An Essay on Evil - The Judge of Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy

Blood Meridian is often considered to be one of the masterpieces, and one the best books of the 20th century. It follows a fourteen year old kid, who gets involved with the murderous Glanton gang, who are in the business of exchanging native Indian scalps for money. In this book, there are three main aspects that are most emphasised, most written of. One is the landscapes. McCarthy, is undeniably a master of his craft, repeatedly setting paragons of how words can be joined to create the most haunting and stunning vistas. Pictures of storms on the prairie, of setting suns on the endless desert pan, of silent lightning in the abyss of the night, of ruins of some obscured civilisation, of malpais, of mountains and their silhouettes, of skies painted pink, red, yellow, draining over the horizon, over the escarpment of the earth leaving the world in darkness and a firmament glittering with falling stars.

Then there is the violence, that so starkly contrasts the picturesque imagery, and plays a core theme in the book. The violence will not be cited as thoroughly as was for the former topic, for obvious reasons, for the violence shown is of such brutality, it is described so thoroughly, that it can be hard to read through. Nonetheless, it is a matter of great importance, for it does drive the story forward, as the business of the Glanton gang relies on how easily it broods in the human being, and how ruthlessly it can be exacted. Blood and war is shown to be almost an intrinsic characteristic of man.

Whether this story is a parable, or an observation, is up to interpretation. It may be suggesting that if humanity does not have some sort of fundamental and completely profound change, war and bloodshed will continue to be a permanent part of history and of the future. But, then again, if violence is such a core part of people, such that humanity can never change, then it is simply a matter of a representation of the truth to humanity, and a delineation of how once must accept that. The Judge, seems to show that, who is the last, most important aspect to this story.

The Judge is a seven foot tall albino man, with ‘small and lashless pig eyes’, who is completely hairless with a great bald head and baby-like facial features. He is often, if not always, naked. He is a man with a preternatural store of knowledge in all types of fields. He is merciless, and has an inherent taste for violence and blood, and he does not try to subdue it or control it, he embraces it, lets it guide him. He rapes; he rapes children too. ‘He never sleeps.’ ‘He says that he will never die’.

Throughout the book, the Judge speaks his homilies, which bewilder the men of the Glanton Gang with whom he rides. His sermons speak of war, of man. And it is these, perplexing revelations of human nature, that will be the primary subject of this essay, for they are often the most important parts of the story, parts that discuss the core themes of this book.

One of the most interesting characteristics of the Judge, is the self-deification, where he asserts that he has a supreme right to judge whether something should exist or not. This takes place in chapter 14, where Toadvine (a character who is introduced in the beginning and continues to be the Kid’s - the protagonist's - main acquaintance, perhaps even friend throughout the story; Toadvine has no ears ) and the Judge are in a forest and the Judge is seen studying the nature around and pressing ‘the leaves of trees and plants into his book’ and trying to catch butterflies ‘with his shirt outheld in both hands, speaking to them in a whisper, no curious study himself.’ Already, there is a strange dichotomy presented between the actions of the Judge. Here, he is engaging in a gentle and relatively feeble activity. But other times, he participates in the monetarily and racially fueled genocide of the Native Indians, killing them in horrific and grisly manners, scalping them for the currency of the exchange in the abject trade between the Mexicans and the Glanton Gang. That duality of character is strange, but then again, the character of the Judge, is one of the strangest in the book.

Toadvine cannot help but be bewildered at seeing the odd sight of a seven foot man with terrifying baby-like features tiptoeing through the forests trying to catch butterflies. So, he inquires, as to why, this agent of death and violence, is a dedicated agent of knowledge as well. A premature judgement may be that the Judge simply has a curiosity, a tenacity for observation. However, the real reasoning is revealed to be a perverted and bastardised form of the desire for knowledge.

