Transcript for:
Analysis of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian

the story that we are going to be talking about today is one of the most incredible and terrible stories that I have ever read it is said by many to be one of the greatest if not the greatest American novel ever written and by others to be one of the most brutal and evil things ever put to paper and as someone who has read the story a few times at this point I have to agree with both sides that story that we are going to be talking about today is the novel Blood Meridian by cormack McCarthy there are a few stories that I read that I can definitively say change the way I look at storytelling or at narratives as a whole and this book is certainly one of them now of course I am a little biased cormick's two most famous stories No Country for Old Men and the road are among my favorite stories ever written so as a fan of the author I went into blood marid and hopeful and after reading it I think this just might be his Masterpiece now a lot of you might have heard of Blood Meridian not from its history as a novel but its history as a film adaptation or more specifically the lack thereof Blood Meridian has officially been put forward as a film on four separate occasions some of them having names like Martin scorsi and Tommy Lee Jones attached and despite that the film has never got out of pre-production most of the time because production companies find the contents of the novel far too disturbing and graphic to be adapted to film and as mentioned earlier I see where they're coming from a lot of the stuff in here would be a massive risk to ever put to screen but with that being said if you're someone who values story and literature especially American literature this is a story you really shouldn't miss out on and that brings us to today what I want to do is go through the story of Blood Meridian as I do with a lot of literature topics in these videos and talk about the characters events and themes as they occur within the story and as we read the book and analyze it together I want to get across to you all why this is such an important and brutal story so before we start I have a couple disclaimers for one if you read any literature or more specifically disturbing literature and I'll talk about the specific contents of the book in a moment and if you're okay with those contents then I want you to stop watching this video right now find Blood Meridian audiobook ebook I don't care and immediately listen to this story as it was originally told I would hate to rob you of experiencing this story the way it was originally written because it truly is a one-of aind experience so if you read anything and you're okay with disturbing content then go ahead and enjoy the book and for those of you that have already read it don't want to engage with the disturbing content of it or a lot of people on YouTube who are like myself and will not read a story no matter how many times I tell you to which hi then hopefully this video can serve as a substitute or summary for the events of the book but I can never tell it in the way McCarthy did and the second disclaimer for those who may be interested in the book is know that this story takes place in a preil war United States so all instances of extreme violence racism uh sexual abuse towards both women and children as well as Extreme Animal violence are depicted thoroughly and gratuitously the story deals with the most evil parts of humanity and there is a purpose to it and we're going to talk about what that purpose is in this video but if those are topics that you don't want to deal with and you don't want to see outright then do not read this book and perhaps even don't watch this video I understand that a lot of what I'm going to say is a lot and also that this video probably won't be monetized but I can't not talk about this story but despite all of that I find this book to be so special that I am excited to explain the story to those of you who haven't heard it before and to nerd out about the details of it with those of you that have so if you're as excited to hear about it as I am to talk about it then stick around as we talk about the story of Blood Meridian right after we deal with whatever emotional trauma I'm about to go through right now oh why hello there I was just taking a moment to relax as I think we all should before talking about subject matters like we'll be talking about today whenever we're confronted by emotional or intense media it's important to analyze our own feelings and understand if this toic is who cares about all of that when we've got the high octane action of today's sponsor World of Tanks World of Tanks let you participate in high adrenaline online battles find the right armor and strategy that works for you and get in on the best competitive tank game that's even free to play in World of Tanks you can customize your Arsenal with tank destroyers artillery light medium and heavy tanks and with over 600 vehicles to choose from you can pick any 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considering this actually adds some level of production value but the story of Blood Meridian is for one a story that doesn't have that many illustrations or depictions and two even if it did I probably couldn't show them on YouTube so for this story we're going to have a lot of mood setting a lot of environments for us to talk through and there's going to be a lot of sections of me reading Pages out of the book and I'll be reusing the same images so bear with me through the low visual quality I feel like the contents of this story more than make up for it and also as we begin uh it feels weird to say but there's almost a nervousness to me making this video right now cuz like I I talk about a lot of important stories on this channel right things like The Divine Comedy or Paradise Lost but there's something about this one that it it just strikes such a personal cord with me about not only its contents and the message it's getting across but the setting and the characters that I I know if this resonates with someone the way it resonated with me it can really change your life as a writer or Storyteller um so it's it's almost like I feel a responsibility standing here talking about it so if there are certain segments in the story that I seem a bit dramatic or I am reading parts of it the way I feel they're intended to be read then just bear with me I think this story is one worth embarrassing myself over so with all of that out of the way let's go ahead and get started with the first question that a lot of you probably have what is this book even about and to explain that I need to explain a little bit of History shortly after the Mexican-American War a little more than a decade before the American Civil War along the border between the United States and Mexico there was constant skirmishes between American soldiers and Mexican soldiers even though the war was officially over some soldiers referred to as filibusters would Mount up arms and charge into the enemy's country to continue the war in the midst of this Bloodshed Native American tribes like the Apaches and Yuma were fighting soldiers on both fronts the natives wanting both the Americans and Mexicans to stay off their land so both the Americans and Mexicans were hostile towards the natives and vice versa creating a scenario where all three sides of the conflict equally want each other dead to combat these Native Americans around 1849 The Mexican government began offering 100 pesos per Native American scalp so that meant that anyone Mexican white or native could get a contract from the Mexican government to go collect native scalps and then sell those back to the government for money one of the most famous practitioners of this was a man named Samuel Chamberlain one of the American filibusters who I mentioned earlier while in Mexico Samuel separated from the American Military and decided to join a gang who set about collecting native scalps the leader of this gang was a man named John Joel glanton a former Texas Ranger and soldier in the Mexican-American War the gang who rode with him was known as The glanton Gang and they were among the most feared and brutal head hunters in the wild west years after Samuel Chambers left the glanton gang he would detail their Journeys in a book called My Confession Recollections of a rogue so everything that I just said is from a true historical account of the American and Mexican Wild West so where Blood Meridian comes into play is cormack McCarthy took the legends of this gang of which little is factually known and he decides to tell the story of what they might have been like through the perspective of a young boy and this Grand tale that deals with fate and War and death and purpose simply begins with the description of this child the book opening with these lines see the child he is pale and thin he wears a thin and ragged linen shirt he Stokes the skullery fire outside like dark turned Fields with Rags of snow and darker Woods beyond that Harbor yet a few last wolves his folk are known for huers of wood and drawers of water but in truth his father has been a school Master he lies in drink he quotes from poets whose names are now lost the boy crouches by the fire and watches him night of your birth 33 the leonids they were called God how the stars did fall I looked for blackness holes in the heavens the Dipper stove the mother dead these 14 years did incubate in her own bosom the creature who would carry her off the father never speaks her name the child does not know it he has a sister in this world that he will not see again he watches pale and unwashed he can neither read nor write and in him Broods already a taste for Mindless violence all history present in that Vis the child the father of the man we are told from this already that the child this kid who is never named in the story by the way he is simply referred to as the kid we are told that the kid's life was rought out of violence his very birth killed his mother born in blood we hear things like the imagery of the star falling as he was born his father is a drunk who is both a school Master but hasn't taught him how to read almost inconsequential in the child's life so at 14 years old with no purpose left and a mine for irrational violence the kid runs away he runs away from his home in Tennessee and he doesn't know where he's going but he just starts heading Southwest for several months he stays in New Orleans and while he's there he periodically gets into fist fights on riverboats and decides to leave after he's shot he's taken in and cared for by a kind woman a Tavern Keeper's wife who he doesn't have any money to pay so one night he just sneaks out for a couple of years the kid just just wanders the countryside periodically getting into fights and working odd jobs eventually he winds up in the city of nakad dois and while he's there he comes across a Tent Revival the kid having no other place to go and no other purpose in the world decides to step into the makeshift Church there are several points in this story where characters within the story will give Tales or Parables that as I talk about them I'll talk about their greater meaning into the plot but a lot of them are interesting and I want to share them with you I say that and also say to mention while this story is set in privil war United States uh as you can imagine there are a lot of slurs and other terms that are not acceptable to say uh especially on YouTube so for obvious reasons if I come across a place where one of those slurs is present I'm going to replace the word with black person or Mexican person or what have you because again duh I don't even know if the portion I'm about to read contains any of those but just in case it does I wanted to make that known because there are a lot in here the kid walks into the tent it says that it's been raining for 2 weeks and inside of the tent it just stinks with the smell of wet dogs and human odor and apparently this Reverend green has been preaching for 2 weeks straight neighbors said the Reverend he couldn't stay out of these here hell hell hell holes right here in nakod does I said to him said you going to take the Son of God in there with you and he said oh no no I ain't and I said don't you know that he said I will follow ye always even unto the end of the road that was my Evangelical voice hope you enjoyed it the Reverend continues to give his sermon talking about how no matter where you travel or what you do God is always with you he's an ever present figure even if you don't want him to be the kid seems to disregard this and has a conversation with the man next to him about the weather and it's immediately after this that we are introduced to I have to think this over but what might be the greatest villain in all of fiction or at least top five greatest villains in all of fiction it's weird to call him a villain because the story is primarily made up of villains there's really no Heroes here um but he's certainly an antagonistic force in the story and that is the character known as the judge and the judge's introduction into the narrative is a perfect introduction of this character an enormous man dressed in an oil cloth Slicker had entered the tent and removed his hat he was bald as a stone and he had no trace of beard and he had no brows to his eyes nor lashes to them he was close on to 7 ft in height and he stood smoking a cigar even in this nomadic House of God and he seemed to have removed his hat only to chase the rain from it for now he put it on again the Reverend had stopped his sermon altogether there was no sound in the tent all watched the man He adjusted the hat and then pushed his way forward as far as the crate board Pulpit where the Reverend stood and there he turned to address the reverend's congregation his face was Serene and strangely childlike his hands were small he held them out ladies and gentlemen I feel it my duty to inform you that the man holding this revival is an impostor he holds no papers of divinity from any institution recognized or improvised he is altogether devoid of the least qualification to the office he has usurped and has only committed to memory a few passages from the good book for the purpose of lending to his fraudulent sermons some faint flavor of the piety he despises in truth the gentleman standing here before you posing as a minister of the Lord is not only totally illiterate but is also wanted by the law in the states of Tennessee Kentucky Mississippi and Arkansas this man who will come to find is known as the judge steps to the front of the room and begins announcing how this man is not only fraudulent but is wanted by the law oh God cried the Reverend lies lies he began reading feverishly from his Open Bible the judge ignores this and continues on on a variety of charges the most recent of which involved a girl of 11 years I said 11 who had come to him in trust and whom he was surprised in the act of violating while actually clothed in the liary of his God aan swept through the crowd a lady sank to her knees this is him cried the Reverend sobbing this is him the devil here he stands not 3 weeks before this he was run out of Fort Smith Arkansas for having congress with a goat yes lady that is what I said goat why damn my eyes if I won't shoot the son of a said a man rising at the far side of the tent and drawing a pistol from his boot he leveled it and fired from there the entire tin Revival breaks out in a gunfight people begin pulling boot knives and shooting randomly into each other several people in the tent including and the kid begin to grab their knives and cut holes in the tent so they can make a speedy exit the kid makes his way to a bar across the street and from there he watches people run bleeding out of the tent before the tent itself Falls over surely with the dead Reverend inside by the time the kid gets there the judge has already made it to the bar and after more men begin to come into the bar out of the rain a few of them walk up to the judge and begin talking to him judge how did you come to have the goods on that note account Goods said the judge when you was in Fort Smith Fort Smith where did you know him to know all that stuff on him you mean Reverend green yes sir I reckon you was in Fort Smith before you come out here I was never in Fort Smith in my life doubt that he was they looked from one to the other well where was it you run up on him I never laid eyes on that man before today never even heard of him he raised his glass to drink there was a strange silence in the room the men looked like mud Effigies finally someone began to laugh then another soon they were all laughing together someone bought the judge a drink the judge either not liking the Reverend or out of just plain meanness walked into a Tent Revival told a lie that got the Reverend as well as several others killed and seemed to do all of it for fun which is a perfect introduction to his character the kid seemingly pays no mind to this there's very few moments of in the book were told explicitly what the kid is thinking or what his thoughts on something are but he does take note of the judge strangeness it comes up later in the story I mean how could you not you're in the middle of the old west and among all of the Raggedy Shaggy faces of the men with their long beards and long hair you have someone in an oiled suit who is nearly 7t tall completely hairless and as we'll find in the story albino technically I don't remember any point in the story where McCarthy explicitly says he's albino but he describes him as very very pale and most people interpret his appearance to be that of a 7ot tall giant hulking albino man he seems like an alien stepped into this world for some purpose Beyond ours and it's something that we'll touch on more as we get into his character the other detail about the story which I probably should have prefaced whenever I was telling people to go read it so oops um but something you need to know going in is cormi McCarthy doesn't use punctuation he uses periods the occasional question mark every now and then a comma and that's it he also uses colons whenever he's about to list something but that's it uh he said in an interview I believe the quote was why would I mark up the page with silly little dashes and lines so there's no quotation marks there's no uh semicolons there's no breaks and sentences you decide where the commas would go typically um so I am even by just reading the words on page I'm kind of giving you my interpretation of what's emphasized I remember whenever I first started reading McCarthy in high school uh we read the road my junior year English class which was a trip uh but I remember whenever we started the book the teacher was like oh yeah just so you know McCarthy doesn't use punctuation and I remember being like you can do that you can get to such a level of writing that you're just like man who cares but it is a testament to his writing style that there are several points in this story where there are like more than three people having a conversation at once and because of how each character is characterized despite never being denoted who's talking or given quotation marks normally I have no trouble just reading straight through it and figuring out who's saying what so a couple of days later the k still staying in nakod does and it's still raining so he goes out one day to go to the bathroom or the Jakes as they're called in the story effectively an ous so he's walking out of the house he's staying in to go to the ous and it had been raining for so long that they had set out boards through the middle of town so that rather than stepping in the deep mud you could just walk across the boards so as he's going as he's walking on the boards to go to the bathroom there is a man walking up from the bathroom so the two are walking towards each other and as as they get to the same spot the man who's walking up says you better get out of my way so the kid just kicks him in the jaw and they both pull knives and immediately get into a knife fight so the kid like he cares about his own life so little that stepping in the mud is like N I guess it's worth dying over so as they get into this fight where they're both pulling knives and trying to stab each other someone comes up and just knocks both of them out uh it's also mentioned that they were both drunk in the street so probably a police officer and then the kid wakes up a day later in a hotel room sitting across from the same man he got into the fight with the two of them realize that they have each other's knives so they pass each other's knives back and I guess decide to quit fighting so the Str introduces himself as toadvine toadvine has several facial tattoos and it's toadvine is mentioned as having several face tattoos and also spending a time in prison uh despite this he thinks that the kid's all right and as a matter of fact he finds the kid so all right that he's immediately like hey you want to help me go beat up a guy and the kid again with nothing better to do in life like sure so the kid follows toine to a hotel and and toadvine walks to the front desk and asks if this cerdit man's there and the guy at the front desk says yeah but if he sees you he'll kill you toadvine brushes him off they go upstairs to the top floor of the hotel where the man's door is locked the man that toadvine wants to beat up and Rob so toad Vine tells the kid to get some paper and light it on fire and shove it under the dude's door so the kid does and it starts to set the door on fire so whenever the man comes to the door and unlocks it to put out the fire toadvine and the kid rush in beat him half to death and then run away as the entire Hotel burns down so the kid's at a point where he's walking through the mud and he's like yeah I'll die so that I don't have to step in it uh and then he gets knocked out and he wakes up across from the guy who was trying to kill him and the guy's like hey do you want to help me go beat up this random guy you don't know and the kid's like sure and they get there and Toad Vine's like burn the hotel down and the kid's like okay the kid has no purpose he is as the story said in the beginning rot with a mind for violence and not much else so after this the kid goes to get his mule and continue on his journey and as the kid leaves town the final lines of chapter 1 say this when he passed back through the town the hotel was burning and men were standing around watching it some holding empty buckets a few men set horseback watching the flames and one of these was the judge as the kid rode past the judge turned and watched him too he turned the horse as if he'd have the animal watch to when the kid looked back the judge smiled the kid touched up the mule and they went sucking out past the Old Stone Fort along the road West the judge is an omnipresent threat throughout the story in a way that's hard to explain at least on a first read through first understanding of the story uh but it's menacing that even in the beginning he was right there smiling just as fate so happened to bring these two together even for a short time the judge will come up later in the tale but for now we continue to follow the kid on his currently pointless Expedition as the kid continues on his journey it begins to storm and he comes across a Hermit who's living in a mud hut nowhere else to go the kid asked to stay with him and the hermit agrees all the hermit has to offer in way of food is some rotten prairie dog and old salty water The Hermit says that he used to be a slave trader and has since fallen on Hard Times hence him now living in a mud hut on the side of the road and as the hermit is describing his situation the two begin to have a conversation beginning with the kid I thank you lost you way in the dark said the old man he stirred the fire standing slender tusks of bone up at out of the ashes the kid didn't answer the old man swung his head back and forth the way of the transgressor is hard God made this world but he didn't make it to suit everybody did he I don't believe he much had me in mind I said the old man but where does a man come by his Notions what worlds he seen that he liked better I can think of better places and better ways can you make it be no no it's a mystery a man's at odds to know his mind cuz his mind is OD he has to know it with he can know his heart but he don't want to rightly so best not to look in there it ain't the heart of a creature that is bound in the way that God has set for it you can find meanness in the least of creatures but when God made man the devil was at his elbow a creature that can do anything make a machine and a machine to make the machine and evil that can run itself a thousand years no need to tend it you believe that I don't know believe that the hermit puts forward the idea that man is especially evil because of his capabilities for evil you can find meanness anywhere you can find mean as in an animal but maliciousness and Terror that is the work of man and that at some point man's eil become self sustaining and is a creature that we can no longer control there's also this strange mention uh so the kid goes to sleep and then it says he woke sometime in the night with the Hut in almost total