The Judge isn't the devil, the judge is God. He never killed Brown or Toadvine, as Tobin had led the kid to believe. Tobin the expriest is a fallen servant of god (lucifer). He decieves the kid and pulls him away from the Judge, even imploring him to kill him. When The Kid escapes the Judge (God) Tobin dissapears, his work done. The Judge is an impartial observer, he watches on as the men commit all sorts of horror, much of which The Kid does not partake in. The judge claims to be disappointed when he next meats the kid because he is broken and unwholesome, and has betrayed him. The Judge's final embrace of the kid in the last chapter represents the re communion with god, which onlookers are shocked by as they live a life of sin and revelry.
>>7746744
>stop discussing books you shitlord
Good insights in this yale lecture
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgyZ4ia25gg
The Judge is the ultimate badass, the greatest villain in literature, with the most wicked lines on its side of Nolan's Joker. If you're looking for a 'lil' bit of the ultra-violence, check out Blood Meridian, it's an epic western that even Harold Bloom recommends. Be sure to put your thinking cap on, though, because this ain't Zane Grey. It's capital-L Literature, and you're gonna want to keep a dictionary handy to look up all the obscure words McCarthy uses. Yes, my friend, this is no waltz through the garden, it's a dark and stormy journey through the valley of darkness. As Illidan from Worldo f Warcraft says, You Are Not Prepared.
If by God, you mean le demiurge, than yes. The Judge wanted nothing less than the Kid to attempt forceful violence against him, like a son staking claim to patrimony, because the Judge's system is the material universe, of competitive physical striving and cyclical regeneration, of sons succeeding fathers, all dependent on agents participating and thus perpetuating it. By trying (and failing) to incite the Kid to proactively strike against the Judge (as differentiated from reaction/self-defense), Tobin is tempting him to assert himself within the system, whether he knows it or not. The Judge recognized the Kid's great potential in this system, shown by his taste for violence and refusal to step down from challenges. However, while the Kid has a strong will, he ultimately doesn't seek or desire a place for it within the Judge's system. But nor can he quite apprehend an alternative place (symbolized by his tarot, the Four of Cups), leaving him in a kind of wayward limbo. The Judge, disappointed, is forced to destroy him, and thereby acknowledge his rebellion. He ravages him like his many child victims, but unlike them (innocents blind to conflict, like lambs to a wolf), the Kid partially understood his enemy and willingly rejected him, for which he was condemned. The Kid, born a century prior to McCarthy (and likewise raised in Tennessee), is the author's imagined previous life, some earlier point in his soul's prolonged journey to redemption/return to the true God.
>>7746883
that whole course is decent. ive found myself reading through the syllabus just to hear what kind of interpretations she has.
>>7746709
I think the judge himself would disagree with you.
"Moral law is an invention of mankind for the disenfranchisement of the powerful in favor of the weak. Historical law subverts it at every turn . . . Man's vanity may well approach the infinite in capacity but his knowledge remains imperfect and howevermuch he comes to value his judgements ultimately he must submit them before a higher court . . . Decisions of life and death, of what shall be and what shall not, beggar all question of right. In elections of these magnitudes are all lesser ones subsumed, moral, spiritual, natural." (250)
The judge's final embrace, as well as the kid's maturity into "the man," seems to have more to do with the kid finally coming to judgement for his past deeds, especially his actions in the Glanton gang. Not a judgement in the realms of heaven and hell but a judgement in the realm of war. "Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be." (248)
Yeah but was it rape?
>>7746883
They also have male literature professors in case you didn't know.
>>7747164
The Judge rapes Holden's sister, Phoebe.
>>7746883
I remember this being pretty interesting if not a little unstructured.
The OP has a great theory however.
>>7746709
He meats the kid alright.
>>7746973
>>7747164
Yes, the kid rapes the little barrel organ girl
>>7746973
Even if this were satire I'd want to never remember such horrible bullshit.