To become the ‘suzerain of the earth.’ That is what the Judge says. To become ‘a special kind of a keeper’ that ‘rules even where there are other rulers'. This is what the Judge’s ultimate goal is; perhaps the Judge believes that he already is the suzerain, but the ‘pockets of autonomous life’ challenge him, this status that is greater in scheme than the world. But this idea is developed by the notion that it is really fear that drives this gargantuan greed. The fear that the ‘smallest crumb can devour us’, ‘Anything beneath yon rock out of men’s knowing’ has the potential to annihilate the human race.

Now does this paranoia of a single minuscule organism somehow being the harbinger to humanity’s perdition, show that this race is weak? Yes, perhaps. But the desire for power and fear are two different notions, yet they coagulate into one idea, one purpose - that wanting to be the ultimate ruler is indeed driven by avarice, but to stay on the throne, fear is required.

Multiple interpretations of the Judge can be made. For, as is shown in the book, violence in the course of actions by humans is inevitable, inexorable, thus it cannot truly by be parted from the general persona or soul of the human, for actions are reflections of the state of the soul. In that sense, if the Judge is the epitome of evil, the Judge is also the epitome of the human.

But he is also aware, of the fallacies of humans made to mask all past horrors and make life so much easier. The Judge claims that morality is the invention of man, created to abase the victor. The members of the Glanton gang blaspheme the Judge, when he speaks of the truths to human nature and human depravity. So, if humans are so unaware of their behaviour, but the Judge is understands himself and his kind so well, and still embraces it and never shies away from it, is he still the epitome of the meagre human? Yes, doubly so.

In the company of the Glanton Gang, murder and conducting the ruin of towns is a commonality between all. It is mostly done as a part of their trade with the mexicans, and the willingness to take part in the trade comes from a bloody cupidity and an indifference towards life. However, the Judge, in all of his preternatural and supposedly divined machinations, there is often no want for money or material goods that leads to death at his hand. The violence in him, in man, is not buried away under layers of largesse and love, rather it is embraced, and he practises it. He controls it, so that it may control him.

One example is at the very beginning of the book. Post the few pages about the Kid which are written like some obscured and mysterious fable, the story begins with the week long sermons of the short lived Reverend Green. The Judge enters the ‘nomadic house of God’ where people are gathered to witness the preaching, and immediately accuses the reverend to be an ‘imposter’, somebody who ‘holds no papers of divinity from an institution recognized or improvised’. He claims that the vestiture of God that this man wears has belied the people from seeing who he truly is, and that is a man that exploits the naivety of a person when it comes to God, and has done so ‘through a variety of charges the most recent of which involv[ing a girl of eleven years’ (a bit ironic, no?). These libels rile up the crowd, instigating a murderous anger, and thus they proceed to kill him, while the Judge conveniently leaves the premises and ventures on to the nearby bar. After killing the him, the crowd comes to the Judge and they ask him how he received this terrible information regarding the Reverend. He essentially says he received no information. He had ‘never laid eyes on the man before today.’ He had ‘never even heard of him.’ Then they all laugh together.

Another example takes place when the peripatetic killers are in a town, resting there. The Judge sits ‘alone in the cantina’ with ‘his eyes small in his great naked face’. He sees a boy selling puppies, holding them by the neck. He buys two dogs from the boy, and it is not out of benevolence to give to these pups a good life. He proceeds to cross a ‘stone bridge’, look ‘down into the swollen waters’, raise the dogs over, and pitch them in. The Vandiemanlander, a member of the gang who later meets a horrific fate, shoots the dogs in the river and they die.

These two examples, delineate how pointless some of the death caused by the the Judge are. There is no purpose, not that death could ever truly be justified (though there are likely some exceptions), but even so, a life taken in vain is worse than one taken without it. These instances show that the Judge is an instrument which the force of ire plays. Perhaps it works the other way around. Either way, the Judge is a man not of mercantilism and money, but of violence and greed.