darkness and the her hermit bent over him and all but in his bed what do you want he said but the hermit crawled away and in the morning when he woke the Hut was empty and he got his things and left so um th this is never stated like why the hermit was looking over maybe he was just you know weird and staring at the kid but the story has a lot of Notions or implications of um what's the word pedophilia uh and different instances and I think this might be one of those it would also be fitting to The Narrative of this story if someone who talked about man's capacity for evil also had a large capacity for evil but again this is very minor compared to what we're going to get into as the kid travels he meets a band of Cattlemen going to beer and this is one of the only instances in the entire story where a random meeting turns out good for everyone involved the Cattlemen are kind they help give him directions and the next morning before he leaves he sees that they left him some food and a knife and while the kids made it well into Texas at this point it's fitting that one of the only acts of Goodwill in the story happens right before he begins his pilgrimage down south so the kid makes his way to the town of beer again he's just kind of roaming randomly right now and whenever he gets there there's a big dance and party going on in the street and he makes his way into a local bar when he gets there the bartender only speaks Spanish and the kid tries to explain that he wants a drink but he doesn't have any money to pay for it so as the barman keeps saying in Spanish that he isn't going to give him a drink for free the kid keeps saying that he'll work for a drink eventually the kid starts making sweeping motions so the Baran figures out that he wants to sweep even though he keeps saying the room doesn't need sweeping but the kid can understand him so the barman hands him a broom and the kid just starts sweeping up around the floors and then whenever comes back to the barman expecting a drink the barman won't give him one because he never agreed to it so the kid's like all right I'll kill you for it as he starts to make his way to the Barm the Barm pulls a pistol on him but then one of the older men in the bar says something to the barman and the barman decides that I guess this isn't worth killing the kid over so he puts down the gun and picks up a hammer and walks around the the bar to fight the kid with his hands so the grabs a whiskey bottle breaks it over the guy's head and it's not explicitly said that he kills him but it says that the kid stabs him in the eye and blood spurts everywhere and the kid steals whiskey from behind the counter and leaves after drinking the entire bottle he then wakes up the next day in an abandoned and rundown Church churches come up a lot in this story and every time they do there's death involved this time being the first and most minor infraction where the kid SE sees buzzards eating some dead animal at the front of the building the kid drunkenly stands up looks around for his mule and can't find it so he just starts walking down the river until he runs into it eventually he finds his mule and while he's at the river he decides to take his clothes off and take a bath while he's naked and lying on the River Bank an American Soldier walks up to him so while talking through the branches on the side of the river howdy there said the rider he didn't answer he moved to the side to see better through the branches howdy there where you at what do you want I wanted to talk to you what about Hell Fire come on out I'm white and Christian the kid reaching up through the Willows trying to get his britches the belt was hanging down and he tugged at it but the britches were hung on a limb why don't you go on and leave me the hell alone just wanted to talk to you didn't intend to get y'all riled up you done got me rled I love the language was you the fell knocked in that mixer's head yesterday evening I ain't the law who wants to know Captain White he wants to sign that fell up to join the Army the army yes sir what army company under Captain White we going to whip up on the Mexicans the war's over he says it ain't over where you at Captain White and the soldier who's come to recruit the kid are the filibusters that I mentioned earlier American soldiers who even though the Mexican-American war was over decided to keep fighting for purpose or just cuz they hated Mexico this is expanded on whenever the kid finally puts on his clothes and they start talking kindly fell on Hard Times ain't you son he said I just ain't fell on no good ones I don't know if that's fun to me you ready to go to Mexico I ain't lost nothing down there it's a chance for you to raise yourself in the world you best make a move some way or another for you go Plumb in under what do they give you every man gets a horse and his ammunition I reckon we might find some clothes in your case I ain't got no rifle we'll find you one what about wages Hellfire son you won't need no wages you get to keep everything you can raise we going to Mexico Spoils of War Ain a man in the company won't come out a big land owner how much land you own now I don't know nothing about soldiering the man eyed him he took the unlit cigar from his teeth and turned his head and spat and put it back again where you from he said Tennessee Tennessee well I don't miss doubt what you can shoot a rifle I like that it's good so the man explains to him that the purpose that a lot of them are doing it is because it's War they're plungers effectively you can steal whatever you want like a pirate and after hearing that he'll get money and some clothes and a horse out of it the kid's like sure I'll go die to kill some Mexicans who cares I mean the kid killed someone over a bottle of whiskey and was willing to die so he wouldn't step in the mud I don't really think he has any Creed or purpose to fighting it's just he gets new clothes we rarely get mentions of the story of like I said earlier the kid's mental state or what's going on in his head uh but we get a weird mention of Shame right here whenever the kid goes to meet Captain White the one putting together the filibuster regiment when they meet it says the captain noted his head he was looking the kid over what happened to you what say Sir said the recruiter sir I said what happened to you the kid looked at the man sitting next to him he looked down at himself and he looked at the captain again I was fell on by robbers he said robbers said the captain took everything I had took my watch and everything have you got a rifle not no more I ain't where was it you were robbed I don't know there wasn't no name to it it was was just a Wilderness where were you coming from I was coming from KN KN nakod does yeah yes sir uh yes sir how many were there the kid stared at him robbers how many robbers seven or eight I reckon I got busted in the head with a scattin the captain squinted one eye at him were they Mexicans the the captain as we're going to see just has hate in his heart not much else but the the kid looks at the rags he's wearing the fact he has no clothes or money and decides to lie he doesn't just say this is how I am as it seem he doesn't care about anything but he does have some sense of self-pride because he was not willing to admit that he instead says that he was recently robbed and that's why he looks the way he does there are brief instances of the kid's Humanity or at least his relatability throughout the story and this is one of them the captain after talking about how fine soldiers from Tennessee are said says the captain leaned forward we fought for it lost friends and brothers down there talking about the Mexican-American War and then by God if we didn't give it back back to a bunch of Barbarians that even the most biased in their favor will admit have no least notion in God's Earth of Honor or Justice or the meaning of Republican government a people so cowardly they've paid tribute a 100 years to tribes of naked Savages giving up their crops and livestock mine shut down whole village is abandoned while a heathen horde rides over the land looting and killing with total impunity not a hand raised against them what kind of people are these the Apaches won't even shoot them did you know that they kill them with rocks the captain shook his head he seemed made sad by what he had to tell the captain continues later and says what we are dealing with he said is a race of degenerates a Mongol race little better than black people and maybe no better there is no government in Mexico hell there's no God in Mexico never will be we are dealing with a people manifestly incapable of governing themselves and do you know what happens with people who cannot govern themselves that's right others come in to govern for them so we see here while the kid and seemingly the soldier he talked to by the river are kind of in it for the money the first thing he incentivized him with is oh we're going to get a keep whatever we got in Mexico this Captain White genuinely has a purpose to go there even if that purpose is to just murder Mexican people but it is a stark contrast how the kid and most characters we're going to see later in the story just operate by their own greed and ideas the captain has a reason or a a a calling to what he's doing rather than just his temporary incentive of greed or lust and we're going to see very shortly what this story things of people who have purpose and motives and emotion so after this the boy goes out with two other boys from the filibuster company and the captain has given them money to get a saddle new boots and new clothes after they do that the boys spend the extra money on women and booze but as they get to one bar it says that an old menite is sitting in the corner he begins to speak to them they'll stop you at the river he says the second Corporal looks past his comrades are you talking to me at the river be told they'll jail you to a man who will the United States Army General Worth hell they will pray that they will he looks at his comrades he leans towards the menite what does that mean old man do you cross the river with yon filibuster armed you'll not cross it back don't aim to cross it back we go into Sonora what's it to you old man the menite watches the in Shadow dark before them as it is reflected to him in the mirror Over the Bar he turns to them his eyes are wet he speaks slowly the wrath of God lies sleeping it was hid a million years before men were and only men have power to wake it hell ain't half full hear me you carry war of a Mad man's making onto a foreign land you'll wake more than the dogs so so far we've had the preacher who says the God goes with you everywhere like it or not we've had the hermit who says man has infinite capacity for evil and we have the minite who says that if they journey into this southern land they're going to wake the wrath of God and it seems that part of that wrath was awaken that night because as the three boys get drunk they get into a pointless bar fight and one of them is killed that morning as the kid and the other soldiers stand in in front of their fallen comrade the minite walks up once again and says there is no such joy in the tavern as upon the road there to in other words the death of this boy is just one of many if you continue on this path after this the gang of filibusters begin to travel South with the kid in their ranks they are immediately infinitely out of their depth only a few days of walking they haven't even ran into combat yet and they're already near dehydrated and at the end of their limits four of them die of sickness a week in before they've came into contact with any enemy it says that as they bury their dead and leave the bones of the food they eat behind that a pack of coyotes has just started following them across the desert and eats and digs up whatever they leave behind so even nature itself knows they're not capable of surviving and that they're not a threat out here they find a small house as they're walking through the desert and they go up to it to see if they can get any supplies and all that they find there is an old man who was hiding from them and he's like curled up on the ground babbling it says he wets himself and Captain White looks at him and just says he's a half wit and to get him out of there and they just leave the hypocrisy that's kind of mentioned in the writing of the story is that Captain White is is both there to free and establish government for the people of Mexico while also talking about how much he hates the people of Mexico like every interaction he has with them is you know halfwit or saying that they're barbarians or what have you but he also talks about how his war is Justified because he's really doing it all to help them he is not only a man of principle but a man of intrinsically flawed principle which even that is rare out here as we'll soon see another element of the story whenever people talk about it as you know the Great American novel is the writing of McCarthy himself it it's hard to explain unless you read it but it's almost as if the word and I don't want to say this and sound too pretentious but it's almost like some of the wording transcends nature in a way that gives the story a scope of something greater going on like there's so many beautiful SE of the story to talk about nature but one right here uh that describes the environment as the this gang of filibusters make their way across the desert is a good example they rode on and the sun in the East flushed pale streaks of light and then a deeper run of color like blood seeping up in sudden reaches flaring plain wise and where the Earth drained up into the sky at the edge of creation the top of the sun rose out of nothing like the head of a great red phus until it cleared the UN seen rim and sat Squat and pulsing and malevolent behind them the Shadows of the smallest Stones lay like pencil lines across the sand and the shapes of the men and their mounts Advanced elongate before them like strands of the night from which they'd ridden like tentacles to bind them to the darkness yet to come they rode with their heads down faceless under their hats like an army asleep on the march by mid morning another man had died and they lifted him from the ra wagon where he'd stained the sacks he laid among and buried him also and rode on there's parts of the story where it feels like I'm not reading about Earth it feels like I'm reading about some alien world or some description from Dante's Inferno of Hell itself um it it's it's strange how the story in your mind can contort to fit whatever McCarthy's trying to get across in almost ways that you know the Logistics don't matter especially with characters like the judge which we'll talk more about later he he was a metamorphosis to me through the story the way he looked the way he behaved it it's so interesting how different descriptions of the same thing can make that thing morph and it's one of the I'll I'll talk about this more at the end but it's one of the reasons it would be very hard to adapt this as a film because some of the uniqueness of this story is how it lays in your mind uh as with any story The Unseen element is elaborated on by you and if you have a creative mind some of the depictions in here are beautiful and terrifying sometimes at the same time eventually as the filibusters are riding through the desert they see a group of Native Americans ride up on them from the plane and the captain looks at them and says oh there's probably about a dozen there we'll have some action by the end of the day thinking this all to be a game that he's already won and whenever the commanches ride up the captain and his men are hopelessly out of their depth a legion of horribles hundreds in number half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobe out of a fever dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of Prior owners coats of slain drons frogged and braided calary jackets one in a stove pipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a blood stained wedding veil and some in headgear of crane feathers or rawh hide helmets that bore the horns of bull or Buffalo and one in a pigeon tailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a Spanish conquistador the breastplate and paldrons deeply dented with old blows of mace or saber done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with their hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground around and their horses ears and Tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse's whole head was painted crims in red and all the Horsemen's faces Gody and grotesque with doings like a company of mounted clowns death hilarious all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of Christian Reckoning screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions Beyond right knowing where the eye wonders and the lip jerks and drools oh my God said the sergeant one of the critiques I saw people talking about this story and I guess it's people who just you know enter the story with bad faith or whatever they got to like that part and they quit reading because they thought the depictions of Native Americans was you know incorrect or whatever um just wait to see how McCarthy describes the white men and uh the me meic soldiers he's not favorable towards them either what he's describing here isn't the difference between white man and Native it's people who are not familiar with this country with this world they've entered into and people who are accustomed to it the description of the commanches as they're wearing clothing of previous battles and the armor of a Spanish conquistador a war a turmoil that is centuries now past yet the armor the remnant of it are still out killing still part of battle to this day these are people who are bred and hungry for war against a people who do not know what war they're getting into and because of that rightfully so the filibusters are slaughtered the following paragraphs are long descriptions of the bodies being tored to bits the scalps getting ripped off the slow death and defilement of the corpses if I recall correctly there were 50 men who began this journey with Captain White uh and at the end of this there are eight survivors the kid had survived because early in the battle his horse was hit with an arrow and the horse fell and in the dust and the kid line on the ground they didn't see him as the commanches went through and slaughtered everyone so the kid after the battle's over begins to stumble his way through the desert and eventually comes across another Survivor a man named sprow Sprout's arm is laid up in a sash because it was injured during the battle and at one point he begins to cough up blood into his fist and the kid asks if it's from the injury and spra says no it's because he has tuberculosis or the consumption as they called it and he moved out west for his health which is grimly ironic so standing there in the middle of the desert Sprout's like well you want to head back and the kid says to where and Sprout says I don't know Texas they've been walking for weeks to get out this far and they have absolutely nothing out here to save them so their best guess is to just follow the road so the men just start walking and they come across an abandoned town that it seems was also attacked by the commanches also another point to mention about McCarthy's characterization of several characters in the story is the bias McCarthy had has is always the bias that the kid has within the tail initially he will view some characters as mysterious or righteous only for later in the story them to be described as dogmatic or evil and that's because even though the story isn't first person through the kid's perspective he is the vehicle that we're following so a lot of the world as it's described is the way the kid sees it we also learn information about peoples and groups in the story as the kid and gang as a whole does so as there's quotes and pages I read that have to do with terms like Savages or barbarians that is again the kid's perspective as he is introduced to this world and its effects they get to the town and Sprout decides to hang back because his arm's injured so the kid starts looking through the houses as he does he finds some food but he also finds the charred remains of people who have been burned alive and the slaughtered remains of families as the kid makes his way back to where Sprout was he looks through the courtyard and the story says when he returned to the square Sprout was gone all about lay in Shadow he crossed the square and mounted the stone steps to the door of the church and entered Sprout was standing in the vestibule long butresses of light fell from the high windows in the Western Wall there were no pews in the church and the stone floor was heaped with the scalped and naked and partly eaten bodies of some 40 Souls who barricaded themselves in this house of God against the Heathen Savages had hacked holes in the roof and shot them down from above and the floor was littered with arrow shafts where they'd snap them off to get the clothes from the bodies the Alters had been hauled down and the Tabernacle looted and the great sleeping god of the Mexicans routed from his golden cup the Primitive painted Saints and their frames hung cocked on the walls as if an earthquake had visited and a dead Christ in a glass buyer lay broken in the chancel floor the murdered lay in a great pool of their communal blood it had set up into a sort of pudding crossed everywhere with the tracks of wolves or dogs and along the edges it had dried and cracked into a burgundy ceramic blood lay in dark tongues on the floor and the blood grouted the flagstones and ran in the vestibule where the stones were CED from the field feet of the faithful and their fathers before them and it had threaded its way down the steps and dripped from the stone among the dark red tracks of the Scavengers Sprout turned and looked at the kid as if he'd known his thoughts but the kid just shook his head flies clambered over the peeled and wigless skulls of the dead and flies walked on their shrunken eyeballs come on said the kid they crossed the square in the last of the light and went down the Narrow Street in a doorway a dead child with two buzzards sitting on it Sprout shed his good hand at the buzzards and they batted and hissed and flapped clumsily but they did not fly they continue to walk through the desert spra says that his arm is beginning to stink or in other words it's infected the two of them become so thirsty that they begin to hallucinate of Oasis in the middle of the desert they eventually keep walking until they get to a road leading up a cliff face and around the corner they see a Mexican Soldier along with a company riding their way and at the front the leader is sitting on Captain White's horse with Captain White nowhere to be seen so if you know a Mexican Soldier is riding White's horse things aren't looking too good for white the leader approaches the two and sees that they're thirsty and offers them a drink of water the two drink as much as they can hurridly stealing it back and forth from each other after giving them the water the leader says when the Lambs is lost in the mountain he said said they is cry sometime come the mother sometime the wolf he smiled at them and raised a sword and ran it back where it had come from and turned the horse smartly and trotted it through the horses behind him and the men mounted up and followed and soon all were gone the leader delivers an ominous line about how they need to be weary of the Wolves of this country as they continue to travel through the desert a wagon of a family of four come by and the two of them effectively hold up the wagon so they can hitch a ride to some place that is in the middle of the desert so the two of them hop in the wagon drink most of the family's water and then sleep the night in the wagon in front of the family's house the next morning the kid wakes up to find that spral has died of his infection over the night and then shortly after realizing this the Mexican Army shows up because you know the family whose wagon they semi hijacked called the police so the soldiers knowing that this kid is one of the Renegade American soldiers who came to mess with Mexico arrest him and take him into the nearby town in the town there is a large parade of people dancing and merchants selling things and as the soldiers drag the kid through the middle of this party they throw him on the ground and when the kid looks up someone is holding in front of him the severed head of Captain White floating in a jar the kid spits on the ground and says he ain't no k to me and of course they would celebrate the death of these guys they came into their country to just cause problems when they kill the leader they're going to you know have a parade about it and I guess put his head in a jar so that's what happens to people who set out to be Pirates but they claim to do it for their own greater purpose or because they have some greater stake or Merit in the world they die and their body is made a spectacle as those around them suffer and bleed as well so the the kid is taken to jail and then shortly after that he is transferred to Chihuahua city when he gets to the Chihuahua