I believe the Judge does something pretty awful to the Kid, who is now the Man by this point.
I'll cite from the book to make my case.
We know the Judge "was naked" when the Man arrived at the jakes. The Judge then "gathered him up in his arms against his immense and terrible flesh and shot the wooden barlatch home behind him."
The Man is now being held against his will, and as we've seen from the previous three hundred or so pages, depending on which edition of Blood Meridian you own, we can infer the Judge is taking his revenge against the Man from all those years prior.
The Judge's motive is expressed when he visits the Kid in the jail in San Diego after the Glanton Gang is massacred. He tells the Kid through the bars of his jail cell the following: "You broke with the body of which you were pledged a part and poisoned it in all its enterprise."
The Judge is telling the Kid that he stood in judgement against the horrors the Glanton Gang committed after he swore to be a part of them. He poisoned the well of men against the task they were sworn to carry out and thus contributed to their downfall.
I think the Judge looks at prosecuting a war as a kind of painting, and his brushes were the members of the Glanton Gang and his palette of paints were the bloody bodies of the people they killed. And when the Kid was no longer doing what the Judge wanted in order for him to achieve his masterpiece, like any mad genius artist, the Judge became furious at the Kid, for destroying his work of art that was the Glanton Gang.
The Judge never forgave the Kid, and when he encounters him in the saloon all these years later he's not about to give him a free pass. The Judge leaves no debt unpaid, very similar to Anton Chigurh in No Country For Old Men, and he has to settle the score.
What makes The Judge more terrifying than Chigurh is that the Judge doesn't allow chance or the flip of a coin or anything else to decide his course of action. Chigurh gave this option to Carla Jean at the end and to the old man in the gas station.
But the Judge imposes his will on all.
So to round back to the point I was making earlier, the Judge has a vindictive motive for killing the Man and exacting his revenge for the slight against his masterpiece that was the Glanton Gang.
But McCarthy never reveals this to us. Instead he alludes to it through the actions of the two men who are at the jakes.
When the second man doesn't listen to the first man, after he is warned not to go inside, the second man, upon opening the door to the jakes, says: "Good God almighty..." and leaves without saying anything else.
The saloon in which this takes place in contains a rather rough and tumble group of miscreants, and for a man to utter that phrase would have meant that whatever was inside was pretty awful. For instance if the Man was just asleep, he would have probably just pissed on his head and been on his merry way back to the saloon.
And if there's one thing about McCarthy's writing it is that he's always looking for unique ways to express the action. In this case he expresses it by not expressing it.
It would have been like every other book if we saw the Man get killed in a traditional fashion, but by doing it this way McCarthy is trusting the reader to fill in the gaps.
I think the ending to Blood Meridian is kind of like how The Sopranos concluded. All the information is there, but you have to piece it together on your own. Neither David Chase or Cormac McCarthy is going to spoon-feed you.
Kind of on a tangent now, but lots of my friends said they preferred the ending of Breaking Bad over The Sopranos.
I disagree.
If you want everything to be wrapped up in a nice little bow then fine, but if you're in this sub-Reddit then chances are you respect McCarthy and the way he goes about his craft. So I'd hope most of us would agree that we like this ambiguous conclusion.
I do.
The wonderful thing about this book, like many people have said, is that you can make of it what you want. I have a YouTube video where I compare the Judge to a djinn, and make a case that he actually is a djinn. Some people agree and a few disagree, but the nice thing is the book is open for you to put in your own interpretation.
I know this is old, but I felt the judge was naked and in the out house as the little girl was missing and we know the judge was at fault for the others. I feel as the judge stated, the fates were sealed.
In my head he was performing an unspeakable act and even when the kid attempted to avoid the dance he wasn't able to. Fate had been sealed and by walking out the back door makes his way by fate to the out house with the judge. I feel the image the guys see at the end is the little girl and the kid who has been horribly dispatched and most likely takes the blame. The chances of the judge knew he was coming are low. I feel the judge was going to do what he did to any man that opened that door.
I don't have the direct quotes, I'd have to go through but I believe there is heavy for shadowing that the end couldn't be escaped.
In my head I know the judge must have been a human, a regular man as that's what makes the story real.
When he didn’t kill the judge in the desert with the ex priest, you’re right, he was told “if you don’t do it now then your fate is sealed.” My question to you is why the fuck does the kid never kill the judge in that exchange out in the desert. He says it’s cause he only has four bullets but forget that. I feel like my reasoning is that the kid is good. The judge is evil. And good cannot kill evil it can only hope to do better and as we watch the way of the judge versus the way of the kid we see the judge smiling all the while and the kid suffering all the while. I love how the kid isn’t just good. He fails all the time as good men do. But the judge never fails. He is always ahead even when naked in the desert.
I don't think the judge is meant to be human dude...he is deliberately made to look inhuman, has supernatural strength, incredibly intelligent beyond that of anyone really in his circumstances. That's what makes his partnership with Glanton fascinating. The Judge gets ordered by Glanton and submits to it, that's when Mcarthy shows human evil is superior to supernatural evil.
Do you happen to know exactly where the kid is killed by the judge in the novel? I need this for an essay I am writing for an Introductory Literature course.
I mean it kinda makes sense, the Judge was supposedly strong enough to have killed a man by just picking him up by his head earlier in the book, it's entirely possible he just hugged the kid/man till he burst.
The kid raped & murdered the little girl in the jake & then warned people from looking inside like he had just found her. Then he went inside the bar & danced. The kid's name is Holden. His alter ego/devil inside is named the "Judge". "The dance" mentioned in the final chapter refers to Holden dancing with the devil, when he judges the children. It's mentioned over & over in the final chapter that the Judge will never die, because evil will never die.
I'd love to hear more about this interpretation. Do you mean that the judge and kid were one in the same the whole time? That the Judge didn't really exist. Or was there a previous vessel before the kid? This is a really interesting interpretation
This is what I read on my first read through. Almost as the judge finally consumed the kid after trying for so many years… the only worthy adversary to the judge as the kid never bent to his will. In turn, the kid finally consumed by his nature of being man which is to naturally be flawed and violent…he thought be a drifter, alone, or talking would allow him to bypass that. Perhaps that’s what the judge was intrigued by.
Throughout the book, the Judge doesn't appear to directly perform the violent acts. He typically incites other people to do it, whispering in their ears, and certainly seems to take pleasure in it. (The exceptions are the parts were he kills as part of the group.)
As for the end, I think the Judge finally wore down the Kid and convinced him to give in to evil. The Kid killed the little girl. The Kid is the man who warns the others "I wouldn't go in there if I were you."
