/lit/ - Literature

>>17769181
The judge is your subjectivity

lots of people seem to be reading this lately.
i find it hard to believe anyone who argues the judge is just an ordinary man.

>>17769205
For me it was: watch No Country -> read No Country -> read Blood Meridian. People like me are slow to read things they want to read and the movie's success is probably still trickling through to Blood Meridian.

The judge is obviously not an ordinary man, in my opinion. It's obvious from the first scene - he teleports around whenever the narrative doesn't have him in focus. But he's not omniscient, either. When he hunts the kid he relies (or seems to rely) on the fool to spot and track for him. The neon-lighting clues as to what he is are the passage earlier in the book where he basically claims that among the three of an angry God, his subjects, and an outside witness, the witness is the most important and the fact that he is "the judge." Also that he says that aliens don't exist but I don't really know what to make of that tangent.

There are two things I haven't seen many people talk much about in my small amount of research and that is his relationship with Glanton - particularly I think of Glanton's taming of the dog and the judge's taming of the fool - and the shift to the present tense in the last paragraph before the epilogue.

>>17769181
He’s Moby Dick

>>17769337
Definitely a relative.

>>17769205
More contained lately. 1 year ago you'd have 6 blood meridian threads in the catalog at any given time.

>>17769181
wtf was the harnessmaker story about

I'm a brainlit and am pretty sure I barely understood 5% of the book an even that I'm pretty sure I got wrong by approaching it way too literally. That being said here's what I got
>The Prairie is a circle of hell and the judge is Satan
>Each man in the party is a sinner being tested. Their deaths, and the ways they die, represent them being finally judged and sent to another circle of hell.
>Todavine and the expriest are the most redeemable and therefore get off easier
>The kid suffers a fate too grizzly to show

I literally just finished it and am way too retardedly autistic to interpret esoteric shit like this without making up some coherent plot, no matter how contrived. Also what did the judges right hand men represent? It was Garrett until the judge found the idiot, then Garret was (allowed to be?) Killed and the idiot took his place. Was it because the idiot was freshly baptized and the judge revils in corruption?

I just finished this book and am incredibly devoid of abstract thinking so forgive me if this is incredibly simplistic but
>The Prairie represents a circle of hell and the judge is Satan
>When a man dies it is because they have been judged, the way they die tells weather they are condemned further or have saved themselves
>Todavine, Brown and Tobine die easy as they are the most redeemable
>The kid suffers a fate too grizzly to show

I realise this is way too literal and not really accurate but I'm way too autistic too follow something this abstract without inventing some baseline. Also
>What does the judges follower (the men in black) represent?
>First it was Glanton, then the judge found the idiot and allowed Glanton to die
Is the follower of the Judge someone redeemable that the judge revels in corrupting, as if it's challenge? The idiot was freshly baptized and was about to drown (a salvation from hell) before the judge "saves" him. Also also, what was the significance of both Jacksons and the act of black Jackson killing White Jackson?

>>17769751
I don't know, but near the very end of the novel, I was reminded of it when they talked about the child whose grandpa had been buried at the roadside like a dog, or something to that effect. I think it's maybe in some way a reference to the kid's family but I don't really know.

>>17769840
>>17769905
The thing about the judge as Satan is almost too obvious. It's immediately obvious that he's the devil in the first chapter he's introduced. That alone makes me think he's absolutely not supposed to be the devil. Obviously there are connections and I think he wants you to think he's the devil.

The more I think about it the more I feel like he's more of a self-aware literary construct. You can't talk about the devil and Hell without referencing literature on the subject. He's obviously (through references) aware of Paradise Lost, Henry V, Moby Dick, Inferno etc. and I think he's supposed to be a self-conscious embodiment of the "thread of order" throughout those books, which he identifies as being war. That would go well with his talk about the importance of the witness - by realizing his status as a character in a grand literary tradition, he becomes neither God (the author) nor the subject (the unaware cast) but a third thing, more like a reader.

That would recontextualize some passages like when he speaks about extraterrestrials and I think that I'll try to reread it in that context someday.

>>17769905
>>17769840
Fuck, 4chan said my first post failed. Phone posted all that shit again just to look like a retard.

>>17769181
Who gives a shit, not even publishers' shills actually read these incoherent blabberings.

>>17769981
I like reading and books

One of the writers for Destiny basically took the themes from Blood Meridian for a lot of the background lore (that wasn't even in the game).

"Why do we have atoms? Because atomic matter is more stable than the primordial broth. Atoms defeated the broth. That was the first war. There were two ways to be and one of them won. And everything that came next was made of atoms.