city jail who else is also in that jail but his friend toadvine well I use the term friend kind of loosely the guy that he tried to kill in a KN fight and then they burnt down a hotel together so toad Vine's in this gel as well and because of their brief history the two develop a sort of camaraderie between each other there's some brief banter between the two uh one of the jail ERS has gold teeth so toadvine keeps saying that he wants to kill them so that he can take the gold teeth they're in a Corral for a while that just has like a high wall around the Corral no fence and these children hop up on the wall and start throwing rocks at them so the kid just takes like a small Stone and Chucks it as hard as he can at a kid and it says it hits the kid in the head the kid falls over the wall and they never hear from that kid again so I guess I guess the kid killed a child with a rock who was just standing at the wall throwing pebbles at him and then one day as toadvine the kid and another friend that they met who is known now as the veteran one day as they're out scrubbing the streets of the city a group of men ride in on Horseback and ride into the governor's Courtyard these men are described as absolute monsters they're barbaric in nature they're wearing the skins and furs of several different animals they have knives on their hips that go down to their knee they have every manner of firearm and bladed weapon you could imagine not to mention that most of these men are white which is particularly strange considering they walked into the governor of Chihuahua City's Courtyard dressed as they did with no problem and who else is riding among them except foremost among them outsized and childlike with his naked face rode the judge his cheeks were ready and he was smiling and bowing to the ladies and doing his filthy hat the enormous Dome of his head when he Beed it was blinding white and perfectly circumscribed about so that it looked to have been painted he and the wreaking horde of rabble with him passed on through the stunned streets and hve up before the governor's Palace where their leader a small blackhaired man clapped for entrance by kicking at the open door with his boot Boots the doors were opened forth with and they rode in rode in all and the doors were closed again this is finally the glanton gang they're riding into Chihuahua city to deliver their payment of scalps to the governor as per their contract toadvine sees this and thinks this might be their ticket out sure enough as they're cleaning the streets the next day toadvine managed to talk to a member of the glanton gang and gets them an in see the glanton gang constantly loses members given the nature of their Capital so because of that they're constantly looking for new people to refill their ranks anyone who knows how to fight so glanton makes a request to the governor and the three men toadvine the kid and the veteran are all released into John glanton's care and with that the kid toadvine and the veteran are now officially and finally for the story members of the glanton gang the child who had nowhere to go who was willing to join any tribe or people as long as it meant killing and as long as it meant money has now found the perfect home to do just that and it seems that by pure chance or perhaps fate he has once again crossed paths with the judge himself this mysterious figure who is set apart in any room that he exists in so what does that mean for the kid does that mean he's finally fit in and found a place that he will exist for freely or is this going to be a corbic mcarthy novel let's find out so the three men ride out with the glanton gang from the town that they were once prisoners in now held as Heroes initially we meet several of the more interesting characters in The Gang it seems to be that there's about 30 of them at this time and while several of their names are mentioned sparsely throughout the book I'm just going to talk about a few who are important cuz spoilers a lot of people die so we're just going to be talking about the ones who actually do something of course we have the judge and glanton who will talk about more as the story goes on but there's also members like the ex priest Tobin who joined the king sometime shortly after the Mexican-American War despite being an ex priest he still holds some views of God and religion in a place of sacrecy which is very interesting as the gang's actions begin to unfold as the story goes on there are two men in the company who are both named John Jackson one of them is a white man and the other is a black man so the gang refers to them as white Jackson and black Jackson respectively that may be surprising to hear that this gang of head hunters in the 1850s has a black man in their ranks but as we're going to see the glanton gang save for the judge holds no values or morals or any set of rules when it comes to the actions they commit they are solely Soldiers of Fortune there are several instances in the book where they talk about the savagery and evil of the Native American people and then in the next chapter Ally themselves with them there are several points in the book whenever someone in town mentions that they don't like black Jackson being there because he's black that the gang members will agree with him and talk about how he's the member of an inferior race only to then turn around and murder the guy that they said that to they hold no values or morality at least none that they can't be bought out of and while it may seem respectable that a gang at the time has a black man in their ranks it is solely because black Jackson is also a murderous killer and that is exactly the kind of man that Clanton needs not caring for their race religion or Creed the gang also has four Delaware Indians in their ranks who mostly stick to themsel and don't really interact with the rest of the gang at least not socially so while they are out on the planes head hunting Native Americans there are four Native Americans in their ranks there is a Mexican man in the company whose name is Miguel but the Americans don't care to pronounce it correctly so they just call him Migel there's a scout named Webster who frequently hunts and travels out with the delawares there's a man named David Brown often called Davey Brown who has a intense propensity for violence uh and seems to Relish in a lot of what the gang does more so so than the other members again excluding the judge and the last member that I'll mention right now is a man named bathat who previously lived on the island that is today known as Tasmania where he used to hunt Aboriginal people for sport and for money so coming to the American West to hunt Native Americans is a normal day in the office for this guy in his introduction it mentions that he wears a necklace of human ears from people that he's killed and several members of the gang take pieces of humans as trophies after a killing in the description for bath cat there is a blink and you'll miss it line that prophesies his death toadvine and bathat are having a conversation about the two Jacksons arguing which is going to kill the other first because the two Jacksons hate each other probably because they're both named Jackson well it's also mentioned later that white Jackson hates black Jackson because he's black but I'm sure having the same name also doesn't help while they're discussing this the book says toadvine glanced at the man's forehead but the man's hat was pushed down almost to his eyes the man smiled and forked the hat back slightly with his thumb the print of the hatband lay on his forehead like a scar but there was no Mark other only on the inside of his lower arm was there tattooed a number which toine would see in a Chihuahua bath house and again when he would cut down the man's torso where it hung skewered by its heel heals from a tree limb in the waist of the pimeria Ala in the fall of that year whenever I first read through this I had to read over that section A few times it's just giving normal descriptions of what the gang members look like and then it mentions that bathat has a tattoo that toadvine would see again whenever he pulled his corpse that was hung by its heels on a tree in the middle of the desert fate is a reoccurring Topic in this story that becomes more prevalent as the story goes on and it's interesting that even in the introduction of this character his death is already set in stone as if it was something that was always meant to be so as the gang is in this small town they're waiting for a merchant to come to sell them weapons whenever the merchant arrives he hands glanton again the leader of the gang a cult revolver from a box of several cult revolvers and testing out the pistol glanton pulls back the hammer and just starts shooting animals that are around the town he shoots a cat and it says that the cat explodes he shoots a chicken he shoots a goat and then after looking over the gun he says I don't think this is worth $50 so he haggles with the salesman over the price and it seems that the murder of the animals was completely inconsequential to him or anyone else in the gang a captain of the Mexican Army walks into the center of town because you know these strangers are shooting guns at random things and as soon as the Mexican Captain starts talking about locking the men up the judge jumps down from his horse and immediately starts talking to the captain in Spanish as they're speaking in Spanish the judge continues to shake his hand and then walks the captain through the parade of these killers and introduces all of them to the captain one by one come to find out later in the story The Judge speaks several languages and has been all over the world in the story fluently speaking Dutch German Spanish and in English as the judge is walking the captain through the group of men he talks of their bravery and how they're each respectable dignities as the men stand there with human fingers and necklaces of ears when they get to Black Jackson the captain remarks that it's strange having a black man in their company so immediately again in Spanish the judge launches into a DI tribe about how Jackson is part of an inferior race and how the whites and Mexicans are so much more prosperous blah blah blah and black Jackson who can't speak Spanish asks the judge what he's saying and the judge effectively tells him not to worry about it again the morality of the gang is whatever best suits them in the moment as the men are about to leave the town a family of performers comes out to ride with them see at the time any area that wasn't immediately in the city or jurisdiction of a police force was effectively Lawless so if you traveled out by yourself you were easy prey to not only the animals and elements but also robbers and Killers who may be on the path so if you were a family traveling for anything it would be smart to travel with a group of armed people so in exchange for money because that's all they care about glanton allows this family of performers to join them through the desert I'm going to mention it now because it comes up a lot and I can't stop at every instance of it nearly every time that they travel out into the desert they are completely engulfed by death that lays all around them I mentioned one instance earlier whenever the kid and spra went into the destroyed Village and there were all the dead bodies in the church well that kind of thing happens constantly also on that Journey the kid and Sprout came across a thorn bush that was skewered with dead babies setting out on this journey they find the bones of Apache families who were lined up and shot by Mexican soldiers every time that they Journey out there is instant es of the world that they inhabit constantly reminding them of what it is hanged bodies swinging on the sides of road with words like murderer painted on their chest entire Cascades of horses and Merchants line the gutters of the roads having been shot for the crime of being present as I talk about the details of this story just know that death surrounds every aspect of it they sat around the fire that night and glanton looks at the father of the Mexican family of performers who he's allowed to come along with him glanton looks at the father and asks the man if he tells fortunes the showrunner is excited and begins to get his family together so that they can perform a fortune telling they do this by having the father hold a deck of tet cards in front of one of the gang members and as he does it his wife who's also one of the performers sets on a log facing out into the darkness of the desert night one of the gang members draws the card and as they do the woman begins to cry out into the desert to receive what the fortune of the man is black Jackson goes first and he draws the card the fool as the lady chanting begins to say his fortune in Spanish Jackson begins to ask the men around the campfire what she saying also there are entire conversations in this book that are entirely in Spanish uh for this book Cormac McCarthy learned Spanish just so he could read the records easier and also give accurate depictions of uh Mexican speech and also while I'm mentioning it McCarthy wrote this book over the course of 15 years and moved to El Paso Texas to do so having traced the route of the glanton gang several times during his time writing it historians have read the novel and remarked that it's about as historically accurate as a book can get anyway so black Jackson is standing around the fire and he first asks Tobin the ex priest what the woman's saying Tobin says that this is all Idol and Witchcraft and he doesn't want to be a part of it eventually the judge Smiles at Jackson and says that what this woman is saying is that in Jackson's Fortune lie all of theirs and when Jackson asks what he means the judge laughs and says that it means he's supposed to stay away from rum the Fool's card is often associated with ignorance or new beginnings and the implication here seems to be that Jackson is in a position to follow after whatever he chooses he's at the start of the rest of his life life and whatever actions he does from here moving forward will determine his fate as well as the fate of the rest of the gang after this the showman then takes the deck of cards to the kid the kid draws and receives the four of cups as this is all happening and the woman's chanting and everyone's looking at the kid he begins to get kind of scared and nervous and he looks over at the judge who's partially naked by the way he's naked from the waist up he's just wearing his pants so this giant 7 foot man is leaning over right next to the kid and laughing while staring at him the kid looks around the rest of the campfire and sees that no one else is laughing and tells the showman to get away so the showman stops the four of cups is most often associated with stagnation or a lack of purpose which is very fitting for the kid at this point he joined the military and a group of crazed Killers just because there might be some money involved with no regard for his life or the life of others the kid is heading down a destructive path and it seems that from his his choices he has no concern in the matter finally the showman makes his way over to glanton the gang's leader glanton's hesitant at first but since everyone else is doing it and since he's a little drunk he decides to play along after glanton takes a card the story says the juggler folded shut the deck and tucked it among his clothes he reached for the card and glanton's hand perhaps he touched it perhaps not the card vanished it was in glennon's hand and then it was not the juggler's eyes snapped after after where it had gone down the dark perhaps Glennon had seen the card's face what could it have meant to him the juggler reached out to that naked Beldon beyond the fire's light but in the doing he overbalanced and fell forward against glanton and created a moment of strange liaison with his old man's arms about the leader as if he would console him at his scrawny bosom glan and swore and flung him away and at that moment the old woman began to chant see up until this point every time that someone draws a card the showman has been reading the card out loud so that his wife can tell their Fortune with it glanton Rose she raised her jaw gibbering at the night shut her up said glanton laar Roa laosa cried the Beldum inverted deera de fanza la rud so unrio obscuro glandon called to her and she paused as if she'd heard him but it was not so she she seemed to catch some new drift in her divining P pra laart esta pra in La NOA un micio cried the old woman quento tan malenta by God you will shut up said Blanton drawing his revolver Cora de muos Lena deesos eloven qu the judge like a great ponderous gin stepped through the fire and the Flames delivered him up as if he were in some way native to their element he put his arms around glanton someone snatched the old woman's blindfold from her and she and the juggler were clouded away and when the company turned in to sleep and the low fire was roaring in the blast like a thing alive these four yet crouched at the edge of the Fire Light among their strange chadels and watched how the Ragged Flames fled down the wind as if sucked by some melstrom out there in the void some vortex in that waist opposit to which man's Transit and his reckonings alike lay abgate as if Beyond will or fate he and his beast and his trappings moved both in card and in substance under consignment to some third and other Destiny glanton saw what the card was more than likely at least for a second and then either hid it so that the showman couldn't see it or threw the card away but at the same time the woman knew exactly what was on the card and begins chanting about this boat of death this fairy of death uh and whatever it is she's saying or whatever she's about to start saying glanton is terrified of it he begins to draw his gun threatening to shoot her but the judge stops him I could explain what this Fairman of the night might mean but I think it will mean more if its points revealed later in the story so with that the next day the game continues on their travel they meet up in the town with a few of the scouts who had went ahead to see what was down the trail and the scouts Webster and a couple of the delawares come back with an old woman this old woman is an old Apache woman who was left behind at an abandoned Market some ways up the road the woman is so old that she can barely walk and she trembles to herself and shakes barely looking at the knes of the men around her this portion is particularly graphic but I find it important to read considering it sets the tone and several of the events that will soon follow Glennon crossed in front of his horse passing the RS behind his back watch her cap she bites she had raised her eyes to the level of his knees glandon pushed the horse back and took one of the heavy saddle pistols from its Scabbard and cocked it watch yourself there several of the men stepped back the woman looked up neither courage nor heart sink in those old eyes he pointed with his left hand and she turned to follow his hand with her gaze and he put the pistol to her head and fired the explosion filled all that sad little Park some of the horses shied and stepped a fist-sized hole erupted out of the far side of the woman's head in a great vomit of Gore and she pitched over and lay slain in her blood without remedy glanton had already put the pistol at half coock and he flicked away the spent primer with his thumb and Was preparing to recharge the cylinder Mill he said a Mexican solitary of his race in that company came forward get that receipt for us he took a skinny knife from his belt and stepped to where the old woman l and took up her hair and twisted it about his wrist and passed the blade of the knife about her skull and ripped away the scalp it says after this that no one in the company is paying any attention to what's going on none except for the new recruits because this is the nature of blood money this is the nature of what the economy for killing was at this time didn't matter how old or feeble they were combatants or not you were paid for Native scalps and it didn't matter who those scalps came off of and everyone's okay with this it's just the nature of their business and if anything an elderly woman who can't fight back it's just an easy paycheck or a receipt as glanton refers to her scalp the violence continues throughout the story and I'm not going to read every instance of verbatim because it's a lot uh there's several people who love this book who talk about how they couldn't read it on the first set through um and it it's certainly brutal but I feel it is entirely not only Justified but needed there are so many tragedies and not just world history but specifically American history that get overridden as a statistic we hear both in school and movies about these men of the Wild West who would hunt down the natives or they would fight back against you know the the no- good Outlaws of the country and we kind of just brushed them off as numbers but whenever we hear something like so many people killed in a battle or uh scalps that were sold for cash or people hanged on the side of Roads um I think it's important that we don't lose the brutality of that like McCarthy here certainly has not this book came out in 1985 at the height of the good guy Cowboy aesthetic of the West and as kind of a counter to that it puts a highlight on how brutal the nature of man hunting actually is it's not Heroes with swelling music and a chisel jawline fighting back against the people who matter less than him it is most often these monstrous almost animalistic people who prey on the weakest targets they can find and to emphasize the historic Anthem Matic evil of the story the violence matters the performers separate from them in this next town and the men walk walk into a bar while in there an old man begins to cryptically talk about how Mexico is a dangerous country and how these men are heroes but there is a cowboy on the planes who's looking to kill them vaguely referring to death or the devil or some concept similar and the entire time they're in this bar there is a man moaning in the back of the bar seemingly at the end of his life just while everyone else is drinking and caring about as usual on their way out of the bar toadvine and bathat have a short conversation that was his son said bathat who was the lad in the corner cut with a knife he was cut one of the chaps at the table cut him they were playing cards and one of them cut him why don't he leave I asked him the same myself what did he say he had a question for me said where would he go to the land is so desolate that the man's son was stabbed in a card fight and is about to die and the man just keeps running the bar as usual like what does the death matter and even if it did what would they do about it between the religious symbols to the death that surrounds them to the fortune teller there are constant signs that they should stop this journey before they begin it and the men continue to ignore these signs at every remark well at least one of them picked up on all the clues the universe was laying down remember the veteran the guy who joined the gang with toadvine and the kid well the next morning they wake up and he's just gone the judge interrogates the kid and Toad bite about it asking where the man went to and toadvine just says he figures the man quit and they have no idea where he went it seems that the veteran realized that this was going to get a lot worse before it got better so he deserted in response to this glanton sends two of the delawares to go find him that night the gang is setting around a couple of campfires and it says that there's no real rules to the Gang mentioned earlier they don't really care about race at least not when it comes to the members of their rank but it seems like the men naturally segregate between the people they're most comfortable with so that night at the fire all of the delawares and Mill the Mexican I mentioned earlier along with the new members of the gang are by one fire and everyone else is by the other fire black Jackson walks up to the fire with everyone else and white Jackson stops him and says that his kind can go sit at the fire where everyone else is sitting in other words telling him to get over there with the natives and the Mexicans and the newcomers in the conversation between black Jackson and white Jackson we have this the white man swung his head one eye half closed his lip loose his gun belt lay coiled on the ground he reached and Drew the revolver and cocked it four men Rose and moved away you aim to shoot me said the black you don't get your black ass away from this fire I'll kill you a graveyard dead he looked to where glanton sat glanton watched him he put the pipe in his mouth and Rose and took up the aicore and folded it over his arm is that your final say final as the Judgment of God the black looked once more across the Flames at glanton and then he moved away in the dark the white man uncocked the revolver and placed it on the ground before him two of the others came back to the fire and stood uneasily Jackson sat with his legs crossed one hand laying in his lap and the other was outstretched on his knee holding a