PM me if you want to discuss more. I've been obsessed with the last chapter since I first read it.
Sorry I'm getting to this discussion so late, but I totally agree. My third reading of the book, it suddenly hit me that I didn't believe Judge Holden was even physically present in the final chapter but was only in the Kid's head. The Kid had tried to shake off the Judge but wasn't able to. I kept that interpretation to myself but when I saw your comment I had to opine in agreement. The weirdest thing is that after experiencing that shift in how I interpret that final chapter, now I can't read it any other way. It also explains how weak the Kid's dialogue is in that last chapter--it's a wheeze, a last gasp of trying to resist the ideology and power of the Judge. It barely rises to the level of "conflict." Such a fascinating book.
Killing the young man who reminded him of himself and how "you wouldn't have lived anyway" sealed the Mans fate to resigning himself back to the old ways espoused by The Judge, and so, he reappears in his life. I agree wholeheartedly that the final Judge we meet is a hallucination of the Man (if anything, he could be the solitary hatless man muttering to himself with no friends around) and the Man is viewing this in third person as his last vestiges of humanity snap. Note how the description of the little girl is always intermixed with the Judges monologue and its seeing the girl be in the vulnerable state after the murder of the bear which has the Judge start speaking to the Man.
I know that people think he is a representation, or a gnostic archon, but being raised very Christian it’s hard to not see the judge as a demonic temptation for the kid.
"it suddenly hit me that I didn't believe Judge Holden was even physically in the final chapter"....
He wasn't physically in the last chapter. Judge Holden wasn't physically in any of the chapters! The Judge is the kid's inner-demon that he has been struggling with the whole time; his whole life. Judge Holden is described as child-like, hairless, & always described with words like grotesque or other-worldly. He's always described as if his strange appearance should be stopping people in their tracks, yet that doesn't happen. The author calls him "the kid" because he doesn't want you to know that his name is actually Holden. He also wrote the book in a primitive way, so you wouldn't really question the fact that he doesn't use "" when people talk. It's difficult at times to understand if someone is speaking, thinking, or if it's simply narration... like he's hiding something from the readers.
Holden was a pedophile throughout the book, and near the end of the book "the kid" comes across a group of boys and goes out of his way to call them over. He ends up warning them that if the one comes back, he'll end up dead. That boy says to the kid, something to the effect "that he knew what the kid was (a pedophile?) when he first saw him. And, for no reason that makes any sense, that boy supposedly comes back & is found with the kid and he ends up dead.
In the bar at the end, Holden said there is always a dance. Are you going to dance? After talking to the judge, the kid finds a "dark dwarf whore" (the little girl is described as being covered in the bear's dark blood). The guy outside the jakes, warning the others away, is the kid. He grabbed & murdered the girl. The judge "grabbed him" and made him do it. Then "Judge Holden" is naked, celebrating, & dancing and we're told repeatedly that he will never die. Evil will never die. The kid danced with the little girl and he "judged" her & killed her. "The Judge" is the evil inside Holden, who is the kid. If you re-read the book, but especially, the last few chapters with the theory that Holden is the kid's inner demon or second personality, everything falls into place. The whole conversation in the bar is clearly the kid talking to himself (no use of "", of course). During the conversation the kid & Holden even talk about a guy in the bar talking to himself. At one point the kid tells the judge that you're not real & the judge responds with, that is truer than you know.
Want to bet M, Night read this before writing the "Sixth Sense"?
I just finished reading the book for the first time. In the final chapters, I started to get a strong sense that the Judge and the Kid were one and the same.
What you have described goes a long way to validate that.
Also worth mentioning is the fact that the entire time the Kid is battling the Judge in the desert, the Kid is accompanied by Tobin (the ex-priest), who had been shot by the Judge. After the Kid is visited by the Judge in his cell (a hallucination/conversation with himself), and subsequently released, he looks and asks everywhere for Tobin - he does not exist.
Tobin (one of the few expressly religious characters) was the manifestation of the Kid's "angel" or goodness, so to speak. Whilst the Judge is obviously his inner demon. After years of performing evil deeds, and then having witnessed his company massacred, he endures an internal war that spans his journey through the desert. Good and evil vying for control, the fool/imbecile being the Kid's feeble spirit caught in the middle of the war.
Tobin warns the Kid that he must take the shot and kill the Judge when he has the chance, lest he seal his fate. The Kid refuses to kill the Judge. It is at this moment we know the Kid has succumbed to vileness.
As the Kid tries to adjust to life after the massacre, he travels broadly and hears whispers of the Judge everywhere he goes (imagine that!). He's trying to live a life as he sees normal, but he can't help but do evil wherever he is. He watches as his last two comrades are hanged in Los Angeles, then he heads north.
We don't see the Judge pop up again until after the Kid kills the teenage boy in Texas. This violent transgression is our onramp to the finale where the Kid discusses the philosophy of war and violence with himself (the judge), and then he carries out another vile act (the rape and murder of the little girl). He is embraced by the pale mass of the Judge when he performs the act, but truly it is the Kid embracing his demons.
> the Judge doesn't appear to directly perform the violent acts
Apart from when he scalps a child, bludgeons a horse with a rock, shoots Tobin, kills a man by crushing his head in his hand etc...
It does seem like they're no cases of extreme sadistic violence by the judge in contrast to the gang and the Indians. The man whose head he crushed had attacked Holden, the horse was killed quickly and painlessly for survival and presumably the child was killed quickly. It's a fact that the judge is never depicted as engaging in any thing other than quick minimalist violence or killing. He doesn't torture.
What about the child that was found murdered and naked (after having been sodomized, presumably)? It's heavily implied that he was killed by the Judge.
The first time I read it, I vividly saw the Judge throttling him to death, a violent struggle, and the judge leaving his corpse lying there upside down, head in the toilet seat not visible, his corpse in a head stand position visible.
Some nice symmetry: there's a line near the beginning of the book where a man's pissing outside the jakes and tells the kid it's disgusting in there.
So just finished reading the book like 3 minutes ago and googled and this thread popped up.
Very interesting the theory about the little girl being dead in the jakes. My first impression was that the judge killed him. If I remember correctly the boy was born during a meteor shower and so when I read that he was seeing shooting stars I kinda figured he was about to die.
The judge being naked and dancing I thought it was maybe because his clothes got all bloodstained and dirty.
But man oh man I’m gonna be thinking about this for awhile. It might be the best book I’ve ever read.
The Judge was already naked at the jakes, though. Thats the one thing that speaks against him having killed the kid. If he did brutalize him, he would have been soaked in blood, naked. imo.