Harking back to an earlier point of knowledge and the bizarre qualities of the Judge, the lexical aspects to his character are of - ostensibly - great importance. It proves that to the character of the Judge there is more than just the violence that is so inseparable from the degenerating (or degenerated) species of the human. While the meagre man only has his blood-stained knife, the Judge has a thought ponder upon and explore as well. It is one of the ways that cements his importance and also his stature as being strangely supreme and divined and contrasts the earlier statement of the Judge being the epitome of man.

The Judge speaks in unheard tongues. The Judge knows much about the world and its ecology. The Judge knows much about the history of man - its manifestation on earth being through a tapestry of ruin in different lands - and about palaeontology. He knows about chemistry, about alchemy. He knows about the creations and constructs of man - of law and negotiation and thus, of the consciousness.

The Judge is remarkably learned, and he often exercises it where required and it is often efficacious. In a gloomy settlement - where the ‘idiot’ is found, who later becomes a strangely eerie accomplice to the Judge, a member of the Glanton gang murders a man for an almost humorous misunderstanding (another example of senseless killing?). When the lieutenant comes in to the take the guilty man into custody, ‘The Judge emerge[s] from the dark’ and begins by stating his role of representing ‘Captain Glanton in all legal matters’, going on to deny all claims made - whilst subtly subjugating the lieutenant - and present alibis that are only true considering the Judge to be an honest man, not a mendacious man. That is not the case, yet the lieutenant acquiesces. He is ‘stunned by the baldness of these disclaimers.’

Another occasion where the knowledge of the Judge is at display, is in a past story told by Tobin - a member of the gang. It delineates the first time Tobin and a number of men met the Judge. Towards the end of this fable, the Judge and company are surrounded by Native Indians on a malpais. They have no gunpowder to fight. So, the Judge starts chiselling out ‘pure flowers of sulphur’. They go towards ‘cupped place in the rock’ pouring charcoal, the nitre, and the sulphur in; the Judge begins combining this alchemical mixture with his bare hand. He then orders all the men to begin urinating into the now ungodly and stinking pool. The Judge then spreads out the mixture along his knife. He watches the sun with one eye and grins, ‘smeared with blacking and reekin of piss and sulphur’.

The two aforementioned examples show how capable the Judge is, and how his lexical inventory spans many fields of learning. The latter instance, an almost phantasmagoric scene, also highlights that despite the extremely stressful and life-threatening circumstances of being weaponless (rather ammunition-less) and being killed in a very painful, possibly horrific manner by the Indians. His actions are defined by some equanimity, a sense of sangfroid. But the Judge does not yield to this sequence of events, the product of probability, fortune, and luck, that has the potential the impose a very despotic order in its forcing of human reaction that is concomitant to the situation. Yet, he smiles and goes on to start writing in his little journal.

Beyond knowledge that can be practised through the material form with a tangible beginning, a tangible process, and a tangible result, it is the Judge’s deep (and hence deeply disturbing) understanding of man, of the mind. And, throughout the book his small yet immensely impactful speeches speak of this.

The first speech to be analysed would seem to be the ideology that describes his behaviour in the malpais, but generally everywhere, and perhaps it is what makes this character so odd, so terrifying, for he is so unpredictable. In Chapter 17, the Judge speaks as to whether there is life beyond this planet. Whether he believes in that or not, is vaguely affirmed by saying that the ‘truth about this world’, ‘is that anything is possible.’ How? Because ‘the universe is no narrow thing and the order within it is not constrained by any latitude in its conception to repeat what exists in one part in any other part. Even in this world more things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order increation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man's mind can compass, that mind itself being but a fact among others.’

Forgive such blatant use of the fine prose of the text in question, but each sentence, each word is quite important, and the dignity and flair to the subtle literary flourish that is the embedded quotation degrades into tedium. Regardless, this passage is quite complex, considering that McCarthy asserts his word with such definiteness that it makes sense as some general overarching principle, but then again its nebulousness quality being nothing but a principal to be applied, persists and can be slightly perplexing. Still, we shall understand it, for not doing so, is a crime to this book.