slender black cigarillo the nearest man to him was Tobin and when the Black stepped out of the darkness bearing the Bowie knife in both hands like some instrument of ceremony Tobin started to rise the white man looked up drunkenly and the black stepped forward and with a single stroke swapped off his head two thick ropes of dark blood and two slender rose-like snakes from the stumps of his neck and arched hissing into the fire the head rolled to the left and came to rest at the ex priest's feet where it lay with eyes a gast Tobin jerked his foot away and Rose and stepped back the fire steamed and blackened and a great cloud of smoke Rose and the columnar arches of blood slowly subsided until just the neck bubbled gently like a stew and then that too was stilled he was set as before save headless drenched in blood the cigarillo still between his fingers leaning towards the dark and smoking Grotto in the Flames where his life had gone glanton Rose the men moved away no one spoke when they set out in the dawn the headless man was sitting like a murdered anchorite dis scaled in ashes and Sark someone had taken his gun but the boots stood where he'd put them the company rode on they had not gone forth one hour upon that plane before they were written upon by the Apaches life is so inconsequential out here that these these two men who yes hate each other both Jacksons get into a simple fight where white Jackson expresses Prejudice saying that he that black Jackson should go sit with the other undesirables as white Jackson would see them and black Jackson just says is that your final say and when white Jackson says yes uh black Jackson gets a Bowie knife and cuts his head off at the campfire and everyone other than the mention of the ex priest jerking his foot away has no reaction L just gets up and goes to bed and the next day they take his gun but they leave his headless body setting up on the log with his boots set up next to him his death the death of a man they've probably rode with for years at this point is just a thing that happened a a coincidence a circumstance of fate and there's no sense crying over it so why say anything about it the next day a group of Apaches ride out to fight them and the Gang Dismounts their horses and begins to shoot back in the battle one Apache is killed and the others ride off the judge walks up to the dead Apache and begins to disrobe him taking his personal effects from underneath his clothes before scalping the Apache as they do any other native they kill it's their first sign of the judge cataloging the world and effects of others around him and it'll come up more as The Story Goes On it's also mentioned that that afternoon the two delawares who went out on a scouty mission come back with the Veteran's horse with the veteran nowhere to be found most likely having been shot by the two delawares for desertion you can take hurt and kill whoever you want but you can't leave the gang that's the one rule that they all seem to stick to as they continue on their Journey they come across more dead bodies a carriage of people who had been shot to death before they whip the horses and send the carriage full of corpses to just walk out into the desert the gang eventually comes across an old abandoned prido uh a prido is effectively like a plantation house not necessarily a mansion but a large house that several people would live out of and from inside of the presido they can see smoke Rising so the gang goes up to enter the compound whenever they come to the door and knock on it the first thing Clanton yells is he says come out if you're W eventually the people inside let them in and the Gang finds that these are five survivors who are near death because of their starvation and dehydration they said that the group they were with were attacked by Apaches and these were the only survivors who managed to take shelter in this abandoned house and they have great survival instincts as they're just letting Camp smoke go up into the air for anyone around to see the five men seem crazed and starved the first thing they ask for instead of food is tobacco they go inside one of the offices of the presido and there is a man who is holding a wound and bleeding onto the floor of the house seemingly having been attacked by the Apache some days earlier Irving the doctor in the company walks up to him and says what have you done for him he said ain't done nothing what do you want me to do for him I ain't asked you to do nothing that's good said Irving because there ain't nothing to be done outside in the courtyard there is a horse that got bitten in the face by a snake so its entire head is swelled into this throbbing mass and the horse is making awful noises like they they should definitely put it down so looking outside why don't you shoot that thing said Irving sooner it dies the sooner it'll rot they said Irving spat you ain't to eat it and it snake bit they looked at one another they didn't know also inside of the presido is a 12-year-old boy who's described as a mixed race between uh Mexicans and a native uh and it seems that he was there when the five others got there because whenever they ask about him the men say that they don't know who he is and there's this one quick interaction that didn't mean anything to me on the first read through but means far too much to me now where it says who's this child said the judge they Shrugged they looked away glandon spat shook his head we will come back to that later out in the courtyard the judge is explaining to these five scared men how the Earth Works he's explaining to them how the Rocks hold the secrets of God and how the Earth itself is an extension of God and then whenever they nod like they believe him the judge laughs at them at their foolishness and so willing to believe anything that someone who seems to be smarter than them tries to say that night there's a storm outside and as all the men are inside it says the men who had been on watch entered the room and stood steaming before the fire the black stood at the door neither in nor out someone had reported the judge naked a top the walls immense and pale in the revelations of lightning striding the perimeter up there and declaiming in the old epic mode glanton watched the fire silently and the men compos themselves in their blankets in the dryer places about the floor and soon they were asleep so in the middle of a storm the judge is completely naked on the roof yelling old poetry the judge as we're going to find out later is one of the most terrifying characters I have ever read about and this kind of imagery doesn't help that next day as the men are about to leave they find the child dead in one of the cubicles he was lying face down naked in one of the cubicles scattered on the clay were great numbers of old bones as if he like others before him had stumbled upon a place where something inimical lived the squatters crowded in and stood about the corpse in silence soon they were conversing senselessly about the merits and Virtues Of The Dead boy so something killed this child in the middle of the night and we'll talk about what that might have been later whenever glanton goes to leave the squatters who were staying there say that they want to join him and glanton just ignores them and rides off they don't have sense or a horse to ride on so they're useless and the men ride away as they hear the crazed inhabitants switching between cursing God and singing hymns later on sitting around the camp during the day the ex priest Tobin is teaching the kid How to Mend a leather strap I want to be careful about my language here Tobin is not a good man by any regards none of the people the story I would classify as good mint at least none of the main characters Tobin is still responsible and complicit with the murder of dozens if not hundreds of people but he does seem to have an affinity for the kid he looks after him he talks to him consistently and in this scene he decides to give him some information about the gang while he may be compassionate to those in his group he's by no means a compassionate man as the two continue to talk while speaking of Tobin it says he glanced across the fire toward the judge that great hairless thing you wouldn't think to look at him that he could outd Dan The Devil Himself now could you God the man is a Dancer you'll not take that away from him and Fiddle he's the greatest Fiddler I ever heard and that's an end on it the greatest he can cut a trail shoot a rifle ride a horse track a deer he's been all over the world him and the governor they set up till breakfast and it was Paris this and London that in five languages you'd have give something to have heard him the Governor is a learned man himself but the judge the xpre shook his head the judge is a mystery this man who seems to be of so many different cultures and experienced in such education for some reason is now roaming around the desert hunting down natives for money while talking about Godly gifts Tobin says that God speaks in the least of creatures he watched the kid for Let It Go how it will he said God speaks in the least of creatures the kit thought him to mean birds or things that crawl but the ex priest watching his head slightly cocked said no man is give leave of that voice the kid spat Into the Fire and bent to his work I ain't heard no voice he said when it stops said toin you'll know you've heard it all your life is that right I the kid turned the leather in his lap the ex- priest watched him at night said Tobin when the horses are grazing and the company is asleep who hears them grazing don't nobody hear them if they're asleep I and if they cease their grazing who is it that wakes every man I said the priest every man the kid looked up and the judge does the voice speak to him the judge said Tobin he didn't answer I seen him before said the kid and Nako dois Tobin smiled every man in the company claims to have encountered that s sold Rascal in some other place Tobin rubbed his beard on the back of his hand he saved us all I have to give him that and from there Tobin begins to tell the kid the story of how the glanton gang met the judge in the first place Tobin tells the kid a story about one time the glanton gang was down to 14 men when they set out on that expedition with 38 all their gunpowder was used up and they were Running Scared from the pursuing Natives and then as the glanton gang out of gunpowder dehydrated are riding through the middle of the desert Tobin says then about the Meridian of that day we came upon the judge on his rock where in that Wilderness by his single self I and there was no Rock just the one Irving said he'd BR it with him I said that it was a miror stone for to Mark him out of nothing at all he had with him that self-same rifle you see him with now all mounted in German silver and the name that he'd give it set with silver wire under the cheekpiece and laddin at in Arcadia ago a reference to that lethal in it common enough for a man to name his gun I've heard sweet lips and heart from the tombs and every sort of lady's name his is the first and only ever I seen with an inscription from the classics so the gang is riding out through the desert and then just sitting on a rock in the middle of nowhere in an act that Irving says the judge must have brought the rock with him just sitting on the Rock is the judge a 7ot tall albino hairless man just waiting for them to show up with a rifle slung over his back the inscription engraved on the rifle eten Arcadia ego is a phrase that's used in a lot of classic poetry and stories and it translates to even in Arcadia there I am Arcadia was seen as sort of an idealic Paradise in a lot of stories and the I referred to in that sentence is referring to death it's an old saying that effectively means even in the best places in the world death still exists so on the judge's rifle is engraved the phrase even in Arcadia there I am when the Glon gang asked where he came from he said that he was in a wagon company and just decided to start walking across the desert so the judge says can I ride with you guys and gets on one of their spare horses and just begins traveling with them the gang is still being chased by the natives so the judge instructs him that they begin heading towards this mountain off in the distance as they get closer to the mountain they realize that it's not a mountain and is in fact a volcano as they're making their way up the mountain the judge keeps getting off the horse and scraping up pieces of flint and metal and volcanic rock this is again as they can look out on the horizon and see the Apache horses getting closer eventually the track gets too treacherous for them to ride so everyone's leading their horses and as they are over these couple of days the judge is getting guano from batcaves and charcoal and he's burning it in an oven and no one has any clue what he's doing um Tobin also mentions that at this point glanton was so ready to die he didn't really care eventually they make it to the top of the volcano and as they do they see that they are completely surrounded by the Apachi and they're probably going to die any minute now as the men are worried about this they look over and the judge has dug out a little hole in the ground and he's put all of his concoctions of charcoal and volcanic rock into to the center of the hole and he's peeing on it and as he does he orders the men to Quick hurriedly get over here and start peeing on the mixture as well as the men are peeing on it the judge gets down on the ground half naked at this point and begins to need the mass of charcoal and guano and pee that people are actively peeing on him with and he just starts to molded until it becomes this black clay so the judge takes this concoction and he spreads it with a knife on the hot rocks and for an hour as it's drying the men are standing around watching the Apaches get closer and the judge is setting off to the side just drawing pictures in a notebook and after an hour's passed he stands up walks over to this dried concoction and he picks it up and it's so dry it's almost powdery he takes the powder shoves it into a shotgun barrel and fires and sure enough the gun goes off the judge was was making homemade gunpowder this whole time and now while stinking he's made enough rudimentary gunpowder to supply the entire company so he orders the men to grab the stinking gunpowder and shove their guns full and with the balls of ammunition and the firing caps that they still have they managed to defeat all of the Apaches not losing another man so this random figure in the middle of the desert leads him to a volcano where whil waiting to be killed he makes gunpowder out of the rudimentary materials he canines and the gang is saved on finishing this story it says the ex priest turned and looked at the kid and that was the judge and the first I ever saw him I he's a thing to study the kid looked at Tobin what's he a judge of he said what's he a judge of what's he a judge of toin glanced off across the fire ah lad he said hush now the man will hear you his ears like a Fox so just the wildest story of how the judge came into the gang's life but not only that whenever the kid just asks the basic question what's he a judge of Tobin tells him to not bring it up again the judge is an odity he's this constant figure this shape that exists with the gang through their journey I also have to mention this now this is jumping the gun a little bit into the analysis section at the end but this is such a cool thing I can't not bring it up after talking about it so that portion I just mentioned about the judge taking them into the volcano to make gunpowder to fight back against the Apaches is a direct reference to Paradise Lost a lot of the language of the volcano and the mountain they go to is similar to the caves and mountains that Satan and the eventual armies of Hell hide out in during their War With Heaven I talked about Paradise Lost on this channel uh but if you haven't seen that video or aren't familiar with the work yourself there's a portion in the story where the Angels who are assed to be fallen that have Allied themselves with Satan are fighting against the armies of Heaven and the devil decides that they should make gunpowder and a lot of the language and imagery between the judge taking these men up the volcano to make gunpowder is very similar and hearkens back to a lot of the story's themes McCarthy said that his two primary influences for the character of the judge was CTS from Heart of Darkness which that's another great story and character if you're familiar with that and Satan from Paradise Lost that will become more apt as The Story Goes On the next day they are riding through the Wilderness and as they are crossing over a fallen down tree one of the delawares jumps over the tree on his horse and as soon as he does a grizzly bear rises from right next to him it had been eating a dead animal and it growls and picks up the Delaware with its teeth it just grabs him the Delaware starts screaming and the Bear runs off and they never see that guy again straight up they're just going through the woods a bear grabs a guy disappears it says that the other delawares go to track him and they come back empty-handed just in the midst of everything a bear eats a dude it says when the other delawares get back that they sparse out his belongings between them and the man's name was never spoken again perhaps some of my favorite interactions in the entire story are between the judge and the glanton Gang sitting around the campfire especially one near the end that we'll get to the Scout I mentioned earlier Webster is standing by the campfire and he's watching the judge scribble drawings in his book Webster asks the judge why he's drawing pictures in the book and the judge says that it's to catalog all of the earth and everything in it Webster says that it's impossible to draw everything in the world and the judge smiles and says well said and keeps drawing Webster then follows up and says but don't draw a picture of me in that book of yours as he says this other people around the campfire began to Hoot and Holler saying why do you care if the judge puts your ugly mug in his book why do he want to put it in there anyway and the judge defends him and says no no it's because Webster here doesn't want to be chronicled he doesn't want to be perceived as a certain thing in the eyes of man that may come after him he doesn't want his image to be whatever I decide it should be after he finishes Webster says it ain't like that and the judge says well good you want my if I draw your picture then and Webster says no I don't want you to draw it but it ain't like that there's this weird command the judge has over the emotions and the beliefs of the people around him where they're sitting at this moment is in the ruins of the Anasazi whenever white settlers first came to this area of Mexico they saw these Old Stone houses built into the faces of cliffs and they assumed that they were built by the current native population it turned out that these were actually bidden by a group of people known as the Anasazi the Anasazi disappeared for some unknown reason and the modern natives that are simply living in the structures that they built have no idea what happened to them as the men are there discussing this discussing who might have made these houses the judge begins to tell a story one of my personal favorite things in media I guess I'm I'm such a nerd one of my favorite things in stories is whenever the story stops for a moment to tell another story uh most of the time they're very you know short and interesting I find and the judge tells a story here to this group of men that I feel is uh worth repeating so with that this is the judge's story in the Western Country of the alagan some years ago when it was yet A wilderness there was a man who kept a harness shop by the side of the Federal Road he did so because it was his trade and yet he did little of it for there were few Travelers in that place so that he fell into the Habit before long of dressing himself as an Indian and taking up station a few miles above his shop and waiting there by the roadside to ask whoever should come that way if they should give him money at this time he had done no person any injury so a harness maker in the middle of the Wilderness isn't making that much money shocker so he decides to dress himself as a native and go beg for money up the road one day a certain man came by and the harness maker in his beads and Feathers St stepped from behind his tree and asked this Sergeant man for some coins he was a young man and he refused and having recognized the harness maker for a white man spoke to him in a way that made the harness maker ashamed so that he invited the young man to come to his dwelling a few miles distant on the road this traveler rebukes the harness maker and he feels so bad about it that he invites The Traveler into his home while in the harness Maker's house The Traveler begins to talk of virtue and of good ethics and decides to give the harness maker a gold coin after receiving the coin the harness maker immediately asks if he could have another or perhaps some more after that immediately The Traveler jumps up and begins to berate and yell at the harness maker saying that he is unjust and not right with God and a greedy man he says this to the harness maker in front of his family as well with this the old man repented all over again and swore that the boy was right and the old woman who was seated by the fire was amazed at all she had heard and when the guest announced that the time had come for his departure she had tears in her eyes and the little girl came out from behind the bed and clung to his clothes the old man the harness maker so thankful to have received this advice from The Traveler ask the traveler if he can accompany him to the fork in the road and the traveler agrees as they walked out they spoke of life in such a wild Place were such people as you saw you saw but once and never again and by and by they came to the fork in the road and here the traveler told the old man that he had come with him far enough and he thanked him and they took their departure each of the other and the stranger went on his way but the harness maker seemed unable to suffer the loss of his company and he called and by they came to a place where the road was darkened in a deep wood and in this place the old man killed the traveler he killed him with a rock and he took his clothes and he took his watch and his money and he buried him in a shallow grave by the side of the road then he went home on the way he tore his own clothes and bloodied himself with a flint and he told his wife they had been set upon by robbers and the young traveler murdered and him only Escape she began to cry and after a while she made him take her to the place and she took wild Prim R which grew in plenty thereabout and she put it on the stones and she came there many times until she was old perhaps because he was ashamed of the traveler or perhaps because the traveler was such a better man than him or maybe similar to the way Webster didn't want the judge to write a picture of him in his book The Traveler perceived the harness maker for what he was and the harness maker wouldn't stand for it so he kills the traveler and lies to his family saying that they were set upon by robbers the harness maker lived until his son was grown and never did anyone harm again as he Lay Dying he called the son to him and told him what he had done and the son said that he forgave him if it was his to do so and the old man said that it was his to do so and then he died but the boy was not sorry for he was jealous of the dead man and before he went away he visited that place and Cast Away the rocks and dug up the bones and Scattered them in the forest and then he went away he went away to the west and he himself became a killer of men so the child who all his life has grown up with the legend that this traveler was a man who was set upon by robbers now hears at his father's deathbed that his father was the reaven this righteous man died and in response to that the kid becomes Furious it says he's jealous of the traveler Maybe the Traveler's reputation or maybe because of his father's attention of him or who knows but for some reason of the other the kid despises this so much that he goes and he throws apart his bones and becomes a killer of men it says after this the old woman goes out and reather the Traveler's bones and places them all back in the grave and continues to watch over his final resting place uh it's out of my scope to talk about there's entire College lectures on this book by the way that go into different subjects I'm not even going to touch on in this video uh it's a very deep book it's an intensive book with a lot of its imagery um but there is something to be said about how women are portrayed compared to men nearly every man in the story except for maybe the cow the uh the herders at the beginning uh and the Mexican General who gave uh the kid water whenever they he was running from the filibuster Army other than them every man in the story is barbaric or monstrous in some way but to that agree every woman is heartfelt and compassionate um perhaps McCarthy is