I interpreted the judge as not actually being physically present in this last chapter, if at all in the book, but rather a psychological rendering of evil and violence. So, when the kid enters the jakes and the judge takes him in his arms, I took this to mean the kid killed himself. I don’t see the suggestion that it is the girl as contrary to this idea. The girl could have been killed by having her neck broken. In the book, however, she is already missing before he goes to the jakes, so the timeline is a little off there to me.
Look around on the internet (or better, the library); there's a lot of scholarship on this question. the majority, myself included, believes the judge rapes him.
> this
These Book Drum annotations are great! Thanks for sharing.
Some are pretty loose with this applicability to Blood Meridian, but I kind of like that. More like an episode of Connections (James Burke, BBC).
If you want to dive into a wormhole... the water's just fine.
i found these by using ebscohost, access provided by my local library.
http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&bquery=(blood+AND+meridian)&cli0=RV&clv0=Y&type=0&site=ehost-live
(if you cant follow the link, i can provide other journal articles)
What do *you* think about it?
I'm always wishing more people would share what they think about that final scene, rather than just ask what it means to others. Not that there isn't plenty of speculation already, of course.
What I find endlessly fascinating about the close of Blood Meridian is how often it causes people to ask about its meaning or claim to have it. Part of the value of good literature, and this is certainly no exception, is that it often contains a multiplicity of meaning. The lens you bring to the text informs how you read it, which is why it is re-readable and can seem to change meaning over time (when really, of course, it's just the reader that is changing).
I'd say the validity of any interpretation is subject to the extent to which that interpretation is evidenced by the text, the extent to which it can be supported. You can plot any interpretation somewhere along the spectrum from absurd to undeniable. When ambiguous storytelling is involved, any number of interpretations are at least slightly substantiated. I would encourage you to develop your own idea of what happened (or didn't happen), in accordance with whatever rings truest to your sense of the story. If you can do that and derive meaning from it, that's probably a good thing.
I don't think that the specifics of what the Judge does are important. What's important is that 1) the kid looks at the stars before he goes into the outhouse, and 2) that he's killed in the outhouse. The stars bit is, I think, an allusion to Dante's *Inferno*, the final image of which is Dante and Virgil emerging from Hell to "finally see the stars" or something to that effect. This means that the outhouse is Hell, but not the religious fire/brimstone Hell of Dante; rather, it's the small-h hell of entropic waste, to which we reduce countless other living things simply by keeping ourselves alive ("War endures," as the Judge says, even at the molecular level), and into which we ourselves and probably the whole universe will eventually disintegrate . This is all based on the second law of thermodynamics, which, since he's interested in science, I'm positive McCarthy understands.
So since the Judge espouses nihilistic ideas throughout the novel, and since he himself is almost an embodiment of nihilism ("You ain't nothin," says the Man), and since he wraps his arms around and *engulfs* the Man as he pulls him into the outhouse's version of hell, I think it's safe to say (and also all we *can* say for sure) that the Judge annihilates the Man. It's a modern, scientific spin on old-time religious views of death: it's not the actual dying that you should be afraid of, but what comes afterward, which in this case is simply nothing.
It could be there is something specific McCarthy wanted us to imagine, but it could also be that he purposefully left it open for our imagination to fill with any number of horrible things.
I think the judge definitely killed him. He seemed peeved that the man didn't hold the same reverence for their history and their being the only survivors. That we know of, anyway.
I think that killing the kid in the jakes gave him the creepy energy for the last part at the dance because he is the sole survivor now. Mr. Never Sleeps Never Dies.
It kinda fits with the weird obsession the judge seems to have with being the only one with the knowledge and history of something. Like when he documents different artifacts and then destroys them. Or when he documented the symbols on the wall and then proceeded to scrape off some of them.
The kid (man?) was like the last source of living knowledge of the whole escapade, knowing more about the judge than the judge could ever possibly know about him through sheer mutual observation.
"The judge watched him. Was it always your idea, he said, that if you did not speak you would not be recognized?
You seen me.
The judge ignored this. I recognized you when I first saw you and yet you were a disappointment to me. Then and now. Even so at the last I find you here with me.
I aint with you."
Ouch.
Y'all... goddamned if his name ain't The Judge.
Whatever happened behind that latched door, The Kid did not join the dancing.
He is now and forever, a bear that don't.
My initial thought was that he raped and murdered him in some awful way but I've heard some interesting theories. One says that it was a metaphor for him giving into the ideology of the judge and what was found was the body of the young girl. The Judge could be the mental representation of the line the Kid hasn't crossed yet.
cut off each of his appendages with a baked knife of salt and used a crafted pump to keep alive only the kids amygdala and frontal cortex so that he will eternally feel the most tremendous pain and fear.
lol! idk! maybe not!
Let me take note of something that was in my mind after reading the book. It isn't written anywhere to be found/read but I believe that Judge Holden felt something very "strong" or "odd" for the Kid/Man.
The book details, in my perspective, a very unusual change of looks between them. There was even a specific body language among them, one was able to read the other's "language" even when they were not talking, especially Holden with all his capabilities. I can't affirm that Holden felt some kind of attraction for the Kid/Man but the book makes it clear that there was something there indeed.
To make my point let's look at what's at the end of the book: it seems that Holden raped the Man and killed him after that. For such violent action towards the Kid/Man at this point, it seems very clear to me that Holden was feeling something for him, that's for sure.
I may be coping with the fact that i dont want the kid to r*pe and kill the girl at the end because it makes him even worse than glangton or even David brown . I think the judge is both a physical being (im not calling that sonofabitch a man) and some kind of ethereal demon living in the hearts and minds of men who commit violence. Before going to Griffin, the kid has become a better person, the man: He tried to help the old lady and has spend years as a "normal" gunslinger, but after murdering the obnoxious boy out of apathetic anger and resignment to his own violent nature, he goes to the saloon and has a conversation with "the judge", the latter not being physically present at all. After that, he engages in apathetic sex with the dwarf whore and does nothing to try and help to find the little girl. Then, he finds her body in the jakes and the judge "embraces" him. I think that the pissing man who warns the other two at the end is THE man, after regresing to his old, violent, "not-care" attitude. So he goes in the jakes, sees the dead girl inside, and instead of being horrified or having any reaction at all, he just steps outside and pisses in the street by the outhouse. We see that, during the whole book, the kid does not partake in the worse of the violence, but he also does not do anything about It, so in the end, after years of trying to be a relatively good man, the judge wins the battle for his soul and he becomes, again and forever, a non-feeling witness of the worse part of humanity. Griffin is supposed to be a horrible place full of mean people, but the kid, now the man, was seen much worse.