Various implications can be made in this passage. The Judge may perhaps be saying that this universe is full of mysteries and questions that will never have been found by man, in such a universe, in a creation that is infinitely augmenting, is there any true law that can bind all to some regiment that is beyond one’s reckoning? Or perhaps, once again in a universe whose bounds and secrets will never be uncovered, a place, a space, that one cannot truly understand, is there a use in trying to categorise the eternally unknown through meagre rules, which are the product of the meagre (in the grand scope of all things) human mind through laws and rules? It would be ‘like a string in the maze, so that you shall not lose your way.’ Existence ‘has its own order’, an order that ‘no man’s mind can compass’, but an order that is often opposed through murder and genocide. Essentially, this paragraph seems to be an acceptance of the limits of the human mind, and in that way, through that acceptance, anything is possible, because all one knows is the material to this earth and one will not go beyond, for in the abyss, whatever is there is not recognised by man, for it simply does not exist. Even the Judge, deems himself suzerain of this earth, not the universe.

This is all conjecture and hypothesising, but what can be derived from this text, is that the Judge is elucidating just how small humans are, and as he speaks in a didactic way - an exemplification of the ‘high baroque’ of this novel, how it reads ‘reads like a conflation of The Inferno, The lliad, and Moby-Dick…’ as said by John Banville, as well as the ‘neo-Biblical rhetoric’ that is employed in Blood Meridian, a comment and observation made by Alan Cheuse - with such command and authority, his superiority, his supremacy is shown to tower above the human, and it aids in establishing an already suggested character trait which is that the Judge is some strange, preternatural creature, that may be more of an entity than a person, whose powers span beyond realms of the conceivable.

Further on in the chapter, is another vital part of the book, that perhaps is the most apropos to the core theme of violence and war and its relationship and its psychic relationship with the human.

‘It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way.’

‘All other trades are contained in that of war.

Is that why war endures?

No. It endures because young men love it and old men love it in them. Those that fought, those that did not.’

‘Men are born for games. Nothing else.

…

He knows that the worth or merit of a game is not inherent in the game itself but rather in the value of what is put at hazard. Games of chance require a wager to have meaning at all.

…

But trial of chance or trial of worth all games aspire to the condition of war for here that which is wagered swallows up game, player, all.’

‘This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the justification. Seen so, war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one's will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god.’

This sort of anthology of quotes from Blood Meridian displays the idea of the Judge he so proudly proclaims from which a multitude of further branching thoughts and understandings can be derived.

The nature of war and the way it is described is incredibly interesting. ‘Men are born for games’ and all games worth time involve chance, the challenging of fortune. The greater the stake, the more important it is, the more fun it is. So, with the game of war, where the stake is life, what greater game can there be? A game that is the absolute end for one player, perhaps both players, is truly the ‘ultimate game’.

It is strange how many themes discussed in this book, as exemplified in this aspect to the idea of war, seems to trivialise war despite revealing the real nature to it, which is something utterly foolish. Once realised, the way the vice of greed in man, has manipulated this machine of devastation to be more of a product of rectitude, how the aesthetics added to the vile nature of war has been belied and hidden by augmenting it with debased, bastardised, and false versions of unity and patriotism, can be seen to be sad and horrible. Trivialising war does not mean trivialising its effects.

The first paragraph of the anthology shows war to be a sort of spirit, a concept that is greater in influence than the human and is also independent from the gallery of human intellectual creation. The presence of war has been there before, thus it likely laid dormant in a primordial, atavistic world, and once the human came, it awoke. The metamorphosis of war took place and the infantile, singular flame transfigured into a bloody creature with red eyes and a rictus that inspires a lust to destroy. Though the story of the Judge is never told save for an ominous paragraph that is to be discussed later on, the progression of war through time may well be the same for the Judge. If he is the epitome of man, and violence is a permanent psychic fixture, a phallic edifice casting a shadow over the endless expanses of the soul, then the Judge is the apotheosis of violence. Then considering the reputation and traits of the Judge leading to his deiform status, and taking into account the final sentence of the anthology - ‘War is god’ - then, is the Judge, god? Perhaps, perhaps not.