saying something about the the counter to man's anger to man's hatred is the spirit of Womanhood uh Perhaps it is showing what man is capable of if not indebted and baptized in the war and blood around them who knows but it does go to mention that every woman in this story seems to be saintly in nature as seen by even the woman in the judge's story who reather the the bones and takes care of the grave at the ending of the story people begin to protest saying no I've heard that story you got this detail wrong and no he wasn't from here he was actually from here and blah blah blah upon hearing this story and that everyone is familiar with it and that this is a story that has stood the test of time the judge stops everyone and he says wait now he said for there's a rider to the tail there was a young bride waiting for the traveler with whose bones we are acquainted and she bore a child in her womb that was The Traveler son now this son whose father's existence in this world is historical and speculative even before the son has entered it is in a bad way all his life he carries before him the idol of a Perfection to which he can never attain the father dead has uker the son out of his patrimony for it is the death of the father to which the son is entitled and to which he is Heir more so than his Goods he will not hear of the small all mean ways that tempered the man in life he will not see him struggling in folies of his own devising no the world which he inherits Bears him false witness he is broken before a frozen God and he will never find his way he's saying this story you're all familiar with sure some of the details are different but you've all heard of it now imagine being the son of the traveler your entire life you have the idol of a father you never knew who everyone tells you every Legend you hear is of of the kindness and compassion of your father but that son who the judge says is owed the death of his own father he is air to it more so than his Goods to see the Legacy which came before you the son is blasphemed with that Legacy because he never knew a father in the way most boys would he never saw how he failed or his shortcomings he never got to see that his father was human too and because of that it says he stands before a frozen God he constantly has to live up to this expectation of a perfect father who he will never hear as anything other than perfect and that is in a bad way the judge then continues explaining why he told this story in the first place what is true of one man said the judge is true of many the people who once lived here are called the Anasazi the old ones they quit these parts routed by drought or disease or by wandering bands of marauders quit these parts aging sense and of them there is no memory there are rumors and ghosts in this land and they are much revered the tools the art building these things stand in judgment on the latter races yet there is nothing for them to Grapple with the old ones are gone like Phantoms and the Savages wander these Canyons to the sound of an ancient laughter and their crude Huts they crouch in darkness and listen to the fear seeping out of the rock all progressions from a hre to a lower order are marked by ruins and mystery and a residue of nameless rage so here are the dead fathers their spirit is entombed in the stone it lies upon the land with the same weight and the same ubiquity for whoever makes a shelter of reeds and hides has joined his Spirit to the common Destiny of creatures and he will subside back into the Primal mud with scarcely a cry but who builds in in stone seeks to alter the structure of the universe and so it was with these Masons however primitive their Works may seem to us the judge says that the people of this country the modern land not just the natives but he's also speaking of the the Mexicans and white settlers especially the white among them in Mexico now he's saying that all of them are the son of the traveler they all have these the the Frozen God as he describes them dead fathers to look back on who built I these creatures these statues and monuments out of Stone and Marble and here they are building huts out of mud and if those previous people who walked before you if they built mountains and Idols to God and you build with Twigs they didn't make it and somehow you hope to make it of what hope does Humanity have have it goes to speak of a lot of themes of this story that despite the superiority that the Gang has because they have equipment and guns and food they are just children toiling at the feet of a dead father think back to stories of Europeans during the Dark Ages who built houses out of straw and stone imagine them stepping into the ruins of Rome and Greece just worms before the feet of dead God and then as a worm trying to survive and make something of yourself to see that even they fell what must that have felt like the gang hears all of this and everyone's quiet for a minute thinking on what the judge has said until finally Tobin speaks up it strikes me he said that either son is equal in the way of disadvantage so what is the way of raising a child because the son of the harmis maker became a better Outlaw and the son of the traveler while not explicitly said is also bitter and will probably lead a life of violence at a young age said the judge they should be put in a pit with wild dogs they should be set to puzzle out from their proper Clues the one of three doors that does not Harbor wild Lions they should be made to run naked in the desert until now hold on now said Tobin the question was put in all earnestness and the answer said the judge if God meant to interfere in the degeneracy of mankind would he not have done so so by now wolves called themselves man what other creature could and is the race of man not more predacious yet the way of the world is to bloom and to flower and die but in the Affairs of men there is no waning and the noon of his expression signals the onset of night his spirit is exhausted at the peak of its achievement his Meridian is at once his darkening and the evening of his day he loves games let him play for Stakes this year see here these ruins wandered at by tribes of savages do you not think that this will be again I and again with other people with other Sons the judge is saying that everyone is doomed every son who is born from here on out every son that has been is set to flounder in The Monuments before them that everything that came before is so great how can one person amass to anything in this world that's why says the only way to raise a child is to throw it to the dogs to make it fight with lions so that through sheer determination and matter of will he can become an instrument of something greater than himself through trial he can become a tool something that matters and what's interesting about this story that I didn't pick up on the first read is obviously the judge is very harsh here in his depiction of you know how children should be but then it occurred to me that what the judge is describing here is nearly the kid the kid like while he was raised debatably by his father until he was 14 ever since then his life has been defined by violence and hate and murder and perhaps it seems the judge's ideal person ideal of what a son should be is what the kid already is the next day The Gang This band of dead Sons begins to March off and they enter an abandoned Apache Village when they get there glanton finds an abandoned dog so glanton manages to feed it with a piece of jerky and for the rest of the story glanton keeps this dog at his side now it's up to you if this means that glanton is an animal lover and shows compassion for animals or if he just shows compassion for things that will do what he says I'm more inclined to believe the latter as they realize they're getting closer to the Apache Camp they begin to move at night so that they won't be seen until finally one night they come across an entire Apache Village full of nearly a thousand people men women and children alike so in a scene that is probably the most brutal in the entire book at least through its descriptions I am not going to read the entire thing here but I'll give you a short description the glanton Gang encircles The Village at night and begins riding in at all directions to save ammo they use clubs and begin to beat people on the outskirts of the village by riding by them and Swinging their heavy mallets into their face once they get to the Village they begin to run the horses through the street as fast as they can glandon's horse specifically stepping on several women and children murdering them as it gallops through the middle of the Town people on fire begin to pour out of the burning houses and children as young as infants are brutally slaughtered most of the Warriors had left the village at this point which is what caused glanton's gang to attack in this moment but a few of them run out of the houses with lances and arrows and try to fight back but it's of little use in the night several people tried to escape down the shoreline of a lake until glanton's men begin to ride in between them picking them off one by one it says whenever the Sun starts to rise that the entire Village and the waters in front of it are bathed in red hundreds and hundreds of dead strewn between the burning houses and the shallow Waters several of glanton's men are trotting through the water using clubs to kill anyone who still might be drowning all the while taking as many scalps as they can Glen is mentioned as having a handful of heads in his hand that is tied up with the hair with him clutching a fist of hair jingling them like they're some sort of instrument walking through the street and in his other hand he has a spear with the head of the tribal leader who he believes is a man named Gomez Gomez was a leader of the Apaches and there was a spefic specifically high price for his head to be brought in so stepping over the burning bodies of the children they killed and the noises and smells being described as he breaks bones as he's walking across them he makes his way over to the judge and gesturing towards the head on a steak says hey does this look like Gomez to you the judge shook his head it's not Gomez he nodded toward the thing that gentleman is SRE Puro Gomez is Mexican he ain't all Mexican you can't be all Mexican it's like being all mongel but that's not Gomez because I've seen Gomez and it's not him will it pass for him no Glennon looked toward the South he looked down at the judge you ain't seen my dog have you there is something about that moment that hit me like a truck the first time I read through it the description in the pages before is brutal with like I said the blood and sounds and descriptions of the Dead it it is stomach churning even for someone who's used to disturbing content um and you're you're just sick reading about it and then you have him trying to figure out if he can get extra money out of this head and then with concern he goes have you seen my dog like just such a a a Detachment from anything resembling Humanity from any form that could be mustered of compassion or sympathy it's just animalistic like the dog is his so it matters but the dead bodies he's standing on top of are worth nothing more than the scalps on their heads also in the midst of this Migel or his real name Miguel the one Mexican in the group steps out of a house with a lance through his stomach slowly bleeding out the kid who hasn't really been mentioned in this altercation up until this point starts to step forward to help Miguel but then glanton comes up behind him and tells the kid stop step away from him and then whenever the kid steps away glanton pulls a gun shoots Miguel and then as soon as Miguel's on the ground he scalps Miguel and keeps his scalp Miguel was a guy who rode for him in a while and the kid tried to show compassion which was immediately shut down by Clanton and hey Miguel's Mexican right so they could probably sell his scalp as one of the natives cuz you know how's the Mexican Government going to tell the difference no honor among Thieves to the point that your scalp can still be used for profit if possible as they're leaving the aache Village because they know that the Apache Warriors will show up soon they are also stealing all of their cattle so as they're hurting the cattle away from the village it says that glanton's dog comes up and glanton gently takes the dog and sets it on the pommel of his saddle because again he cares about this dog as opposed to the several human heads and scalps that are riding on the back of the horse and it's also mentioned as they're leaving the village that the judge has a small native boy sitting on his lap at the front of the saddle alive a living child sitting at the front of his saddle that night while sitting around the camp David Brown has an arrow where the top of the head is peeking through the other side of his thigh so Brown needs someone to push the arrow the rest of the way through so that they can cut off the head and pull it out after several people say they're not going to help him eventually the kid decides to do so so David bites down on a belt the kid pushes the arrow through and then they chop it in half and pull out the shaft when the kid returned to his own blant the ex priest leaned to him and hissed at his ear fool he said God will not love you forever the kid turned to look at him don't you know he'd have took you with him he'd have took you boy like a bride to the altar Tobin is highlighting the depravity of these men if the kid had messed up and cut an artery or done anything to kill David on accident David would have killed the boy no question took him like a bride to the altar as Tobin says that's why no one else wanted to help David they knew that if they did something wrong David would probably kill him for it and this is just the code among these men I have got to take off this jacket it is way too hot in here did I break the screen no we're good okay do I need to up the cowboy aesthetic I've got this if we need it let me dare to put this on camera I don't know how I feel about it we'll leave it on for a bit why not not remember that kid this is so weird remember that kid that the judge took with him uh took them out of the Apache Village well that kid has been with the boys for the past few nights and then one morning toadvine wakes up and the kid is sitting on the judge's lap and he's bouncing it up and down and toadvine walks away and 10 minutes later he walks back and the judge has killed the kid and is now scalping it toadvine angered by this pulls a gun and puts it to the judge's head the judge says you either shoot or take that away you do it now and tone Vine not willing to kill him decs the revolver and re holsters it it's bizarre on both ends why would the judge keep this child for a few days just to then kill and scalp it like the rest especially playing with it among the group it says that they played games with it and would feed him jerky and we'll talk about why that might be later but also it's a little weird if you think about it for toadvine like the reason toadvine put the to the judge's head is because they had cared for this kid for a few days right but they had just massacred about a thousand Apaches and now toadvine threatening to kill the judge over this one it's strange how these moral instances arise in the gang how people so Godless and without Creed are willing to pick up arms over seemingly trivial actions and I do agree that it is more Sinister to keep the kid and then lull it into a sense of security for a few days and and then kill it but even then in a strange way it makes toadvine a sort of hypocrite around this time the gang begins to be chased by a group of Apaches as they're running from them the gang begins to run through small villages and haciendas to lose the Apaches in the ensuing Slaughter they ride in front of houses where men come out to greet them only to immediately be murdered by the Apaches right behind them eventually it works and on July the 21st of 1849 the gang makes it back to Chihuahua city they receive a hero's welcome women come out and throw roses at them and men and Merchants begin to throw them goods and gold because to the people these are seen as the heroes they are ridding the land of the evil people who seek to harm them whenever they step out of the city's Gates and it's bizarre to see this band of child murderers praised by the women as these heroic Knights they make it to the governor's Courtyard and count up 128 scalps and eight heads or in other words a lot of money after this the men are promised that they'll be paid at dinner and they all go to the public bath house where they just destroy the water with all the CATE gunpowder and blood and soot and dirt that's laid all over their skin as they leave the bath house they see that the scalps they had gathered now hang as banisters in front of the Capitol building that felt too strange looking into the camera view over and over and seeing that hat on my head we're back to this for now that night at the the dinner Glennon is told that his men can sit at a different table while Glennon comes and dines with the governor Glennon refuses saying he's not eating without his gang while they're eating at the dinner table the governor is giving some speech of bravery and camaraderie and the spirit of the Mexican Government and as he's giving the speech the merchant comes in or I guess the scalp dealer who has the money for their scalps and as soon as he hands the bag of gold and silver to glanton glanton immediately quits caring about what the governor's talking about and he throws the bag of money down on the dinner table and using a knife he separates each man his shares and then they just get up and leave they were only sitting around entertaining the governor for as long as there was food and they hadn't been paid and as soon as they do get paid uh they turn the entire city into a giant brothel they go to the governor's house and take all his expensive furniture and throw it into a big bonfire they go to all the random houses and bars and just start stealing alcohol and women they'd walk out into the night and drunk and just start shooting bullets into the sky these scenes and scenes like them were repeated night after night the citizenry made a dress to the governor but he was much like the Sorcerers Apprentice who could indeed provoke the Imp to do his will but could in no way make him cease again the baths had become bordellos the attendance driven off the white stone fountain in the plaza was filled at night with naked and drunken men Cantinas were evacuated as if by fire with the appearance of any two of the company and the Americans found themselves in ghost taverns with drinks on tables and cigars still burning in the clay ashtrays horses were ridden indoors and out and as the gold began to dwindle away shopkeepers found themselves presented with debits scrawled on butcher paper in a foreign language for whole shells of goods stores began to close charcoal Scrolls appeared on the lime washed walls mayor Los indos the evening Street stood empty and there was no pesos and the young girls of the city were boarded up and seen no more so they're just a terror as soon as they get their money they become these debaucherous lunatics I mean they always were but now they have money to actually act on it they ride to another town and are once again greeted by Heroes welcome and then it says 3 days later they leave and everyone's excited that they're gone there's also mentions that find these random groups of native people just by themselves defenseless and as always they slaughter them take their scalps and then sell them at the next town they ride into eventually they make it to the town of noori a small stowaway town that has a Cantina so the men go in to get drunk and as soon as they sit down at the Cantina someone at a table next to theirs says something offensive probably a reference to them being white and this far into Mexico as soon as that table says something to them the kids stands up walks over to the table and it says that he speaks in his quote wretched Spanish he's trying to find out which of these drunk men said anything about him and his gang but as they're talking a funeral passes the street in front of the Cantina this funeral party that's walking through the center of town has a juggler at the front of it who is lighting rockets and Performing tricks it says that as the juggler passes the section of the street that has the gang's horses and the local Mexicans horses that the Mexicans horses are freaked out by the explosions but the gang's horses don't move which is a sign of things to come because those horses have heard their fair share of gunshots and if the people in The Cantina saw it maybe they wouldn't have started a fight instead at the sound of explosions everyone goes out front to check John dorsy and Henderson Smith two boys from Missouri were the first into the street they were followed by Charlie Brown and the judge the judge could see over their heads and he raised one hand to those behind him the buyer was just passing the Fiddler and the cornetist were making little bows to each other and their steps suggested the Marshall style of the air they played it's a funeral said the judge as he spoke the drunk with the knife now reeling in the doorway this is the man who insulted them whenever they walked in now reeling in the doorway sank the blade deep into the back of a man named Grimley none saw it but the judge Grimley put a hand on the roughwood frame of the door I'm killed he said the judge drew his belt pistol and leveled it above the heads of the men and shot the drunk through the middle of the forehead immediately the Cantina turns into a blood bath all that the gang sees is that the judge shot someone so they figure he had a reason for it and all that the Mexicans see is that the judge shot someone so immediately both sides just start shooting each other from inside came the uninterrupted sounds of of gunfire and the door frame was filling up with smoke in the middle of the gunfight it says the survivors were making for the daylight in the doorway and the first of these encountered the judge there and cut at him with his knife but the judge was like a cat and he Sid stepped the man seized his arm and broke it and picked the man up by his head he put him against the wall and smiled at him but the man had begun to bleed from the ears and the blood was running down between the judge's fingers and over his hands and when the judge turned him loose there was something wrong with his head and he slid to the floor and did not get up middle of a gunfight knives and bullets flying everywhere the judge grabs a man by his head picks him up on the wall and crushes his skull with his bare hand again this guy is a monster among monsters it says when the dust settles the kid and toadvine are in the center of the room back to back with their pistols in hand Smoking Barrels as they've been shooting at everyone who who runs up at the windows so now they have a problem they are effectively contracted by the state of Mexico to save Mexican people from the natives and now they just killed a whole lot of Mexicans so that means they can't leave any Witnesses of this three men were running down the street to leave town so the gang grabs their rifles and gun them down as they're trying to escape as they're standing there amongst all the dead none of them having been killed except for Grimley who was stabbed in the back at the beginning of this and is now bleeding out as they're standing there among the dead glannon thinks to himself what you guys have probably figured out at this point there's not really a way for the Mexican Government to tell what's a native scalp and what's a Mexican scalp so as they're standing there among 36 dead Mexicans he looks at the boys and says ha boys the string ain't run on this trade yet so they just go about scalping everybody it says in 10 minutes they scalp all 36 men and begin to make their way up out of the Town 30 minutes later it says the people of the Town begin to make their way to The Cantina to care for the wounded but at this point the damage has already been done and as a matter of fact why stop there the next day they ride on another defenseless Village and decide hey these are just a bunch of scalps right for the taking so they go through this Mexican Village and just start killing everyone they run over them with their horses like they did to the native Village and it says that all the people in the town who are defenseless go to a church Church's Altar and begin to pray so the gang members walk up behind them and just start dragging them away from the altar one by one and begin to scalp them while they're still alive right there at the pulpit eventually they're walking through another town this one a bit too big to cause a fuss but as they do they are approached by a troop of Mexican soldiers who have likely heard word of their actions at this point so upon seeing the soldiers before even seeing if the soldiers have any to do with them or if they even know to be on the lookout for the glanton gang glanton just pulls a rifle and shoots the commander and immediately the street erupts into gunfire it's a