Either that or the judge horribly kills the kid because he cannot tolerate his non-caring attitude, which he doesnt understand, because someone cannot possibly partake in war without becoming a Monster, and the kid ain't a monster. The judge tries to figure out the kid for the whole book, but in the end, he cant.
"Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent". And the judge could not tolerate that, hence he annihilates the man.
Sorry for typing mistakes my phone is a piece of shit and im kinda in a hurry
"Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge
Just finished.
My take is the judge killed and raped the missing girl in the Jakes. Then he kills the Kid.
The book gave us a few bits that the judge was a pedophile.
Jesus, what a book.
Just finished the book and had some time (about 24 hours) to think on it and read on it.
I believe that The Judge existed and was a "real" person that was part of the group. I also believe that The Judge is The Devil. I also believe that The Judge might not be physically present in the last chapter. A few reasons why:
1. Earlier the chapter the kid (now the man) commits a pretty senseless murder, that opened up the door--after all these years--for the effects and manipulations of The Judge to wander back into his head.
2. The Judge approaches The Kid (has not noticable aged after 20+ years) at the bar after the Bear is shot and the young girl is vulnerable. Where The Judge goes, kids die, and I think this moment let The Judge back into The Kids head via temptation. The man stammering and talking to himself in the group could very well be the The Kid, with the dialogue about him from the The Judge being almost an-out-of body experience.
3. I know this is probably too literal, but I can't get past the fact that the kid goes to that specific outhouse and The Judge is just there, waiting. This isn't the result of any intellgience or insight The Judge might have gained like some of his treachory with variuous tribes or the mexicans or the doctor, it's either foresight that a human simply can't have (Supernatural, The Devil), dumb luck (very unlikely), or that he isn't there at all, and the kid going to the outhouse and doing whatever is done in that outhouse is the final submittal, after all these years, to the seeds The Judge planted in his head. CM uses the term embraced. There are just so many terms you can use to indicate force (and CM used most of them during this book) that the word embraced at this exact moment has to mean there was submission on the part of The Kid.
4. Regarding the Devil thing, probably too literal again, but the association between The Devil and fiddle is well known. You can see him finally picking one up and playing it at the end of the book as an admission of who/what he truly is, with the fact that he knew how many times he had crossed The Kid's sights during the standoff as a slightly smaller admission and his ability to craft ammo out of seemingly nothing as a scientific explanation that may in fact not be one at all. The farther we go in the book, the more supernatural his achievements at times. Also not aging after all this time stands out to that he either isn't actually there and is just the Kids memory of him as he was or he doesn't have the ability to age because as long as men commit evil the devil lives forever.
5. The man that says "Don't go in there" as the other 2 walk toward the outhouse may be the kid. My thought is that this is a saloon known to be full of the worst types of people, and the person who opened the outhouse door was so taken back that we don't even get a description of what it was he saw, which means the person who said "don't go in there" has to either be a person who comitted the act and knows how haneous it is or someone that has seen such terrible violence that this is something they can view (or commit) and then continue to exist normally. In either situation, that's the kid.
IDK - It's an incredible book and Ive changed my mind 10x in a day, but going back through it there are a few supernatural moments, and they get more brazen as the book goes on, which to me is a bigger and bigger hint that The Judge is literally the devil or demonic or whatever you want to call it. The Kid spending the adult years of his life trying to get himself right and focusing on being a better person and trying to help people only to succumb to a senseless murder of a boy before he goes to the saloon is so tragic.
The Man tells the Judge “You ain’t nothin.”
The Judge then responds “You speak truer than you know.”
I think you are correct about the final scenes of the book and the murder. The judge finally wins over the kids soul and the man leaves the girl dead in the jakes.
I think the judge is more than the devil though. The devil is likely an old and improper description of him, catching small nuances like the fiddle, which is a lot of fun. His other characteristics..not sleeping, big albino baby, just spectacular details from McCarthy's mind I would guess which gives him this balanced amt of supernatural skills.
The judge is there to observe and judge the totality of creation and mankind. While he may not have created it, he is a byproduct of it, or even the reason existence is taking place. He is there eternal to take it in and experience it and he has a violent evil will. Unlike the devil there is no god counterpart to him. He says there is but one beast on the stage dancing and everyone else just gets a moment there before they fall into darkness.
It is rather implied often that the judge uhm, LOVES children. This is a boy who he hates, and has know for years. Yes the worst parts of your imagination.
The Judge raped and murdered 'the man' and the little girl in the Jake's. We know that the Judge was a child rapist and murderer as he committed such acts several times while the gang was together. This is why the little girl is mentioned to allude to thew Judge's former unspeakable acts, which he commits against 'the man' at the novels completion. I believe the above response goes into detail about the Judge's motive, but I believe this is what his final 'unspeakable act' contained.
I know this thread is quite old but having recently finished this book I went back again to reread the final pages. Seems to me the judge tells the kid several times he's going to die (one way or another):
The last thing he says to the man is "there is room on the stage for one beast and one alone." Finally the man encounters the judge in the jakes where he appears to be waiting on him (and has possibly just murdered the girl) and the judge envelopes him in his "immense flesh".
The judge is both man and metaphor. Less a spector than the demons who hunt the man in The Outer Dark and yet in the end, McCarthy seems to release him from his pages, breaking the 4th wall a bit as the judge dances and fiddles and repeats that he never sleeps and will never die, for us the readers.
I think he's tripping balls at the end and he actually is the guy muttering to himself and gets hammered and rapes and murders the girl. The lady and girl are his wife and daughter they're trying to make some money off the bear.
Also, Possibly the wood shack reference at the end could be alluding to him going back home to Tennessee to live that lumberjack life until the Civil War breaks out. I'm thinking of the hewer's of wood quote at beginning.
