoiled, even in the carnage. Until the last chapter. When the man, unwilling to let go of his past deeds, kills a kid, he loses. He continues to reject the judge later in his words, but it's already too late. He already agreed to play the game. The judge can only get to him because he agreed with him already, because he put his history over the life of another. And in doing so, he said yes to the game, and saying yes to the game means being subject to the judge.
He is the Judge after all. He's the measure of everything.
is this the book with the big forehead injun guy cracks babies heads open like eggs?
>>7525224
Judge Holden isn't Satan per se, but he is the spirit of nihilism, which is synonymous to Satan in some conceptions.
>>7525240
And also, the Judge isn't really a Judge (he's called that because the historical character is), he is the prosecutor.
>>7525240
>war is god
>nihilism
>>7525336
clever. instead of calling them reddit, which wouldn't work, because the site aligns with your own views, you call them /r/4chan, managing to alienate them without drawing an unfavorable comparison with yourself.
>>7525224
>unscalpable
>mind fucking blown
Slow clap for you anons. Seriously.
>I have so much to learn about this book I've read six times...
>>7524906
I was able to get through 99% of the violence in the book without flinching. The part that got me? The fucking bear at the end.
>>7525224
good post lad
>>7525596
poor dancing circus bear :(
>>7525224
Posts like this give me some hope for the state of /lit/
Throughout all the forced memes and shitposting there are still some intelligent motherfuckers in here
>>7527360
It's a perfect example of the worthlessness of most literary theory. You could make a similar "intelligent" analysis of any number of other shitty pseudo-Nietzschean villain with "creepy" quirks (of which there are countless in every medium) and it wouldn't make them interesting (not even if the author intended for the character to be understood in such a way!), just as it fails to make the judge interesting or the book more enjoyable. It has no aesthetic significance and no intellectual value. It's pseudo-philosophical trash.
>>7527416
sounds like you're jelly tbqh
>>7525224
>The judge is something that is in all of us.
Yeah, Satan.
>>7525224
Good post, anon.
>>7525225
Yeppers.
>>7527416
you win the prize for dumbest post in the thread
good job
>>7525224
Sounds like a badass
>>7525224
You made me want to read the book again.
>>7525211
But then why would people be shocked upon entering the toilet?
>“Only now is the child finally divested of all that he has been. His origins are become remote as is his destiny and not again in all the world's turning will there be terrains so wild and barbarous to try whether the stuff of creation may be shaped to man's will or whether his own heart is not another kind of clay.”
>>7525224
The Kid didn't agree to play the Judge's game by killing Elrod. I think the Kid actually sort of succeeds against the Judge, by resisting what he represents right to the end. The Judge represents not just the animal within man but rather all of nature and materiality, which has war and cyclical destruction/regeneration as its organizing principle. And what's suggested is this is ultimately a false principle, truth being only the anti-material spirit, intuited by the Kid. The Judge is the object unable to conceive of subject. The "You ain't nothing" exchange almost sounds like Plotinian theodicy. What summoned the Judge to finally eliminate the Kid was the fact that Elrod represented a kind of son of the Kid (one hint is Elrod's restatement of the Kid's earlier line: "ain't nobody done it yet", plus his connections to the harnessmaker story). The Kid reluctantly kills him in self-defense (even allowing the boy to fire first) and is effectively euthanizing his own quasi-progeny before things get worse ("You wouldn't of lived anyway"). That's in contrast to the Judge, who just delights in preying on children the same way a wolf hunts lambs. The Judge's child-killing expresses nature's evil, but the Kid's filicide is disruptive. Killing Elrod was a final affront to the Judge's order, a strike at nature's cycle right where it starts. This rejection of the cycle of paternal inheritance is shown in other things, like the Kid running away from his dad, impotently failing with the prostitute, etc.. The Kid wins in the end, in a way, by standing his ground and forcing the Judge (who would've "loved" him "like a son") to likewise commit filicide as an execution sentence, in recognition of that stubborn history of defiance.
>>7525280
Nihilism is very destructive, yes.
Yes probably, but it was hot as fuck.
The Judge's (and the Kid's) final atrocity was an act of consensual intercourse.