shootout between the Mexican soldiers and the Gang and while the gang managed to wipe out most of the soldiers a few of them got away and started running down the street towards Chihuahua city at this point they're about 4 days out from the city and the Mexican soldiers have about half a day's lead on them so over several days they just continue to chase down these soldiers so that they can't get back to the capital and tell the governor what the glanton gang is doing because you know this massacre that happened out in the small town takes a while to get back to the head office eventually only a couple hours outside of the gates of Chihuahua city the gang catches up to him and guns the soldiers down they quickly dig a ditch and put their bodies in it of course after scalping them and then stamp on the ground with the horses to make it look like it's nothing suspicious and then immediately after they ride in chuah a city and sell the scalps of the Mexican villages they had slaughtered as well as the soldiers that they had just slaughtered outside of the gates they entered the city Haggard and filthy and wreaking with the blood of the citizenry for whose protection they had contracted the scalps of the slain villagers were strung from the windows of the governor's house and the partisans were paid out of the all but exhausted coffers and the soad was disbanded and the Bounty rescinded within a week of their quitting the city the there would be a price of 8,000 pesos posted for glanton's head they rode out on the North Road awood parties Bound for El Paso but before they were even quite out of the sight of the city they had turned their tragic mounts to the west and they rode infatuate and half fwn towards the red demise of the day toward the evening lands and the distant pandemonium of the Sun so they make their way into the City sell Mexican scalps to the Mexican Government who are none the wiser and then it says a week later there is a bounty for 8,000 pesos on glanton's head so for a while they just make their way to these small towns who don't have words that you know they're murderers yet well they've always been murderers but now they're murderers of Mexican so the government cares these small towns don't have a word of that so they just go to these small towns and take their Bounty and sell it on again women and booze until they terrorize the town so much they have to leave and they just keep doing that in one of these towns it says while the judge finds a fiddler and begins to dance in the street the men just start pulling out their guns and shooting pictures of Jesus Christ and Mary that are along the streets so a priest walks out holding up a crucifix uh to war them off because he rightfully thinks they're the devil so they just beat him half to death in the street there's this interesting moment whenever the priest stands up uh it says that whenever he was on the ground the men were throwing gold coins at him mockingly uh and then whenever the priest stands up these young boys run out from the street and start to pick up the coins and the priest stops them and says bring the coins to me and on hearing this the gang begins to cheer and have a toast to him again there are these constant defamations and blasphemies of both churches and images of God throughout the story the next day was the Feast of Las Animas and as opposed to a lot of the Cities they were in this town actually observed it so they began to have their feast and their Traditions to respect Christ as they do this it says the judge sat alone in the Cantina he also watched the rain his eyes small and his great and naked face he'd filled his pockets with little candy death sheds and he sat by the door and offered these to Children passing on the walk under the eaves but they shied away like little horses shortly after this it says by noon the day following glanton in his drunkenness was taken with a kind of fit and he lurched crazed and disheveled into the little Courtyard and began to open fire with his pistols in the afternoon he laid bound to his bed like a mad man while the judge sat with him and cooled his brow with with Rags of water and spoke to him in a low voice outside voices called across the Steep hillsides a little girl was missing and parties of citizens had turned out to search the mine shafts after a while glanton slept and the judge Rose and went out keep that mention in mind for later as the judge walks out in the street a young boy standing by the bridge is holding two puppies that he's trying to sell the boy's trying to sell the dogs so the judge reaches into his pocket and pulls out a gold coin that the story says is worth a bushel of these dogs so he gives the boy the golden coin and the judge takes the two puppies into his hand and smiles at the boy and walks over to the bridge and throws the puppies into a river as he does that bathat is standing underneath the bridge peeing into it and whenever he sees the puppies flying to the river he pulls his gun and shoots them as they're floating down the water if this is done out of Mercy or out of meanness the story never says but what is apparent is it seems while the judge gave far too much money for these two puppies it was well worth it to him to be able to extinguish a life that wasn't his own in the meantime glanton who's stumbling drunk out of bed and seemingly has no purpose in his life now that he can't kill people for money because good luck finding a local Governor's house that he can sell the scalps at he just decides to start a problem he cuts down a Mexican flag and ties it to the tail of a mule and just starts walking the mule down the street for fun thinking it's funny to you know drag the flag across the dirt eventually someone gets tired of this and as glanton rounds a corner someone pulls a gun and Fires at him immediately Glon fires back and it erupts into a gunfight with all of the gang showing up to just start shooting at random people in this Mexican Town eventually the gang realizes they're out gun and they all Mount their horses and ride out of the city leaving six of their dead and wounded behind after they get out of the town a couple of gang members who were held up join up with the gang and say that the locals were taking their wounded uh The glanton Gangs wounded and they dragged them into the street and the priest baptized them before a soldier executed them which the baptism before death is much more Mercy that the Mexicans are giving to the glanton gang than the glanton gang are giving to the Mexicans so they continue on their journey and they get to this section where it is a switch back back on the side of a cliff face or in other words like the mountain does this and it's a very narrow walkway because this is a path to a Mercury mine at the base of the mountain so as the glanton gang begins to walk on it there are several Mine Workers who are whipping mules up The Cliff face as they have bags of mercury saddled over them so the glanton gang just ignores them and glanton at the front just pushes through this group of mules and is so close to several of the mules that the mules are about to step over the cliff face and eventually glanton steps by one of the Riders uh or one of the people who are ushering the mules up these Hills and the man begins to yell at glanton glanton pays him no mind and after glan and passed the man pulls out a gun so immediately on seeing this with no hesitation David Brown just pulls his own gun and shoots the worker and at the gunfire every of the gang just starts slaughtering the mules and the people working them the novel describes this as bad luck on behalf of the Mind workers they just so happened to run into the glanton gang which of course surely meant death it talks about the mules falling over the cliff face hundreds of feet screaming only to explode in a pop of silver and red a scene that isn't really explained is when they get to the base of the mountain that night uh the judge points out that black Jackson's missing so the judge and a couple of the delawares go to find him and they bring him back but it says when they bring him back they had the black with him he was naked safe for a blanket he'd wrapped himself in he didn't even have boots he was riding one of the bonea pack mules from the conductor and he was shivering with cold the only thing he'd saved was his pistol he was holding it against his chest under the blanket for he had no other place to carry it so perhaps Jackson tried to defect so whenever the judge found him he shamed him by making him strip naked to ride back into camp or maybe he lost his clothes or got separated I don't know make if that interaction what you will knowing what we know about the judge later in the story I'm kind of inclined to believe it was a type of shaming so as the gang especially glanton is kind of at a Breaking Point uh they have no purpose anymore well beyond what little purpose they had of murder and money but now they can't even do that so everyone's kind of losing their mind just killing for the sake of killing except for the judge who seems completely unbothered by everything that's happening at this point also they've gone so far south so they're beginning to hit the jungle and it says as they're walking through the Jungle the judge is just like shooting birds and catching butterflies to catalog and draw pictures of in his book So eventually one night while they're sitting around the fire toadvine looks at him and says what's the point of this book and all of this cataloging he does anyway which leads to another of my favorite scenes in the entire novel the judges quill ceased at scratching he looked at toadvine then he continued to write again toadvine spat into the fire the judge rode on and then he folded The Ledger shut and laid it to one side and pressed his hands together and passed them down over his nose and mouth and placed them Palm down on his knees whatever exists he said whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent he looked about at the Dark Forest in which they were bivouak he nodded towards the specimens he collected these Anonymous creatures he said may seem little or nothing in the world yet the smallest crumb can devour us any smallest thing beneath ywn rock out of men's knowing only nature can enslave man and only when the existence of each last entity is routed out and made to stand naked before him will he properly Sue A Reign of the Earth what's a suarin a keeper a keeper or Overlord why not say keeper then because he is a special kind of keeper a suarin rules even where there are other rulers his authority counterterms local judgments toad Vine's fat the judge placed his hands on the ground he looked at his Inquisitor this is my claim he said and yet everywhere upon it are pockets of autonomous life autonomous in order for it to be mine nothing must be permitted to occur upon it save by my dispensation toine sat with his boots crossed before the fire no man can acquaint himself with everything on this Earth he said the judge tilted his great head the man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear Superstition will drag him down the rain will rode the Deeds of his life but the man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of of order from the tapestry will by decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge that he will affect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate I don't see what that has to do with catching birds the freedom of the birds is an insult to me I'd have them all in zoos that'd be a hell of a zoo the judge smiled yes he said even so the judge has such an interesting and and almost selfish outlook on the world he touches the dirt and says this is my claim the world and everything in it and anything in this world that exists without my knowledge doesn't look to me for permission it exists without my consent he says the freedom of the birds the autonomy of them is an insult to him he'd rather they all be locked up in zoos because then it would be cataloged and it would be under his command he is not trying to be the master of his own destiny he is trying to be the warlord of everyone else after this once again the gang does the same thing where they go to a small town and there's a hostel and they take it over and have a party and burn stuff in the backyard so the men make it to Sonora and out here they don't have word of what the glinton gang's done yet so they get another contract to collect native scalps so they immediately go back to the new much easier trick than fighting armed Natives and instead just Massacre another Mexican Village this time while they're on their way back they are approached by Mexican Calvary led by General Elias in the fight glanton's gang is outgunned and immediately begins an escape however in the initial shootout three of them are dead and seven of them are injured that night they can see out in the Horizon the fires of Elias's soldiers they're being chased through the desert and it doesn't seem like Elias is going to lose interest in them anytime soon Elias again was a general of the Mexican military who didn't take kindly to glanton killing Mexican civilians of those seven that are wounded four of them are wounded so badly that they can no longer ride and if they leave these men behind to the Mexican soldiers then there's no telling what the Mexicans will do to them so the gang decides to draw Lots they take arrows out of a quiver and they wrap pieces of flannel to them and whoever draws the arrow with the flannel has to stay behind to put down the wounded soldier the four men that are wounded are two of the Delaware Indians uh a Mexican who is new to the gang or I guess was new to the gang and a man named dick Shelby there's this weird moment whenever the kid goes up to draw arrows where it says he sat on the ground with the quiver upright between his knees while the company filed past when the kid selected among the shafts to draw one he saw the judge watching him and he paused he looked at glanton he let go the arrow he'd Chosen and sorted out another and Drew that one it carried the red tassel he looked at the judge again and the judge was not not watching and he moved on and took his place with Tate and Webster so they're sitting there casting arrows and right before the kid goes to the judge is staring him down and it changes the kid's mind and sure enough the arrow that he pulls next has the flannel attached to it it's like the judge is instrumenting the kids's life to put them in these horrific scenarios again it's an instance of Fate perhaps or perhaps the judge is an agent of it so the kid standing there with the three other men who drew the arrows and then one of the UN injured Delaware Indians walks up to the line and goes to two of the men and takes their arrows from them because the Delaware sees it more fitting that he kills his own people rather than them they watch as the Delaware walks to the two other injured Delaware and he takes a club and just caves their head in and leaves so that leaves the kid and a man named Tate to kill the wounded Mexican and Dick Shelby at this point everyone else in the Gang has started to move out so they can get some ground on the soldiers and Tate and the kid need to finish what they're about to do fast so after everyone leaves the conversation picks up Tate squatted in the sand his hands dangling in front of him he turned and looked at the kid who gets the Mexican he said the kid didn't answer they looked at Shelby he was watching them Tate had a clutch of small pebbles in his hand and he let them drop one by one into the sand he looked at the kid go on if you want to the kid said he looked looked at the delawares dead in their blankets you might not do it he said that ain't your worry Lon might come back he might Tate looked over to where the Mexican was lying and he looked at the kid again I'm still held to it he said the kid didn't answer you know what they'll do to them the kid spat I can guess he said no you can't I said you could go you do what you want the kid senses that Tate's having trouble thinking about putting these men men that he probably considers friends down so the kid tells Tate to get out of there again it's one of those instances of the kid's weird rule of mercy and something we're about to see another instance of right after so Tate leaves and now the kid is standing there by himself with the Mexican and Shelby the kid sat in the sand and stared off to the South the Mexican was shot through the lungs and would die anyway but Shelby had his hips Shattered by a ball he was clear in his head he lay watching the kid he was from a prominent Kentucky family and had attended Transylvania college and like many another young man of his class he gone west because of a woman he watched the kid and he watched the enormous Sun where it sat boiling on the edge of the desert any road agent or Gambler would have known that the first to speak would lose but Shelby had already lost it all man I love I love the the way McCarthy writes these scenes any road agent or Gambler would know that the first to speak would lose but Shelby had already lost at all it makes me want to scream at such a good bug why don't you just get it on with he said that Shelby talking the kid looked at him if I had a gun I'd shoot you Shelby said the kid didn't answer you know that don't you you ain't got a gun the kid said he looked to the South again something moving perhaps the first lines of heat no dust in the morning so early when he looked at Shelby again Shelby was crying you won't thank me if I let you off he said do it then you son of a the kid sat a light wind was blowing out of the North and some doves had begun to call in the thicket of Grease wood behind them if you want me just to leave you I will Shelby did an answer he pushed a Furrow in the sand with the heal of his boot you'll have to say will you leave me a gun you know I can't leave you no gun you're no better than him are you the kid didn't answer what if he comes back glandon yes what if he does he'll kill me you won't be out nothing kids like oh he'll kill you yeah we wouldn't want that to happen now wouldn't we you won't be out nothing you son of a the kid Rose will you hide me hide you yes the kid spat You Can't Hide where you going to hide at will he come back I don't know this is a terrible place to die in where's a good one Shelby wiped his eyes with the back of his wrist can you see them he said not yet will you pull me up under that bush the kid turned and looked at him he looked off down country again and then he crossed the Basin and squatted behind Shelby and took him up under the arms and raised him Shelby's head rolled back and he looked up and then he snatched at the butt of the pistol stuck in the kid's belt the kid seized his arm he let him down and stepped away and turned him loose when he returned through the Basin leading the horse the man was crying again he took the pistol from his belt and jamed it among his belongings lashed to the CLE took his canteen down and went to him he had his face turned away the kid filled his flask from his own and reeded the stopper where it hung by its thong and drove it home with the heel of his hand then he rosed and looked off to the South Yonder they come he said Shelby raised up on one elbow the kid looked at him and he looked at the faint and formless articulation along the horizon of the sky Shelby laid back he was staring up at the sky a dark overcast was moving down from the North and the wind was up a clutch of leaves scuttled out of the willow Bracken at the edge of the sand and then scuttled back again the kid crossed to where the horse stood waiting took the pistol stuck it in his belt hung the canteen over the saddle horn mounted up and looked back at the wounded man then he rode out even though Shelby reached for the kid's gun even though he was probably going to kill him in that moment the kid went over to him and in the middle of the hot desert he refilled a dine man's canteen with his own water that just one of the elements of of this story uh that becomes more apparent I think whenever you think of the ending the place it ends is the kids morality is almost subjective and in my opinion I'm jumping the gun on the analysis a bit but in my opinion I think that is the greatest thing that would be lost if you made this into a film like yeah Studios won't do it because of the brutal depictions of elderly women and babies being murdered right but from a thematic perspective whenever you read this story it is almost up to you how evil the kid is because like in all the mentions earlier in the story whenever it's talking about the gang scalping people murdering people the kid is never mentioned in the violence he is definitely there and he's mentioned afterwards like for example whenever they slaughtered the Apache Village the kid isn't mentioned through the entire Slaughter he's mentioned at the end whenever he sees that Miguel has been stabbed and that's the first time he comes back into the tail so you can imagine the kid as going through and just massacring people along with the rest of the gang or kind of being a witness to it all nowhere else to be in the world this is just where he lives so in moments like this where I don't I don't know in MO in moments like this where there's an act of Mercy that is unseen by the other members of the game Unthinkable even by the other members of the gang I don't know it it feeds this idea that perhaps the kid definitely not Innocent but is more blameless than most uh it's it's so interesting to me I I heard people talking about this story like you know people giving lectures on and stuff and they would talk about a kid that was not my kid it was not that the way they would describe his actions and his evil were completely different from what I envisioned in my head and I heard other people who treated the kid much more favorably than I had in my head and it's like not only is the kid an audience surrogate in a way you know cuz he's what we see the actions of the story through but he's almost a moral I don't know imprint it's weird what you think he's most likely to do in this scenario is what he does except for instances like this and because of that and because of where the story ends I like to think that perhaps the kid is different from the rest of the Gang in some way he might be nihilistic he might be empty with you know compassion of man but he's not a he's not a Manhunter he's not a monster at least not yet I don't know it's an interesting aspect of the story something I don't see done a lot so the kid is riding up the trail to catch up with the gang and as he does he sees a lone Rider standing off side of his horse as he gets closer he realizes that this is tap as the kid rides up he's sees that the horse is standing on three legs which is not a good sign the kid Begins by speaking to Tate can he walk not much he got down and Drew up the horse's leg the Frog of the hoof was split and bloody and the animal's shoulder quivered he let the hoof down the sun was about 2 hours high and now there was dust on the horizon a couple things to note the reason that the H's hoof split is because earlier in the story whenever they were being trapped I believe it was by the Mexican Army the Mexican Army was able to follow them easier cuz they just looked for the horse the horseshoes in the ground so they Deo the horses which is what caused this injury the other detail is that dust on the horizon is the Mexican Army getting closer so this is quickly becoming a problem he looked at Tate what do you want to do I don't know lead him a while see how he does he ain't going to do I know it we could ride and tie you might just keep riding I might anyway Tate looked at him go on if you want he said the kid spat come on he said I hate to leave the saddle hate to leave the horse as far as that goes the kid picked up the trailing Reigns of his own animal you might change your mind about what you hate to leave he said I love the kid I love his dialogue like when he doesn't speak that much but when he does speak it's always some matter of fact statement that I I love so both of them are now walking their horses at a much much slower rate and Tate has to keep fighting his animal to make it move forward I should also mention that I know the passage of time probably weird in my description it's more better defined in the story and now they've worked their way back uh North and they are now in the mountains around Sonora I mention that because it's about to start snowing and that'd be really weird considering last time mentioned they were in the jungle the gang's been riding with the kid for going on a year at this point eventually the snow got blowing to such a degree that they had to wrap in their blankets and face away from it as it pelted them in the eyes they can barely see a few feet in front of them and Tate says ain't this hell he said will your horse lead hell no I can hardly make him follower we get turned around we might just run Plum into the Spaniards I never seen it turn so cold so quick what do you want to do we better go on we could pull for the High Country as long as we keep going uphill we'll know we ain't gone in a circle we'll get cut off we never will find glanton we're cut off now