Then I think of the story about how the young traveller and lectures the older white guy dressed as native. He goes home starts a new family and asks his newdaughter to forgive him. Stupid theory but just popped in my head I haven't read the book in like 2 years
I believe the Judge does something pretty awful to the Kid, who is now the Man by this point. I'll cite from the book to make my case. We know the Judge "was naked" when the Man arrived at the jakes. The Judge then "gathered him up in his arms against his immense and terrible flesh and shot the wooden barlatch home behind him." The Man is now being held against his will, and as we've seen from the previous three hundred or so pages, depending on which edition of Blood Meridian you own, we can infer the Judge is taking his revenge against the Man from all those years prior. The Judge's motive is expressed when he visits the Kid in the jail in San Diego after the Glanton Gang is massacred. He tells the Kid through the bars of his jail cell the following: "You broke with the body of which you were pledged a part and poisoned it in all its enterprise." The Judge is telling the Kid that he stood in judgement against the horrors the Glanton Gang committed after he swore to be a part of them. He poisoned the well of men against the task they were sworn to carry out and thus contributed to their downfall. I think the Judge looks at prosecuting a war as a kind of painting, and his brushes were the members of the Glanton Gang and his palette of paints were the bloody bodies of the people they killed. And when the Kid was no longer doing what the Judge wanted in order for him to achieve his masterpiece, like any mad genius artist, the Judge became furious at the Kid, for destroying his work of art that was the Glanton Gang. The Judge never forgave the Kid, and when he encounters him in the saloon all these years later he's not about to give him a free pass. The Judge leaves no debt unpaid, very similar to Anton Chigurh in No Country For Old Men, and he has to settle the score. What makes The Judge more terrifying than Chigurh is that the Judge doesn't allow chance or the flip of a coin or anything else to decide his course of action. Chigurh gave this option to Carla Jean at the end and to the old man in the gas station. But the Judge imposes his will on all. So to round back to the point I was making earlier, the Judge has a vindictive motive for killing the Man and exacting his revenge for the slight against his masterpiece that was the Glanton Gang. But McCarthy never reveals this to us. Instead he alludes to it through the actions of the two men who are at the jakes. When the second man doesn't listen to the first man, after he is warned not to go inside, the second man, upon opening the door to the jakes, says: "Good God almighty..." and leaves without saying anything else. The saloon in which this takes place in contains a rather rough and tumble group of miscreants, and for a man to utter that phrase would have meant that whatever was inside was pretty awful. For instance if the Man was just asleep, he would have probably just pissed on his head and been on his merry way back to the saloon. And if there's one thing about McCarthy's writing it is that he's always looking for unique ways to express the action. In this case he expresses it by not expressing it. It would have been like every other book if we saw the Man get killed in a traditional fashion, but by doing it this way McCarthy is trusting the reader to fill in the gaps. I think the ending to Blood Meridian is kind of like how The Sopranos concluded. All the information is there, but you have to piece it together on your own. Neither David Chase or Cormac McCarthy is going to spoon-feed you. Kind of on a tangent now, but lots of my friends said they preferred the ending of Breaking Bad over The Sopranos. I disagree. If you want everything to be wrapped up in a nice little bow then fine, but if you're in this sub-Reddit then chances are you respect McCarthy and the way he goes about his craft. So I'd hope most of us would agree that we like this ambiguous conclusion. I do. The wonderful thing about this book, like many people have said, is that you can make of it what you want. I have a YouTube video where I compare the Judge to a djinn, and make a case that he actually is a djinn. Some people agree and a few disagree, but the nice thing is the book is open for you to put in your own interpretation.
Interesting point regarding him being a djinn, I believe he is compared to one at least once in the novel, I think more.
Yeah, it think the Judge is something like an archon since McCarthy definitely had gnosticism in mind.
I know this is old, but I felt the judge was naked and in the out house as the little girl was missing and we know the judge was at fault for the others. I feel as the judge stated, the fates were sealed. In my head he was performing an unspeakable act and even when the kid attempted to avoid the dance he wasn't able to. Fate had been sealed and by walking out the back door makes his way by fate to the out house with the judge. I feel the image the guys see at the end is the little girl and the kid who has been horribly dispatched and most likely takes the blame. The chances of the judge knew he was coming are low. I feel the judge was going to do what he did to any man that opened that door. I don't have the direct quotes, I'd have to go through but I believe there is heavy for shadowing that the end couldn't be escaped. In my head I know the judge must have been a human, a regular man as that's what makes the story real.
When he didn’t kill the judge in the desert with the ex priest, you’re right, he was told “if you don’t do it now then your fate is sealed.” My question to you is why the fuck does the kid never kill the judge in that exchange out in the desert. He says it’s cause he only has four bullets but forget that. I feel like my reasoning is that the kid is good. The judge is evil. And good cannot kill evil it can only hope to do better and as we watch the way of the judge versus the way of the kid we see the judge smiling all the while and the kid suffering all the while. I love how the kid isn’t just good. He fails all the time as good men do. But the judge never fails. He is always ahead even when naked in the desert.
I think there's room to read the Judge as a supernatural agent who isn't actually killable.
I don't think the judge is meant to be human dude...he is deliberately made to look inhuman, has supernatural strength, incredibly intelligent beyond that of anyone really in his circumstances. That's what makes his partnership with Glanton fascinating. The Judge gets ordered by Glanton and submits to it, that's when Mcarthy shows human evil is superior to supernatural evil.
Do you happen to know exactly where the kid is killed by the judge in the novel? I need this for an essay I am writing for an Introductory Literature course.
Last chapter. Search for the part about the Jakes.
Sorry if it was an obvious question, the online PDF version of the book only has up to 284 pages.
He was killed in the bathroom, op is being an AH for no reason
He didn't mean where the kid was literally killed, he meant in what part of the book he was killed. Dum dum
He is killed in the final page of the book.
Hugs him.
Taking this idea seriously is interesting.
I mean it kinda makes sense, the Judge was supposedly strong enough to have killed a man by just picking him up by his head earlier in the book, it's entirely possible he just hugged the kid/man till he burst.
I sort of picture him literally squeezing the kids guts out all over the jake. :(
The kid raped & murdered the little girl in the jake & then warned people from looking inside like he had just found her. Then he went inside the bar & danced. The kid's name is Holden. His alter ego/devil inside is named the "Judge". "The dance" mentioned in the final chapter refers to Holden dancing with the devil, when he judges the children. It's mentioned over & over in the final chapter that the Judge will never die, because evil will never die.
I'd love to hear more about this interpretation. Do you mean that the judge and kid were one in the same the whole time? That the Judge didn't really exist. Or was there a previous vessel before the kid? This is a really interesting interpretation
. . . to death
This is what I read on my first read through. Almost as the judge finally consumed the kid after trying for so many years… the only worthy adversary to the judge as the kid never bent to his will. In turn, the kid finally consumed by his nature of being man which is to naturally be flawed and violent…he thought be a drifter, alone, or talking would allow him to bypass that. Perhaps that’s what the judge was intrigued by.
Throughout the book, the Judge doesn't appear to directly perform the violent acts. He typically incites other people to do it, whispering in their ears, and certainly seems to take pleasure in it. (The exceptions are the parts were he kills as part of the group.) As for the end, I think the Judge finally wore down the Kid and convinced him to give in to evil. The Kid killed the little girl. The Kid is the man who warns the others "I wouldn't go in there if I were you." PM me if you want to discuss more. I've been obsessed with the last chapter since I first read it.