But if war is god, then warring is to follow a ruinous religion through prayer. The common argument of god’s non-existence is that when so many wars and so much bloodshed stains the soil and earth, why did god never intervene in stopping his own creations from massacring each other? But if god is war, could it be anything else? Why is war a permanent aspect to history, why is it so often the causality that results in consequences that drive civilisations forward? Because god commands it.

The final sermon to be discussed, is one between the Kid, now the Man 28 years older meanwhile the Judge who is ‘little changed or none in all these years.’ There is a surreal show of entertainment happening, involving an ‘old man in a tyrolean costume’, ‘a little girl in a smock’, and ‘a bear in a crinoline’. After some time into the conversation between the Judge and the Man, the metaphor of a dance and dancers is brought up, seemingly representing warrior and man. ‘As war becomes dishonored and its nobility called into question those honorable men who recognize the sanctity of blood will become excluded from the dance, which is the warrior's right, and thereby will the dance become a false dance and the dancers false dancers. And yet there will be one there always who is a true dancer and can you guess who that might be?’ That one dancer is the Judge, and since the Judge is the pure manifestation of war, then it seems as though war will always persist. For the eternity to come, till the end of time.

‘There is room on the stage for one beast and one alone. All others are destined for a night that is eternal and without name. 'One by one they will step down into the darkness before the

footlamps. Bears that dance, bears that dont.’ It seems as though this stage is some higher plane of life, of existence. If the final bounds of humanity is absolute blackness - the space beyond and death - then this higher plane of existence is a realm where there is a clarity and light that cannot be understand by the normal person. Only one person can achieve such status. Maybe it is the Judge, and so, maybe it is war.

The final paragraph of Blood Meridian shows a crowd in an outhouse, dancing with no purpose, helpless, helpless to their own desire, this lust. It would just so happen to be that this desire is literally symbolised in this situation of pandemonium and debauchery, for in the centre the judge - not the epitome of man, but the master of man and the apotheosis of violence - dances and dances and his stature of seven feet towers above all of them, and it is symbolic of how violence is the selfsame centre of all people; and amongst other seemingly essential characteristics to the enigmatic human, it seems to reign above all on a throne of carrion with a vestiture of blood.

To conclude, an excerpt.

‘A great shambling mutant, silent and serene. Whatever his antecedents he was something wholly other than their sum, nor was there system by which to divide him back into his origins for he would not go. Whoever would seek out his his- tory through what unraveling of loins and ledgerbooks must stand at last darkened and dumb at the shore of a void without

terminus or origin and whatever science he might bring to bear upon the dusty primal matter blowing down out of the millennia will discover no trace of any ultimate atavistic egg by which to reckon his commencing. In the white and empty room he stood in his bespoken suit with his hat in his hand and he peered down with his small and lashless pigs eyes wherein this child just six- teen years on earth could read whole bodies of decisions not accountable to the courts of men and he saw his own name which nowhere else could he have ciphered out at all logged into the records as a thing already accomplished, a traveler known in jurisdictions existing only in the claims of certain pensioners or on old dated maps.’

The judge’s origins are shrouded in mystery and cloudiness. He is a seven foot tall albino man, hairless and often naked. He has small eyes, small hands, and small feet. He looks like a baby. Yet in him ‘broods a taste for mindless violence.’ He may be one of the most terrifying characters in all of literary canon. The number of perspectives to this character is nothing but a testament to the genius of Cormac McCarthy. But no matter how many attempts are made at uncoding this dense text and this extremely complex character, he still seems and perhaps will always be something ineffable, as a god.

Image Credit: https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Judge_Holden