Tate turned and stared bleakly to where the whirling flakes blew down from the north let's go he said we can't stand here so they eventually get up to a little like Cliffside in the snow and decide to wrap themselves in their sleeping bags for the night the next day the kid wakes up underneath a pile of snow because he hears footsteps the kid underneath the snow grabs his gun and sets up right throwing the snow off of him and when he does he sees five Mexican soldiers walking up on him with rifles immediately the kid pulls his pistol and shoots the one in front of him before rolling out of the sleeping bag grabbing his boots and sprinting down the mountain side as he fires bullets behind him up on the mountain side he can hear gunshots continue to go off and from here Tate is never mentioned again well he's mentioned but he's never seen again so it's more than likely that the Mexican soldiers killed him up there on the Mountain from here we're treated to this interesting scene where it's kind of like the beginning of the novel where the kid is traveling across the countryside of his own seeing the remnants of war and nature as it carries around him and he's just kind of a voyager through it it's so cold that he can't feel his feet and as he's walking he's picking up patches of snow and keeps eating it to stay hydrated he sleeps curled up in a ball having lost his sleeping bag on top of the mountain wrapped around his pistol as it's the only artifact he has and the only thing that could possibly save him as he's walking one night again it's been a few nights of him walking over the mountain tops through the cold as he's walking he looks out in the darkness and he sees a solitary fire it's weird there's several scenes in this book that I continue to think about after I finish reading it um one of the primary ones being the ending of the book which again we'll get to uh but probably next to that the scene I find myself thinking of the most or thinking what it might mean is this he continues to walk through the darkness through the fog it says a couple of times it seems that the image of the fire is cut off he thinks maybe wolves are running in between him and the fire but it doesn't distract him from it he keeps pushing on and when he gets there it was a lone tree burning on the desert a heraldic tree that the passing storm had left a fire the solitary Pilgrim drawn up before it had traveled far to be here and he knelt in the hot sand and held his numbed hands out while all about in that Circle attended companies of lesser auxiliaries routed forth into the in orted day small owls that crouched silently and stood from foot to foot and tarantulas and slugas and vinegaroons and the vicious Mel spiders and beaded lizards with mouth black as a chow dog's deadly demand and the little desert basilisks that jet blood from their eyes eyes and the small sand vipers like seamly Gods silent and the same in jeda and Babylon a constellation of ignited eyes that edged that ring of light all bound in precarious truce before this torch whose brightness had set back the stars in their sockets it I think this is this will make more sense later but for me this was the turning point of the novel The kid has witnessed horrific atrocities of man over and over again uh and some some things nearly unspeakable and how evil they are and now he is separate from the gang he is apart from them he is his own agent if desperate still you know acting on his own here in his own accordance and just before the scene happened he had done everything to be right by his fellow man he had you know he he spared Shelby uh Shelby didn't want to be shot it seemed so the kid didn't do it uh he stuck with Tate and that's what put him in the situation but he wouldn't leave his man alone and it's like now after all of that happened he's given a Herald uh this a blazing tree left by a storm in the middle of this Tundra and it says that you know it's it's a offering of Salvation that he's near freezing to death about to lose his hands and he can use the fire to warm his hands um but this this boy who has been at least been complicit with evil all this time as he stands there before a burning altar surrounded by the snakes and the spiders he crawls before it humble a pilgrim as the story describes and he draws warmth from it and it's also not to be overlooked how the image of a burning in the wilderness directly hearkens back to the biblical story of Moses and the burning bush uh but here God isn't speaking it's just quiet it's just it's just a a Salvation that happens for him even if for a moment it keeps him going to the next day and I'll explain I'll come back to the scene when we get to the ending but I think his decision after this his decision to walk back towards the gang is how do I phrase this is symbolically the final step of his journey he eventually comes off the mountain and gets back on the trail the gang was following as he's walking down the trail he sees a giant smoldering mass and when he gets closer to it he realizes it's all of the gang scalps thrown into a pile and burned this is twofold for one they're not going back to Sonora to sell these things not while being chased by the Sonora military so so that's out there's no reason to carry them and two they are about to try to make deals with the natives and if you show up with a horse full of native scalps they're probably not going to be in a talking mood eventually the kid makes it back to the gang at this point he had found one of the horses that the gang had left behind in the desert and he managed to get on top of it and catch up with them when he gets there he finds that four more have been killed and the Gang as a whole is in a very bad state of being that night they're all starving so the judge walks over and finds the most sickly looking horse and decides to kill it for me he ask the men to come help him and no one will except for the kid who again volunteers however this time unlike he did with David Brown the priest tries to stop him Tobin says pay him no mine lad the judge called again from the dark beyond the fire and the ex- priest placed a cautionary hand upon the kid's arm but the kid Rose and spat Into the Fire he turned and eyed the ex- priest you think I'm AF afid of him the ex priest didn't answer and the kid turned and went out into the darkness where the judge waited he stood holding the horse just his teeth glistened in the Fire Light together they led the animal off little ways and the kid held the woven Riata while the judge took up a round rock weighing perhaps 100 lb and crushed the horse's skull with a single blow blood shot out of its ears and it slammed to the ground so hard that one of its four legs broke under it with a dull snap that's a such an interesting note for one we see more of the brutality of the judge that he's able to pick up this Boulder and just smash its head but that quick mention of the kid about to go help him and the priest tries to stop him uh this will become more prevalent as The Story Goes On they spend some days going from town to town staying in dingy Stables to stay away from the cold and eventually they come to an old deserted Mission or effectively a church that several people would live at that would also operate as sort of a community center they decided to go check it out and a few of the men entered the church before glanton and some of the others and as they're riding up to the church they hear a gunshot quickly everyone runs inside to see what's going on they walk in to see their men reloading a rifle and some stranger lying dying on the floor in between them the man in the floor was dying and he was dressed all together in homemade clothes of sheep hide even to boots and a strange cap they turned him over on the crack clay tiles and his jaw moved and a bloody spittle formed along his lower his eyes were dull and there was fear in them and there was something else John puit stood the butt of his rifle on the floor and swung his horn about to recharge the piece I seen another and run he said least two of them the man in the floor began to move he had one arm lying in his groin and he moved it slightly and pointed at them or at the height from which he had fallen or to his destination in eternity they did not know then he died something about that just a man dying and all all this details about him in his last moments it's so it's so melancholic so they said that as they walked in there was a hole in the ceiling and there were two guys up top so puit took his rifle and shot one of them and he had fallen from the ceiling to the church floor and that's the scene that everyone walked in on the rest of the gang finds this second man and brings him before glanton he's babbling like a fool and speaks no English and a little Spanish so then the judge begins to speak to him normally because it turns out they both speak German it's a explained that the man who they shot who fell to the ground was that second Man's brother and that the two of them had jumped off of a boat some time ago that was coming over from Germany and they had been living in this abandoned mission for quite some time so the gang decides to leave him there and as they're riding away it says the judge caught glanton up and they rode side by side out to the road glanton spat order to shot that one too he said the judge smiled I don't like to see white men that way Clan said Dutch or whatever I don't like to see it as the men continue to ride it was mentioned earlier that they sent out a scouting party ahead to see if there is any danger on the horizon as the men continue to ride they find the scouting party hung upside down from the Thorns of a tree with thorns ran through their heels as they had been slowly cooked by the natives that had captured them one of these men who was hanging upside down on the tree was bath cap and as it was prophesized near the beginning of the book toadvine walks up to him and cuts him down from the tree observing that tattoo that it was mentioned all the way back then he would see when he cut his naked torso from a tree in the wilderness they continue riding and eventually they come across an Apache village now typically this would be the part where the gang starts murdering them but now because the gang doesn't have the faculties to do that and also they can't get paid for it they decide that why not talk to the Apaches for once the Apaches are standing stand there with their leader out front so glanton walks up to the leader and the two approach each other and as soon as glanton starts to talk to him glanton's horse reaches forward and bites the ear of the Apache Leader's horse just rips the ear out Blood starts spurting everywhere because glanton's warhorse is so used to killing and more specifically killing anyone who looks like these Apaches that it just immediately goes to fight and glandon has to start punching it in the face to Make It Stop So immediately the Apaches and the Gang begin to draw weapons on each other but before anyone can fire the judge rides up and begins his smooth talking the leader comes to them and the gang says they don't want any trouble and they're just looking to barter the Apaches agree that they'll let bygones be bygones if they can trade money for whiskey the gang says that they don't have any whiskey but at this point they're pretty close to Tucson Arizona so they tell the Apaches that if they give them 3 days they'll be back to trade a barrel of whiskey for gold so now back in America the gang is in Tucson and they are met by an American Lieutenant named Couts and again CS has no idea what the glanton gang's been up to so they meet each other exchange their pleasantries and then the gang goes to a bar to get drunk and eat food they also need to rebuild the gang so as a lot of these men go to bars to get drunk glanton and the judge start to walk through the town seeing if anyone's interested in joining up for a ride to California everyone in the streets kind of laugh at them until eventually someone says hey go to the end of the road and see if clouse and that mad man want to go with you so glanton and the judge go to look for it and the story says glanton and the judge sought them out a rude ENT thrown up out of an old tarp a sign that said see the Wild Man Two Bits they passed behind a wagon sheet where within a crude cage of PIV poles crouched a naked imbecile the floor of the cage was littered with filth and trot in food and flies clambered about everywhere the idiot was small and misshapen and his face was smeared with feces and he sat peering at them with dull hostility silently chewing a turd K steps out and the two ask if he's the keeper of this thing and K says that he is after some conversing glanton says that he'll take CL and this wild man in a cage for $100 K says that he'll get the money because he wants to make it to California and as mentioned earlier you can't travel by yourself and on the way out glanton turns to him and says you let women see that thing and K says I don't know said the owner there's none ever asked so CL just has a crazy person who is inside of a cage who says is covered in his own filth and excrement and he just takes people's money so they can look at him a right fit for the glanton gang so glanton and the judge join the rest of the gang and they go to an eating house to get food as they sitting there they're encountered by a problem that they haven't experienced a long time because it wasn't a problem in Mexico perhaps the owner of the restaurant it says a man in a Blood Stained apron walks up to them from out of the back and says gentlemen he said we don't mind serving people of color glad to do it but we asked for him to sit over here at this other table here right over here he stepped back and held out one hand in a strange gesture of hospice his guests looked at one another what in the hell is he talking about just right over here said the man toadvine looked down the table to where Jackson sat several looked toward glanton his hands were at rest on the board in front of him and his head was slightly bent like a man at Grace the judge sat smiling his arms crossed they were all slightly drunk they said in Silence the old woman in the court had commenced wailing some dolorous air and the man was standing with his hand out held piled just within the door were the satchels and holsters and the arms of the company Glon raised his head he looked at the man what's your name he said name's Owens I own the place Mr Owens if you was anything at all other than a damn fool you could take one look at these here men and know for a stone fact they ain't a one of them going to get up from where they're at to go sit somewhere else well I can't serve you suit yourself about that ask her what she's got Tommy Harland one of the gang members Harland was sitting at the end of the table and he leaned out and called to the old woman at her pots and asked her in Spanish what she had to eat she looked toward the house hoo she said hoos said Harlen tell her to bring him Tommy she won't bring you nothing without I tell her to I own this place Harland was calling out the open door I know for a fact that that man yonder's uh black man said Owens Jackson looked up at him Brown turned toward the owner have you got a gun he said a gun A gun have you got a gun not on me I ain't Brown pulled a small five shot Colt from his belt and pitched it to him he caught it and stood holding it uncertainly you got one now now shoot the black man wait a minute said Owens shoot him said Brown Jackson had risen and he pulled one of the big pistols from his belt Owens pointed the pistol at him you put that down he said better forget about giving orders and shoot the son of a put it down man tell him to put it down shoot it he cocked the pistol Jackson fired he simply passed his left hand over the top of the revolver he was holding in a gesture brief as a flint spark and tripped the hammer the big pistol jumped and a double handful of Owen's brains went out the back of his skull and plopped in the floor behind him he sank without a sound and lay crumpled with his face in the floor and one eye open and the blood welling up out of the destruction of the back of his head Jackson sat down brown rose and retrieved his pistol and let the hammer back down and put it in his belt so they're at a bar and the owner says that Jackson can't eat with him because he's black so Brown's like all right let's make it interesting and he throws a gun to the owner so in a duel Jackson stands up and kills Owens you immediately after this Clouts who's the lieutenant in Tucson as mentioned comes to glanton and the men who are now drinking at a different establishment and says I'm sorry Glennon but I'm going to have to arrest whoever was responsible for the murder of Owens and glennon's like what are you talking about and clout says well you all walked into the bar and then we there was a gunshot and now he's dead and glinton says did you witness it you have any Witnesses of it and and um clout says no and glanton said well you can go ahead and ask the boys but none of us were in there either and through the judge finagling with Clouts uh they get away with it because they're all sworn to secrecy towards each other again their own sense of loyalty also in one of these bars glanton and the judge begin talking tolouse about the nature of this wild man it turns out that this wild man is clouse's brother who was just born that way he says that he has taken this boy from town to town and in every town he has been r ruled and feathered he had one town where they were convinced he was drugging the boy so they jailed both of them for a while and when the boy didn't get any better they just released both of them and let them go about their way so effectively clouse is a traveling showman with the showman being his mentally ill brother it's also mentioned that within the village that night another child goes missing and of course as with every single town they go to they get drunk that night and they go naked through the streets door too demanding for women and liquor to be brought out to them so you know their standard Charming self it's also said that the faer in Tucson doesn't have an anvil to work with and instead he has a meteorite that fell to the Earth that weighs potentially hundreds of pounds so for a series of bets The Judge first picks it up and then he picks it up above his head and then he throws the meteor tin Feet Again attesting to the capabilities of this man so as they leave Tucson they go back to finish their deal with the Apaches the deal was they would trade gold for a barrel of whiskey so what glanton does is he gets a barrel and he takes a sack like a leather sack and he ties it to the inside of where the spet is located on the outside of the barrel so there is enough whiskey in that sack for you know a few cups full but the rest of the barrel is filled with water so he goes and he tricks the Apaches gets the gold for the whole Barrel's worth and takes off one of the new recruits who they got a Tucson rides up next to Brown and asks what will happen if the Apaches decide to retaliate they won't ride at night said Brown the recruit looked back at the figures gathered about The Keg in that scoured and darkening waist why won't they he said Brown spat cuz it's dark he said why won't they ride at night I don't know maybe cuz they can't see idiot during this time around the campfire it says that gland is nearly broken so many people dead the members of the gang now aren't even the people that he started with and he just sits there staring as the judge sits next to him watching the idiot stare at the fire from his cage also I'm not being mean calling him the idiot uh that's what the story calls him for the rest of it so you can take it up with the author one night the men are sitting around the fire and someone ask the ex priest if it's true that at one point in history there were two moons in the night sky which was a belief held by a few few I guess groups of people at this time the exiest said it was fully possible perhaps God put up two moons and then decided that Humanity only needed one after that someone asked the question of if there's life on other planets out there Among the Stars the question was then put as to whether there were on mars or other planets in the void men or creatures like them and at this the judge who had returned to the fire and stood half naked and sweating spoke and said that there were not and that there were no men anywhere in the Universe save those upon the Earth all listened as he spoke those who had turned to watch him and those who would not the truth about the world he said is that anything is possible have you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is a hat trick in a medicine show a fever dream a trans depopulate with chimeras having neither analog nor precedent an itinerant Carnival a migratory T show whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous Beyond Reckoning 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 in creation which you see is that which you have put there like a string in a maze so that 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 the judge is saying of course there isn't life on other planets there's no order there's no repetition in the universe it is entirely chaotic and changing in every instance Humanity isn't looking why would we expect something as strange as life to happen anywhere else again it falls back on the judge's belief that the world itself is without order unless we assign order to it brown spat Into the Fire that's some of your craziness he said the judge smiled he placed the palms of his hands upon his chest and breathed the night air and he stepped closer and squatted and held up one hand he turned that hand and there was a gold coin between his fingers where's the coin Davey I'll notify you where to put the coin the judge swung his hand and the coin winked overhead in the Fire Light it must have been fastened to some subtle lead horse hair perhaps for it circled the fire and returned to the judge and he caught it in his hand and smiled the Ark of circling bodies is determined by the length of their tether said the judge moons coins men his hands moved as if he were pulling something from one fist in a series of elongations watch the coin Davey he said he flung it and it cut an arc through the fire light and was gone in the darkness Beyond they watched the night where it had vanished and they watched the judge and in they watching some the one and some the other they were a common witness the coin Davey the coin whispered the judge he sat erect and raised his hand and smiled around the coin returned back out of the night crossed the fire with a faint High droning and the judge raised hand was empty and then it held the coin there was a light slap and it held the coin even so some claimed that he had thrown the coin away and palmed another like it and made the sound with his tongue for he was himself a cunning old alista and he said himself as he put the coin away what all men knew that there are coins and false coins in the morning some did walk over the ground where the coin had gone but if any man found it and he kept it to himself and with Sunrise they were mounted and riding again so the judge is explaining that you know the world is without order but at the same time humans are only destined to go so far the coin can only move as far as the ark will allow it to and much the same people are kept to their own devices of their birth of what they make of it if you don't aspire to be anything greater then you will never be something greater the coin can never go farther than the horse hair allows but then he does the magic trick where he throws the coin across the fire and then another one appears in his hand and you would think oh well he just threw a coin and then pulled out another one right but it says the next day they all looked for it and if anyone found it they kept them to thems again another mysterious trait almost Supernatural about the judge's character it seems that this point in the gang that glanton has kind of given up on any Greater Hope or purpose and the judge is just taking his run to the show doing what he wants and that's proven when a couple nights later he's giving another of his sermons and this sermon is by far his most famous and perhaps the most famous segment of the entire book whenever I went into this story I had several of my friends who had read it say wait till you get to the part where the judge talks about this it's one of the greatest monologues in fiction and after reading it I see the hype they were gathered around and the story says that the subject of their discussion was war the good book says that he that lives by the sword Shall Perish By The Sword said the black the judge smiled his face shining with grease what right man would have it any other way he said that line does go pretty hard the good book does indeed count Wars an evil said Irving yet there's many a bloody tale of War inside it 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 he turned to Brown for whom he'd heard some whispered slur or Dem murmur oh Davey he said it's your own trade we honor here why not rather take a small bow Let each acknowledge each my