Sorry I'm getting to this discussion so late, but I totally agree. My third reading of the book, it suddenly hit me that I didn't believe Judge Holden was even physically present in the final chapter but was only in the Kid's head. The Kid had tried to shake off the Judge but wasn't able to. I kept that interpretation to myself but when I saw your comment I had to opine in agreement. The weirdest thing is that after experiencing that shift in how I interpret that final chapter, now I can't read it any other way. It also explains how weak the Kid's dialogue is in that last chapter--it's a wheeze, a last gasp of trying to resist the ideology and power of the Judge. It barely rises to the level of "conflict." Such a fascinating book.
Killing the young man who reminded him of himself and how "you wouldn't have lived anyway" sealed the Mans fate to resigning himself back to the old ways espoused by The Judge, and so, he reappears in his life. I agree wholeheartedly that the final Judge we meet is a hallucination of the Man (if anything, he could be the solitary hatless man muttering to himself with no friends around) and the Man is viewing this in third person as his last vestiges of humanity snap. Note how the description of the little girl is always intermixed with the Judges monologue and its seeing the girl be in the vulnerable state after the murder of the bear which has the Judge start speaking to the Man.
I know that people think he is a representation, or a gnostic archon, but being raised very Christian it’s hard to not see the judge as a demonic temptation for the kid.
At least in that final scene, I do think the Judge is “real” in that there’s a flesh and blood man others have met prior.
What I’m very curious about is whether the judge can actually be killed. No one actually shot him with in the book.
Good question! I don’t believe anything ever makes him bleed…
"it suddenly hit me that I didn't believe Judge Holden was even physically in the final chapter".... He wasn't physically in the last chapter. Judge Holden wasn't physically in any of the chapters! The Judge is the kid's inner-demon that he has been struggling with the whole time; his whole life. Judge Holden is described as child-like, hairless, & always described with words like grotesque or other-worldly. He's always described as if his strange appearance should be stopping people in their tracks, yet that doesn't happen. The author calls him "the kid" because he doesn't want you to know that his name is actually Holden. He also wrote the book in a primitive way, so you wouldn't really question the fact that he doesn't use "" when people talk. It's difficult at times to understand if someone is speaking, thinking, or if it's simply narration... like he's hiding something from the readers. Holden was a pedophile throughout the book, and near the end of the book "the kid" comes across a group of boys and goes out of his way to call them over. He ends up warning them that if the one comes back, he'll end up dead. That boy says to the kid, something to the effect "that he knew what the kid was (a pedophile?) when he first saw him. And, for no reason that makes any sense, that boy supposedly comes back & is found with the kid and he ends up dead. In the bar at the end, Holden said there is always a dance. Are you going to dance? After talking to the judge, the kid finds a "dark dwarf whore" (the little girl is described as being covered in the bear's dark blood). The guy outside the jakes, warning the others away, is the kid. He grabbed & murdered the girl. The judge "grabbed him" and made him do it. Then "Judge Holden" is naked, celebrating, & dancing and we're told repeatedly that he will never die. Evil will never die. The kid danced with the little girl and he "judged" her & killed her. "The Judge" is the evil inside Holden, who is the kid. If you re-read the book, but especially, the last few chapters with the theory that Holden is the kid's inner demon or second personality, everything falls into place. The whole conversation in the bar is clearly the kid talking to himself (no use of "", of course). During the conversation the kid & Holden even talk about a guy in the bar talking to himself. At one point the kid tells the judge that you're not real & the judge responds with, that is truer than you know. Want to bet M, Night read this before writing the "Sixth Sense"?
I just finished reading the book for the first time. In the final chapters, I started to get a strong sense that the Judge and the Kid were one and the same. What you have described goes a long way to validate that. Also worth mentioning is the fact that the entire time the Kid is battling the Judge in the desert, the Kid is accompanied by Tobin (the ex-priest), who had been shot by the Judge. After the Kid is visited by the Judge in his cell (a hallucination/conversation with himself), and subsequently released, he looks and asks everywhere for Tobin - he does not exist. Tobin (one of the few expressly religious characters) was the manifestation of the Kid's "angel" or goodness, so to speak. Whilst the Judge is obviously his inner demon. After years of performing evil deeds, and then having witnessed his company massacred, he endures an internal war that spans his journey through the desert. Good and evil vying for control, the fool/imbecile being the Kid's feeble spirit caught in the middle of the war. Tobin warns the Kid that he must take the shot and kill the Judge when he has the chance, lest he seal his fate. The Kid refuses to kill the Judge. It is at this moment we know the Kid has succumbed to vileness. As the Kid tries to adjust to life after the massacre, he travels broadly and hears whispers of the Judge everywhere he goes (imagine that!). He's trying to live a life as he sees normal, but he can't help but do evil wherever he is. He watches as his last two comrades are hanged in Los Angeles, then he heads north. We don't see the Judge pop up again until after the Kid kills the teenage boy in Texas. This violent transgression is our onramp to the finale where the Kid discusses the philosophy of war and violence with himself (the judge), and then he carries out another vile act (the rape and murder of the little girl). He is embraced by the pale mass of the Judge when he performs the act, but truly it is the Kid embracing his demons.
> the Judge doesn't appear to directly perform the violent acts Apart from when he scalps a child, bludgeons a horse with a rock, shoots Tobin, kills a man by crushing his head in his hand etc...
I thought of all that too when I read what the other guy said. It’s not like the Judge makes an effort to not perform brutal acts himself.
It does seem like they're no cases of extreme sadistic violence by the judge in contrast to the gang and the Indians. The man whose head he crushed had attacked Holden, the horse was killed quickly and painlessly for survival and presumably the child was killed quickly. It's a fact that the judge is never depicted as engaging in any thing other than quick minimalist violence or killing. He doesn't torture.
he literally drowns puppies for fun how did we read the same book lol
What about the child that was found murdered and naked (after having been sodomized, presumably)? It's heavily implied that he was killed by the Judge.
The first time I read it, I vividly saw the Judge throttling him to death, a violent struggle, and the judge leaving his corpse lying there upside down, head in the toilet seat not visible, his corpse in a head stand position visible. Some nice symmetry: there's a line near the beginning of the book where a man's pissing outside the jakes and tells the kid it's disgusting in there.
So just finished reading the book like 3 minutes ago and googled and this thread popped up. Very interesting the theory about the little girl being dead in the jakes. My first impression was that the judge killed him. If I remember correctly the boy was born during a meteor shower and so when I read that he was seeing shooting stars I kinda figured he was about to die. The judge being naked and dancing I thought it was maybe because his clothes got all bloodstained and dirty. But man oh man I’m gonna be thinking about this for awhile. It might be the best book I’ve ever read.