Atoms made stars. Stars made galaxies. Worlds simmered down to rock and acid and in those smoking primal seas the first living molecule learned to copy itself. All of this happened by the one law, the blind law, which exists without mind or meaning. It's the simplest law but it has no worshippers here (out there, though, out there - !)

Everything is becoming more ruthless and in the end only the most ruthless will remain (LOOK UP AT THE SKY) and they will hunt the territories of the night and extinguish the first glint of competition before it can even understand what it faces or why it has transgressed. This is the shape of victory: to rule the universe so absolutely that nothing will ever exist except by your consent. This is the queen at the end of time, whose sovereignty is eternal because no other sovereign can defeat it. And there is no reason for it, no more than there was reason for the victory of the atom. It is simply the winning play."

>>17769181
the judge was a force of nature and an absolute unit

>>17769181
Personification of violence or something similar.

>>17769840
>>17769905
Why do you consider yourself someone who takes things "literally" if you've completely imagined that the story is really a complex analogy?

>>17770221
One thing I noticed that was stolen was the scene where Jackson shoots Owens. Tarantino did something way too similar in Hateful Eight where a racist is pressured into a pointing a gun at a black guy so the black guy can shoot him.

>>17770234
True

>>17770202
Check "The Cosmic Expense Account" then to both experience some fine literature and see my point about publishers shills.

>>17770251
I guess it's more I need a coherent narrative to follow in order to divine meaning. The more esoteric and obscure passages that diverge into some other topic that hasn't yet been mentioned in the narrative confuse me, and I try to interpret it as a consistent and running aspect of the plot. E.g. when Glanton adopts the dog, instead of interpreting it as a commentary on morality or some such I interpret it as a moral test for Glanton that the hell sent to test him, or some shit, which is consistent with the narrative. Basically I get tunnel vision when reading and relate everything to the established narrative, rather than look at it as a broader reference for life.

I also found 100 years of Solitude completely unreadable for basically this reason.

>>17769945
Its okay, we're all retarded here

Can someone explain to me what the ex-priest Tobin meant by this and the following dialogue between the kid and Tobin?

>>17770234
this

>>17770926
I literally just finished this book today but as far as I can tell this chapter references a certain duality. Specifically the duality between brutish violence where "might makes right" and imposed morality, in this case the word of God. I believe the author continuesly questions these ideas in the book rather than make any concrete statements. For example the judge believes "war was always here, before men war waited. The perfect beings for the perfect craft" and says morality is made up by men to "disenfranchise the strong in favour of the weak".

Tobin is arguing from the other side. "The voice of God is always with us" meaning we are born with morality within us and the ability to do good is really what's part of natural law, though this still implies violence and evil are necessary for this choice to exist

>>17771184
Additionally, what Tobin says about the more simplistic, or "silent", a being is the more capable they are of hearing the word of God probably is reference to the tree of Knowledge and the first sin. War is a product of man (counter to what the Judge says) and goes against natural law. Birds and beast cannot wage war, this may be why the Judge has such a hatred for nature and wants it all catalogued and caged.

He is a djinn, war, Moby Dick, Milton's Satan, Holden the man. And a dancer.

>I know him well
Who was the Judge referring to?

>>17772249
In my "judge is a self-aware character" interpretation I think he means either the kid, who as the novel's protagonist is the reason that any given scene happens the way it does, or the author, which makes less sense to me. In that scene he's trying to convince the kid to return to the way of war, which he has abandoned, and when he will not he attacks him, ending the novel. That's my thinking, at least. It also sounds like something Milton's Satan would say about God so it's probably to be taken at least in some part in that way.

>>17770366
bro it sounds like you can't read and have to assign characters into actors and plot into dragonball z arc in order to comprehend words

>>17769915
Did you just suggest that holden is deadpool?

>>17774195
Go eat a fucking Funko Pop

>>17774270
Suggest he is aware he is a character in a book, cannot change that fact, decides to do as he will being aware he is immaterial and therefore invincible and immortal. Sounds like you called the judge deadpool.

>>17773620
I doubt it. The only books I have had trouble with were 100 years of Solitude and blood meridian, and after reading some analysis by others I feel I understand this perfectly. I think I just get tunnel vision when reading and latch on to my first assumption. The judge is literally introduced as the devil and the kid almost died twice in the beginning, which I took as his actual death and transmission to hell.

>>17774624
He doesn't break the fourth wall and by that alone he's different.

>>17774818
It does feel like he winks every now and then.

>>17770234
kek

>>17775862
this is 10x funnier when you imagine the artist being serious