The evidence that I believe proves this is couched in the Socratic Method Judge Holden assumes in his address to and edification of the gang and the Kid specifically. He talks to them in that exact kind of question-answer dialectic we see in the dialogues (go back and read some of his conversations with Tobin if you don’t believe me), just embellished to fit with the Paradise Lost grandiloquence McCarthy was cultivating.
We have all heard of the homosexual interplay that took place in Grecian pedagogy between teachers and students, but what some of you may not be aware of is the distinct meaning that intercourse carried. In Attic society, it was the duty and recreation of the teacher to attempt to seduce his students, to use his logic and wiles to persuade them to submit to him both sexually and intellectually. An ultimate act of deference by which the student was, in a sense, culled from the herd, and where after they were no longer a distinct and autonomous intellect, but rather one subservient to the teachers.
Given this understanding, the whole of Judge Holden's lectures may be considered a seduction of the boy, drawing him in with his power and erudition to the dogma of elemental warfare and supremacy.
This dynamic takes on even greater poignancy considering the kid was effectively the reader himself/herself, a mute attendant and ancillary of the Glanton gang.
So, in summation, if you are one of those who felt disturbed and violated following your first reading of Blood Meridian, it is simply because it was you and no other who was willingly buggered by the Judge in those dark Jakes. Because by simply reading through to the end of the book, you had granted him permission to do so, had asked or begged him to sodomize you with his evil. The Judge opened his arms and we all went quietly into his enveloping embrace.
So it is a good book, but I still prefer Suttree.
>>7525183
That's one of the things I like about the judge in particular. Many things about him are highly improbable, but never impossible. The way they first run across him in the desert. The way he doesn't look any older at the end (but he's also a fatass, so maybe less wrinkly). I dunno.
>>7528003
You win the prize for dumbest human being on Earth. I bet you read novels for their "philosophical messages" and think analyzing symbolism in fiction actually makes you smarter and more insightful.
>>7525049
exclusively what?
>>7525211
That makes no sense at all
What was the significance of Tobin? Why wasn't his end shown? Was he already beaten by quitting being a priest in the first place?
>>7525596
he just wouldnt stop dancing ;_;
>>7528712
what alternative do you suggest? what is your metric of intelligence or insightfulness?
ohhh ur just trolling ok
>>7525369
>>7525620
>>7527360
>>7527969
>>7528016
>All this positive feedback.
Shine on you crazy diamonds.
>>7527843
>>7527857
Is not so much that they are incompatible, I just wanted to explicit he's not supposed to an outside force.
Which may be where Tobin failed, now that I think about it; by continuing to externalize the judge he only makes him more powerful and real.
I'm halfway through this book and so far I'm not liking it. Does it get better?
>>7529465
What part are you up to?
>>7529465
Yes. Trust me, I hated the book at first, but by the end of it it made me question how it was I wanted to write.
>>7529489
Just finished chapter 12.
>>7525211
find it pls
>>7529539
Tbh I don't know why you aren't hooked by now, I'd say just keep going
>>7527416
I agree with this post but people are calling him stupid, why?
>>7529641
Pointless imagery, can't tell where the characters are going or why I should care about them, lots of boring bullshit and then a bunch of violence in single chapter which makes even the violence boring, etc.
>>7529518
>mfw that depiction of Glanton is based on a portrait of Samuel Chamberlain, not Glanton, who was a dusky, savage looking manlet
>>7529642
Because his argument can be summarized as "nuh-uh".
>>7528102
>to try whether the stuff of creation
I seriously don't understand this section.
>>7529711
>Pointless imagery
Can you not find beauty in words?
>In the days to come they would ride up through a country where the rocks would cook the flesh from your hand and where other than rock nothing was. They rode in a narrow enfilade along a trail strewn with the dry round turds of goats and they rode with their faces averted from the rock wall and the bake-oven air which it rebated, the slant black shapes of the mounted men stenciled across the stone with a definition austere and implacable like shapes capable of violating their covenant with the flesh that authored them and continuing autonomous across the naked rock without reference to sun or man or god.
>>7529889
What made him who he was? His own inner strength or God?