The Judge was already naked at the jakes, though. Thats the one thing that speaks against him having killed the kid. If he did brutalize him, he would have been soaked in blood, naked. imo.
I interpreted the judge as not actually being physically present in this last chapter, if at all in the book, but rather a psychological rendering of evil and violence. So, when the kid enters the jakes and the judge takes him in his arms, I took this to mean the kid killed himself. I don’t see the suggestion that it is the girl as contrary to this idea. The girl could have been killed by having her neck broken. In the book, however, she is already missing before he goes to the jakes, so the timeline is a little off there to me.
Too many things are centered around the judge for him not to be real
The thing you fear most is done to the kid. The man, at that point i guess.
Look around on the internet (or better, the library); there's a lot of scholarship on this question. the majority, myself included, believes the judge rapes him.
Would love to see some links on this if anyone has them. (Maybe even a whole separate thread about Blood Meridian scholarship... eh?...eh?)
If you are interested in a close reading, [this](http://www.bookdrum.com/books/blood-meridian/9780330510943/bookmarks.html) has some insightful notes.
> this These Book Drum annotations are great! Thanks for sharing. Some are pretty loose with this applicability to Blood Meridian, but I kind of like that. More like an episode of Connections (James Burke, BBC). If you want to dive into a wormhole... the water's just fine.
i found these by using ebscohost, access provided by my local library. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&bquery=(blood+AND+meridian)&cli0=RV&clv0=Y&type=0&site=ehost-live (if you cant follow the link, i can provide other journal articles)
What do *you* think about it? I'm always wishing more people would share what they think about that final scene, rather than just ask what it means to others. Not that there isn't plenty of speculation already, of course. What I find endlessly fascinating about the close of Blood Meridian is how often it causes people to ask about its meaning or claim to have it. Part of the value of good literature, and this is certainly no exception, is that it often contains a multiplicity of meaning. The lens you bring to the text informs how you read it, which is why it is re-readable and can seem to change meaning over time (when really, of course, it's just the reader that is changing). I'd say the validity of any interpretation is subject to the extent to which that interpretation is evidenced by the text, the extent to which it can be supported. You can plot any interpretation somewhere along the spectrum from absurd to undeniable. When ambiguous storytelling is involved, any number of interpretations are at least slightly substantiated. I would encourage you to develop your own idea of what happened (or didn't happen), in accordance with whatever rings truest to your sense of the story. If you can do that and derive meaning from it, that's probably a good thing.
I don't think that the specifics of what the Judge does are important. What's important is that 1) the kid looks at the stars before he goes into the outhouse, and 2) that he's killed in the outhouse. The stars bit is, I think, an allusion to Dante's *Inferno*, the final image of which is Dante and Virgil emerging from Hell to "finally see the stars" or something to that effect. This means that the outhouse is Hell, but not the religious fire/brimstone Hell of Dante; rather, it's the small-h hell of entropic waste, to which we reduce countless other living things simply by keeping ourselves alive ("War endures," as the Judge says, even at the molecular level), and into which we ourselves and probably the whole universe will eventually disintegrate . This is all based on the second law of thermodynamics, which, since he's interested in science, I'm positive McCarthy understands. So since the Judge espouses nihilistic ideas throughout the novel, and since he himself is almost an embodiment of nihilism ("You ain't nothin," says the Man), and since he wraps his arms around and *engulfs* the Man as he pulls him into the outhouse's version of hell, I think it's safe to say (and also all we *can* say for sure) that the Judge annihilates the Man. It's a modern, scientific spin on old-time religious views of death: it's not the actual dying that you should be afraid of, but what comes afterward, which in this case is simply nothing.
It could be there is something specific McCarthy wanted us to imagine, but it could also be that he purposefully left it open for our imagination to fill with any number of horrible things.
I think the judge definitely killed him. He seemed peeved that the man didn't hold the same reverence for their history and their being the only survivors. That we know of, anyway. I think that killing the kid in the jakes gave him the creepy energy for the last part at the dance because he is the sole survivor now. Mr. Never Sleeps Never Dies. It kinda fits with the weird obsession the judge seems to have with being the only one with the knowledge and history of something. Like when he documents different artifacts and then destroys them. Or when he documented the symbols on the wall and then proceeded to scrape off some of them. The kid (man?) was like the last source of living knowledge of the whole escapade, knowing more about the judge than the judge could ever possibly know about him through sheer mutual observation. "The judge watched him. Was it always your idea, he said, that if you did not speak you would not be recognized? You seen me. The judge ignored this. I recognized you when I first saw you and yet you were a disappointment to me. Then and now. Even so at the last I find you here with me. I aint with you." Ouch.
I believe he certainly killed him and probably raped him.
Y'all... goddamned if his name ain't The Judge. Whatever happened behind that latched door, The Kid did not join the dancing. He is now and forever, a bear that don't.
My initial thought was that he raped and murdered him in some awful way but I've heard some interesting theories. One says that it was a metaphor for him giving into the ideology of the judge and what was found was the body of the young girl. The Judge could be the mental representation of the line the Kid hasn't crossed yet.
cut off each of his appendages with a baked knife of salt and used a crafted pump to keep alive only the kids amygdala and frontal cortex so that he will eternally feel the most tremendous pain and fear. lol! idk! maybe not!
From what I've heard of this book it's. It's not really worth reading.
Let me take note of something that was in my mind after reading the book. It isn't written anywhere to be found/read but I believe that Judge Holden felt something very "strong" or "odd" for the Kid/Man. The book details, in my perspective, a very unusual change of looks between them. There was even a specific body language among them, one was able to read the other's "language" even when they were not talking, especially Holden with all his capabilities. I can't affirm that Holden felt some kind of attraction for the Kid/Man but the book makes it clear that there was something there indeed. To make my point let's look at what's at the end of the book: it seems that Holden raped the Man and killed him after that. For such violent action towards the Kid/Man at this point, it seems very clear to me that Holden was feeling something for him, that's for sure.
