Re:Crossing the Blood Meridian: Cormac McCarthy and American...
by SideburnsOfDoom on Thursday February 17, 2022 @04:09AM
(#30371041)
> my future boss asserted that The Judge was a mass psychogenic hallucinatory manifestation of the Glanton Gang's deflecting their collective guilt
I recently finished _Blood Meridian_ and then read some analyses of the ending, particularly how the Judge waxes lyrical about "The Dance" of violence as a higher human activity, while the kid dismisses it as base: "even a dumb animal can dance" just as he is sucked back into it.
I do not think that McCarthy intends there to be a single correct reading of what The Judge is; he is inexplicable, uncanny and ambiguous like something from a David Lynch film; however this "manifestation of guilt" reading has to be among the main contenders latent in the book's meanings.
Alternately, the Judge is just a man, the Judge is Satan incarnate, the Judge is chaos and lust for violence, the Judge is a metaphor, the Judge is some other natural force, the Judge is some other supernatural force, the Judge has a deal with Satan, the Judge has tapped into some other supernatural force.
I recently finished _Blood Meridian_ and then read some analyses of the ending, particularly how the Judge waxes lyrical about "The Dance" of violence as a higher human activity, while the kid dismisses it as base: "even a dumb animal can dance" just as he is sucked back into it.
I do not think that McCarthy intends there to be a single correct reading of what The Judge is; he is inexplicable, uncanny and ambiguous like something from a David Lynch film; however this "manifestation of guilt" reading has to be among the main contenders latent in the book's meanings.
Alternately, the Judge is just a man, the Judge is Satan incarnate, the Judge is chaos and lust for violence, the Judge is a metaphor, the Judge is some other natural force, the Judge is some other supernatural force, the Judge has a deal with Satan, the Judge has tapped into some other supernatural force.