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bolido_sentimental  1yr ago (text post)   4133 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 25, 2022

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I think this requires a fair bit of reinterpretation of the story's events. I wondered about it while reading, but ultimately rejected it.

Evidence for: The Judge is more often seen counselling the gang, encouraging them, teaching them, but not seen committing the deeds himself. We see the aftermath and assume he is responsible. He is almost inhuman, impossibly skilled, knowledgeable, strong. His being the personification of evil/violence/war/his philosophy, he certainly doesn't seem real.

Evidence against: But on the other hand, he does act a fair bit himself and can't easily be removed. I'm not sure how to reassess scenes like the stand-off with Toadvine, Brown, Tobin, and the Kid toward the end without the Judge there as a real character. Holden negotiates on behalf of the gang with some of the more cultured/learned characters in the story. He teaches the gang how to make gunpowder, etc. Sure, these events could be waved away, but.. who did it then? Is that another aspect of Glanton's personality? If so, why is it the Judge the more intellectual, rational part rather than the violent, impulsive part that is still attributed to Glanton.

I thought it worked better if he was a real, though possibly supernatural character. The confrontation at the end is the two of them committing to their respective philosophies. The Judge again lectures the man on war and the way of the world. The man again rejects it. "You aint nothin".

The Judge will have him anyway, but not willingly.

IMO it's worth taking another look at the opening quotes of the book.

Your ideas are terrifying and your hearts are faint. Your acts of pity and cruelty are absurd, committed with no calm, as if they were irresistible. Finally, you fear blood more and more. Blood and time.

PAUL VALÉRY

It is not to be thought that the life of darkness is sunk in misery and lost as if in sorrowing. There is no sorrowing. For sorrow is a thing that is swallowed up in death, and death and dying are the very life of the darkness.

JACOB BOEHME

Clark, who led last year’s expedition to the Afar region of northern Ethiopia, and UC Berkeley colleague Tim D. White, also said that a reexamination of a 300,000-year-old fossil skull found in the same region earlier showed evidence of having been scalped.

THE YUMA DAILY SUN

The theme these suggest to me is the following: Violence and death, for lack of a better term, are an essential component of life. Rejecting them will not free you from them. They're coming for you no matter what. Let's take a look at No Country For Old Men:

He did close his eyes. He closed his eyes and he turned his head and he raised one hand to fend away what could not be fended away. Chigurh shot him in the face.

Of course Chigurh is not an otherworldly entity on the same level as the Judge, but both characters seem to stand with one foot in the mundane and with the other in the supernatural. Both bring death, in various ways. Both expound on philosophy. Neither can be stopped. For all the fight he puts up, the only reason why Llewelyn Moss manages to not get killed by Chigurh is because others get to him first. For all the geographic and philosophical distance the Kid tries to put between himself and the Judge, the Judge still gets him in the end.

Here's another from BM:

Have you got a gun? he said. A gun? A gun. Have you got a gun. Not on me I aint. Brown pulled a small fiveshot Colt from his belt and pitched it to him. He caught it and stood holding it uncertainly. You got one now. Now shoot the nigger. Wait a goddamn minute, said Owens. Shoot him, said Brown. Jackson had risen and he pulled one of the big pistols from his belt. Owens pointed the pistol at him. You put that down, he said. You better forget about givin orders and shoot the son of a bitch. Put it down. Goddamn, man. Tell him to put it down. Shoot him. He cocked the pistol. Jackson fired.

You can't get away from it. You just plain can't. Whether you're born for violence like the Kid or thrust into it like Owens, it's there. Death is there. It's the fundamental stuff of the universe. Run or fight or close your eyes in denial, the end is the same.

I strongly feel that this is one of McCarthy's central points. It makes no sense for the Judge to be an abstract position that can be adopted or rejected by regular humans, who then have all the agency. Whatever principle the Judge and Chigurh represent has agency of its own. It moves, it acts, one way or another you must engage it - and you can't just refuse to be overcome by it.

The Judge must be a physical actor to represent the agency of this primordial force.

I didn't mean to imply that the judge isn't real. I do think he is an actual person in the gang and possibly the worst of them all. I'm just not sure everything can be ascribed to him. It is not easy to reconcile and maybe even impossible on a second reading.

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