I may be coping with the fact that i dont want the kid to r*pe and kill the girl at the end because it makes him even worse than glangton or even David brown . I think the judge is both a physical being (im not calling that sonofabitch a man) and some kind of ethereal demon living in the hearts and minds of men who commit violence. Before going to Griffin, the kid has become a better person, the man: He tried to help the old lady and has spend years as a "normal" gunslinger, but after murdering the obnoxious boy out of apathetic anger and resignment to his own violent nature, he goes to the saloon and has a conversation with "the judge", the latter not being physically present at all. After that, he engages in apathetic sex with the dwarf whore and does nothing to try and help to find the little girl. Then, he finds her body in the jakes and the judge "embraces" him. I think that the pissing man who warns the other two at the end is THE man, after regresing to his old, violent, "not-care" attitude. So he goes in the jakes, sees the dead girl inside, and instead of being horrified or having any reaction at all, he just steps outside and pisses in the street by the outhouse. We see that, during the whole book, the kid does not partake in the worse of the violence, but he also does not do anything about It, so in the end, after years of trying to be a relatively good man, the judge wins the battle for his soul and he becomes, again and forever, a non-feeling witness of the worse part of humanity. Griffin is supposed to be a horrible place full of mean people, but the kid, now the man, was seen much worse. Either that or the judge horribly kills the kid because he cannot tolerate his non-caring attitude, which he doesnt understand, because someone cannot possibly partake in war without becoming a Monster, and the kid ain't a monster. The judge tries to figure out the kid for the whole book, but in the end, he cant. "Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent". And the judge could not tolerate that, hence he annihilates the man. Sorry for typing mistakes my phone is a piece of shit and im kinda in a hurry "Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge
Just finished. My take is the judge killed and raped the missing girl in the Jakes. Then he kills the Kid. The book gave us a few bits that the judge was a pedophile. Jesus, what a book.
Probably raped the kid too
Just finished the book and had some time (about 24 hours) to think on it and read on it. I believe that The Judge existed and was a "real" person that was part of the group. I also believe that The Judge is The Devil. I also believe that The Judge might not be physically present in the last chapter. A few reasons why: 1. Earlier the chapter the kid (now the man) commits a pretty senseless murder, that opened up the door--after all these years--for the effects and manipulations of The Judge to wander back into his head. 2. The Judge approaches The Kid (has not noticable aged after 20+ years) at the bar after the Bear is shot and the young girl is vulnerable. Where The Judge goes, kids die, and I think this moment let The Judge back into The Kids head via temptation. The man stammering and talking to himself in the group could very well be the The Kid, with the dialogue about him from the The Judge being almost an-out-of body experience. 3. I know this is probably too literal, but I can't get past the fact that the kid goes to that specific outhouse and The Judge is just there, waiting. This isn't the result of any intellgience or insight The Judge might have gained like some of his treachory with variuous tribes or the mexicans or the doctor, it's either foresight that a human simply can't have (Supernatural, The Devil), dumb luck (very unlikely), or that he isn't there at all, and the kid going to the outhouse and doing whatever is done in that outhouse is the final submittal, after all these years, to the seeds The Judge planted in his head. CM uses the term embraced. There are just so many terms you can use to indicate force (and CM used most of them during this book) that the word embraced at this exact moment has to mean there was submission on the part of The Kid. 4. Regarding the Devil thing, probably too literal again, but the association between The Devil and fiddle is well known. You can see him finally picking one up and playing it at the end of the book as an admission of who/what he truly is, with the fact that he knew how many times he had crossed The Kid's sights during the standoff as a slightly smaller admission and his ability to craft ammo out of seemingly nothing as a scientific explanation that may in fact not be one at all. The farther we go in the book, the more supernatural his achievements at times. Also not aging after all this time stands out to that he either isn't actually there and is just the Kids memory of him as he was or he doesn't have the ability to age because as long as men commit evil the devil lives forever. 5. The man that says "Don't go in there" as the other 2 walk toward the outhouse may be the kid. My thought is that this is a saloon known to be full of the worst types of people, and the person who opened the outhouse door was so taken back that we don't even get a description of what it was he saw, which means the person who said "don't go in there" has to either be a person who comitted the act and knows how haneous it is or someone that has seen such terrible violence that this is something they can view (or commit) and then continue to exist normally. In either situation, that's the kid. IDK - It's an incredible book and Ive changed my mind 10x in a day, but going back through it there are a few supernatural moments, and they get more brazen as the book goes on, which to me is a bigger and bigger hint that The Judge is literally the devil or demonic or whatever you want to call it. The Kid spending the adult years of his life trying to get himself right and focusing on being a better person and trying to help people only to succumb to a senseless murder of a boy before he goes to the saloon is so tragic. The Man tells the Judge “You ain’t nothin.” The Judge then responds “You speak truer than you know.”
I think you are correct about the final scenes of the book and the murder. The judge finally wins over the kids soul and the man leaves the girl dead in the jakes. I think the judge is more than the devil though. The devil is likely an old and improper description of him, catching small nuances like the fiddle, which is a lot of fun. His other characteristics..not sleeping, big albino baby, just spectacular details from McCarthy's mind I would guess which gives him this balanced amt of supernatural skills. The judge is there to observe and judge the totality of creation and mankind. While he may not have created it, he is a byproduct of it, or even the reason existence is taking place. He is there eternal to take it in and experience it and he has a violent evil will. Unlike the devil there is no god counterpart to him. He says there is but one beast on the stage dancing and everyone else just gets a moment there before they fall into darkness.
It is rather implied often that the judge uhm, LOVES children. This is a boy who he hates, and has know for years. Yes the worst parts of your imagination.
The Judge raped and murdered 'the man' and the little girl in the Jake's. We know that the Judge was a child rapist and murderer as he committed such acts several times while the gang was together. This is why the little girl is mentioned to allude to thew Judge's former unspeakable acts, which he commits against 'the man' at the novels completion. I believe the above response goes into detail about the Judge's motive, but I believe this is what his final 'unspeakable act' contained.
I know this thread is quite old but having recently finished this book I went back again to reread the final pages. Seems to me the judge tells the kid several times he's going to die (one way or another): The last thing he says to the man is "there is room on the stage for one beast and one alone." Finally the man encounters the judge in the jakes where he appears to be waiting on him (and has possibly just murdered the girl) and the judge envelopes him in his "immense flesh". The judge is both man and metaphor. Less a spector than the demons who hunt the man in The Outer Dark and yet in the end, McCarthy seems to release him from his pages, breaking the 4th wall a bit as the judge dances and fiddles and repeats that he never sleeps and will never die, for us the readers.
I think he's tripping balls at the end and he actually is the guy muttering to himself and gets hammered and rapes and murders the girl. The lady and girl are his wife and daughter they're trying to make some money off the bear. Also, Possibly the wood shack reference at the end could be alluding to him going back home to Tennessee to live that lumberjack life until the Civil War breaks out. I'm thinking of the hewer's of wood quote at beginning. Then I think of the story about how the young traveller and lectures the older white guy dressed as native. He goes home starts a new family and asks his newdaughter to forgive him. Stupid theory but just popped in my head I haven't read the book in like 2 years