trade certainly what is my trade war war is your trade is it not and ain't it yours mine too very much so what about all them notebooks and bones and stuff 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 that's your notion the judge smiled men are born for games nothing else every child knows that play is nobler than work he knows too that the Worth or Merit of a game is not inherent in the game itself but rather in the value of that which is put at Hazard games of chance require a wager to have meaning at all games of sport involve the skill and strength of the opponents and the humiliation of defeat and the pride of Victory are in themselves sufficient stake because they inhere in the worth of the principles and Define them 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 suppose two-minute cards with nothing to wager save their lives who has not heard such a tale a turn of the card the whole universe for such a player has labored clanking to this moment which will tell if he is to die at that man's hand or that man at his what more certain validation of a man's worth could there be this enhancement of the game to its ultimate State admits no argument concerning the notion of Faith the selection of one man over another is a preference absolute and irrevocable and it is a dull man indeed who could reckon so profound a decision without agency or significance either one in such games as have for their sake the annihilation of the defeated the decisions are quite clear this man holding this particular arrangement of cards in his hand is thereby removed from existence this is the nature of War whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the justification seeing 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 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 and for the first time in the story it makes sense why a 7 foot tall mountain of a man who is educated in matters of government law and art chooses to be in the middle of a Rove of head hunters in the American southwest see as the judge says nothing in the world matters more than War nothing matters more than the conquest of one man over the other if man was made to play games then what greater game could there be than one where the risk is the very existence of man itself what more noble or better causes there to fight for than one that you die for or even better one that you kill for he's not out here killing people wildly in the desert because he loves it although that is part of it he's doing it because there's simply nothing else worth doing Brown studied the judge you're crazy Holden crazy at last the judge smiled might does not make Right Said Irving the man that wins in some combat is not Vindicated morally moral law is an invention of mankind for the disenfranchisement of the powerful in favor of the week historical law subverts it at every turn a moral view can never be proven right or wrong by any ultimate test a man falling dead in a duel is not thought thereby to be proven in error as to his views his very involvement in such a trial gives evidence of a new and broader view the willingness of the principles to forego further argument as the triviality which it in fact is and to petition directly the chambers of the historical absolute clearly indicates of how little movement are the opinions and of what great moment the divergences thereof for the argument is indeed trivial but not so the separate Wills thereby made manifest man's vanity May well approach the infinite in capacity but his knowledge remains imperfect and however much he comes to Value his judgments ultimately he must submit them before a higher Court here there can be no special pleaing here are considerations of equity and rectitude and moral right rendered void and without warrant and here are the views of the litigants despised decisions of life and death of what shall be and what shall not beggar all question of right and elections of these magnitudes are all lesser ones subsumed moral spiritual natural the judge searched out the circle for disputant but what says the priest he said Tobin looked up the priest does not say the priest does not say said the judge Nile diss it but the priest has said for the priest has put by the Robes of his craft and taken up the tools of that higher calling which all men honor the priest also would be no God server but a God himself Tobin shook his head you've a Blasphemous tongue Holden and in truth I was never a priest but only a noviciate to the order journeyman priest or Apprentice priest said the judge men of God and Men of War have strange affinities I'll not seconday you in your notion said Tobin don't ask it ah priest said the judge what could I ask of you that you've not already given all that as to say that morality principles all of that to the judge is meaningless what what is an opinion or a thought of how something should go when there is instead an arena of combat in which one lives and the other dies that is the final decision maker that is the only thing that matters in this world not any decry of God or virtues or life or love only death the final absolute decision that is just and fair in every ruling and he looks to the priest and he says look at the priest he's thrown off his robes decided to be something greater he has found the True Religion the religion of War not a god server as the judge says but a God himself while everyone else in the gang excluding the kid potentially while everyone else in the gang is there as Soldiers of Fortune and willing to shed misery on others for the sake of profit the judge is there because it's Noble because murder Conquest destroying any life in your path to be the one left standing that is nobility that is honor that is something to be praised so as the others are there for money and for the the women and the booze the judge is there because it feels good because it's supposed to feel good because if War if death if murder is the highest calling a human can Inspire towards then what other call might a man or a king have than Mass Bloodshed a few days later the gang makes it to the Colorado River and when they get there they see that the ferry across the river is being ran by a man named Lincoln so the gang begins to conspire as another way to make money off of these people The Yuma Indians who are nearby have been thinking about attacking Lincoln and the fery so the gang goes to the yumas and say that they'll be happy to help them attack the fery they then go to Lincoln and say that any day now the humas are probably going to attack and it's in Lincoln's best interest to let the gang set up fortification ations to which Lincoln agrees also in the midst of this a woman who is traveling on the ferry sees uh CL and his deranged brother in a cage and she scolds him for being a bad brother and for uh you know locking up your mentally old brother and putting him on a cage to sell shows to so she asked CL what the idiot's name is and he says that his name is James so the woman takes James to the river and her and several other women clean him off and set his Carriage on fire that night the idiot gets up from camp and walks into the river by himself and nearly drowns but he stopped whenever the judge who is walking alongside the river sees him drowning and waits into the river to pull him out the relationship between the judge and the idiot as he's called or James is weird uh typically the judge despises all life and you know everything around him that lives that you know without his permission or whatever but he not really cares he keeps the idiot alive and keeps him around uh for here in like some parts of the story moving forward and I don't know if it's because he's interested in him as a specimen if he likes the idiot or if he likes I keep saying idiot because that's what the story calls him if he likes Jame it's a little mean if he likes James because James bends to his will perhaps but for some reason he seems to have a soft spot for him even though he's you know insane and can't talk which is probably the aspect that the judge likes about him so once all the pieces are in play The Day of the Yuma attack comes another thing that I should mention is that one of the goods Lincoln the guy who ran the ferry had in his possession was a 12lb Howitzer cannon the gang decides to set it up to prepare for the advancing yumas they get up on a cliff side where they can oversee the other Bank of the fery and as soon as the yumas launch their attack they like off the Candon killing a dozen yumas with grape shot out of the cannon all at once the yumas begin to scream and shout calling them Traders and monsters and the Gang ignores their cries and guns them down on the side of the Colorado River something interesting to note is that after the gang kills the yumas they start scalping them this is weird because the gang can't sell the scalps anymore it seems that they're doing it just out of tradition or love of the kill after they do this Lincoln decides to to not try to hinder them in in their future endeavors because you know the last guys that tried got blown up by a cannon so Lincoln effectively just lets glanton run the show and that goes exactly as you'd expect glandon took charge of the operation of the ferry people who had been waiting 3 days to cross at a dollar ahead were now told that the fair was $4 and even this Tariff was in effect for no more than a few days soon they were operating a sort of prusan Ferry where the fairs were tailored to a ate the purses of The Travelers ultimately all pretense was dropped and the immigrants were robbed outright Travelers were beaten and their arms and goods appropriated and they were sent destitute and beggared into the desert the doctor came down to remonstrate with them and was paid his share of the revenues and sent back horses were taken and women violated and bodies began to drift past the Yuma Camp down river as these outrages multiplied the doctor barricaded himself in his court ERS and was seen no more so glan and figures hey since we lost that whole gimmick we had going with the sing native scalps thing what if we just ra people just a a good oldfashioned American robbery one day a group of American soldiers show up to cross the river and after seeing the glannon is just an animal they decide not to work with him so they build their own faery further down the river after the soldiers leave the ferry becomes an alternate route of travel compared to glanton's fairy the fery down the river being operated by the yumas and white men working with the yumas so how does the gang respond to this easy they kill everyone there and set the fery on fire by now glanton had enslaved a number of sonorans and he kept Crews of them working at the fortification of the Hill there were also detained in the camp a dozen or more Indian and Mexican girls some little more than children Glennon supervised with some interest the raising of the walls about him but otherwise left his men to pursue the business at the cross ING with a terrible latitude he seemed to take little account of the wealth they were amassing although daily he'd open the brass lock with which the wood and leather trunk in his quarters was secured and raised the lid and empty whole sacks of valuables into it the trunk already holding thousands of dollars in gold and silver coins as well as jewelry watches pistols raw gold and little Leather stes silver in bars knives silverwear plate teeth so at this point rather than just roaming the countryside they decide to build a little castle here at the edge of the ferry and just rob anyone who tries to get across the Colorado River glanton just a dragon sitting on top of his horde no need to journey into the world or be anything better eventually they need Building Supplies so glanton sends toadvine David Brown and Webster to the city of San Diego to get the supplies they need it's about a 5 days journey and when the three get there they go to the store to order the parts they need and then immediately go on a bender the next day David Brown wakes up in an alley with the gangs money tied around his neck and he can't find toadvine or Webster anywhere turns out the two of them got arrested for their drunken Endeavors the night before San Diego isn't like these small towns in the middle of Mexico that you can just torment all you want they have you know police and jails that will do something about it Brown goes to the alcal day which is effectively like a judge or Sheriff of the town and ask for his two friends to be let out but the alal tells him to get lost so Brown concerns himself with other things Brown goes to a faer and demands to have a double barrel shotgun cut down but by the description the shotgun is so beautiful that the frier says he's not going to saw the barrel because that would be a disgrace to the weapon Brown eventually tells the frier that if the frier doesn't saw down the shotgun barrels that brown will kill him so the fairer goes to get the police and as he does brown just hops the counter and uses the the fer tools to saw off the shotgun barrel and then police show up they were like are you did you threaten to injure this man and brow said no I didn't threaten anything it was a promise I promised to kill him the gang is unfit for any manner of civilized or polite living as you could probably imagine the next day Webster and toadvine get out of jail so how did the men celebrate with another Bender of course this night however as the men are walking out of the bar drunk Brown sees a peace officer or police officer walk walking by and brown thinks it would be funny to pour a picture of aguar Dente I believe that's how it's pronounced on him effectively a very strong alcohol and then he Puffs his cigar and holds it to the officer and sure enough the officer bursts into flames only instead of a funny joke the man began to scream and tear at himself until eventually he burned to death and lied dead in the street of course because of this brown was arrested one night an officer comes to Brown in his jail s and while he's standing there Brown shows him the necklace of ears that he has on his neck it's implied that brown took the necklace from bathat after bathat died and he begins to tell this young officer that he is a part of a gang that has tons and tons of gold and riches amassed in the Hills outside of San Diego after nights of convincing eventually this officer agrees to help Brown Escape if Brown takes him to the money so the two of them Escape into the night and it says two nights in as as they're setting up camp Brown Walks Behind the officer who helped free him and shoots him in the back of the head stealing what little gear he had and then leaving to head back towards the ferry in the meantime that all of this was going on Webster and toadvine as soon as brown had been arrested ran back to the ferry to tell glanton so glanton seeing that one of the gang members has been trapped gets a couple more men and all of them ride to San Diego before he leaves glanton leaves the judge in charge of the ferry and the castle they they're building next to the ferry it seems that in the beginning they were just building fortifications around the office of the fery but at this point it's a full-blown Murder Castle in the middle of the night glanton and some of his men make it to the alcalde's house break into his house and then tie him and his wife up and throw a noose over the Raptors and begin to hang the alal in front of his wife until he tells them where David Brown went the alal says to go check the jail cell there's no one in there and sure enough Glon walks in and the cell's empty because as we know David Brown had escaped with the officer during this time so they take the alal and his wife out of town and it says that they're found 8 days later still alive but tied up in a Hut South of San Diego so glennon's like well it seems that we came all this way to get brown and he's not here so time for a party and after two nights of partying the police threaten to arrest him so glanton and his men scatter glanton eventually makes it back to the ferry by himself whenever he gets close he's met by Travelers who are heading the opposite direction of him who are yelling at him not to go to the river because the only people there is a Band of Thieves and murderers glanton being the king of these murderers ignores them and keeps walking back to the ferry however when glanton gets back to the ferry keep in mind it had been probably a couple weeks at this point something's changed a young Mexican girl was crouched naked under the shade of the wall she watched him ride past covering her breast with her hands she wore a rawhide collar about her neck and she was chained to a post and there was a clay bowl of blackened meat scraps beside her Clinton tied the Jacks to the post and rode inside on the horse there was no one about he rode down to The Landing while he was watching the river the doctor came scrambling down the bank and seized glanton by the Foot the doctor is Lincoln by the way the previous owner of the fery forgot to mention that seiz glanton by the foot and began to plead with him in a sensless jabber he' not seen to his person in weeks and he was filthy and disheveled and he tugged on glanton's trouser leg and pointed toward the fortifications on the hill that man he said that man glanton slid his boot from the sturup and pushed the doctor away with his foot and turned the horse and rode back up the hill the judge was standing on the rise in silhouette against the Evening Sun like some great Balden archimandrite he was wrapped in a mantle of free flowing cloth beneath which he was naked the black man Jackson came out of one of the stone bunkers dressed in a similar Garb and Stood Beside him glandon rode back up along the crest of the hill to his quarters he shows up and a few weeks ago he told the judge you're in charge of this place for a while and he gets back and everyone is terrified and screaming there's young children with collars on their necks and the judge is standing naked in like a kingly robe on top of the mountain with Jackson standing in a similar robe right next to him he has become the totalitarian warlord that he's always wanted to be that night it says that there's gunfire and parting and screaming and glanton lies asleep and drunk in his quarters early in the next morning Jackson goes down to the river to pee and while he's standing there the story says the sun was not up and there was a low skin of mist on the water Downstream some ducks moved out from the Willows they circled in the Edy water and then flapped out across the open River and Rose and circled and bent their way up stream in the floor of the sko the boat that Jackson is standing in in the floor of the sko was a small coin perhaps once lodged under the tongue of some passenger he bent to fetch it he stood up and wiped the grit from the piece and held it up and as he did so a long cane Arrow passed through his upper abdomen and flew on and fell far out in the river and sank and back to the surface again and begin to turn and to drift Downstream he faced around his robe sustained about him he was holding his wound and with his other hand he ravaged among his clothes for the weapons that were not there and were not there a second Arrow passed him on the left and two more struck and lodged fast in his chest and in his groin they were a full 4T in length and they lofted slightly with his movements like ceremonial wands and he seized his thigh where the dark arterial blood was spurting along the shaft and took a step toward the shore and fell sideways into the river Jackson was standing at the shore and sure enough the humus came back for their Revenge they killed Jackson and then immediately make their way towards the rest of the camp they swarmed up the hill toward the fortifications where the Americans lay sleeping and some were mounted and some a foot and all of them armed with bows and clubs and their faces black and der pale with fard and their hair bound up in clay the first quarters they entered were Lincoln's when they emerged a few minutes later one of them carried the doctor's dripping head by the hair and others were dragging behind them the doctor's dog bound at the muzzle jerking and bucking across the dry clay of The Concourse they entered a Wiki Up of Willow poles and canvas and slew gun and will son and Henderson Smith each in turn as they reared up drunkenly and they moved on among the rude half walls in total silence glistening with paint and grease and blood among the bands of light where the Risen Sun now touched the higher ground when they entered glanton's chamber he lurched upright and glared wildly about him the small clay room he occupied was entirely filled with a brass bed he'd appropriated from some migrating family and he set in it like a debauched feudal Baron while his weapons hung in a rich array from the finals cabalo and pelo mounted into the actual bed with him and stood there while one of the attending tribunal handed him at his right side a common axe the Hickory h of which was carved with Pagan motifs and tassled with the feathers of predatory Birds glanton spat hack away you mean red he said and the old man raised the axe and split the head of John Joel glanton to the thrapple the humans came in and they not only killed Jackson and several members but they killed glanton they snuck in while he was in a drunken stup jumped on his bed and cut his head all the way to the throat clean in half the man who lived by violence who lived by the rule and law of violence died in much the same way with his last moment swearing and cursing The Men Who were about to do it and challenging them to the task of Killing Him of which it seems they obliged remember how back around the campfire whenever the fortune teller was telling their stories the card that glanton Drew was a man on a fairy riding into the night and the woman gave a description of his fortune as being that of death and Misery by this man at the helm of a fairy and it seems that glanton who had absolutely nothing going for him at any point in his life but now not even a pretend purpose or a fake purpose he just set on top of a pile of gold and waited to take in more he was nothing and this dog that had been running his whole life hurting anyone who came in his way stopped running long enough to finally get caught and with that glanton dies and as we're going to see so does the glanton gang now if you thought that was crazy The Yuma showing up and killing glanton wait till they get to the judge's quarters when they entered the judge's quarters they found the idiot and a girl of perhaps 12 years cowering naked in the floor behind them also naked stood the judge he was holding leveled at them the bronze barrel of the Howitzer the wooden truck stood in the floor the straps pried up and twisted off the pillow blocks the judge had the cannon under one arm and he was holding a lighted cigar over the touch hole the yumas fell over one another backward and the judge put the cigar in his mouth and took up his portm and stepped out the door and backed past them and down the embankment the idiot who reached just to his waist stuck close to his side and together they entered the wood at the base of the hill and disappeared from sight we'll talk about what was happening in the judge's room in a moment but the judge picking up this Giant Cannon and holding a cigar to the touch hole ready to fire it at them just walks out of the castle and backs into the woods because no one's going to mess with a guy who is just holding a cannon so the judge and the idiot make it out but other than them nearly every member of the glanton gang died right here this actually lines up with a historical account it's reasonable if you forgot at this point but as I mentioned at the beginning of this video the glanton gang is based on a real life gang who according to Samuel Chamberlain was mostly wiped out by an attack from The Yuma tribe there is a very brutal depiction of the yumas burning the bodies of everyone that they killed and then throwing the men's living animals onto the fire to burn with them every trace of what the ganting gang was is now eradicated from the earth with only the few survivers who managed to get away being the witnesses that not only it existed but of what they did and the atrocities they had committed earlier in the story it was mentioned around the Anasazi and the people who built with stones who overwhelm the people who build with mud and rocks but what does that say of men like lanton Men Who Built with nothing who built nothing at all in their entire lives that stood the test of time if it were not for the witnesses and the account of this story glanton himself would be forgot to time far faster than those who he attempted to kill for his own personal gain so I'll go ahead and spoil it for you out of every member of the glanton gang there are only five survivors the judge and the idiot as mentioned earlier when they backed into the woods the kid and toadvine and the ex priest Tobin those are our only five survivors of this entire Massacre well there's six survivors if you count David Brown who's still on his way back from killing the officer who helped him escape from jail but five people survived the massacre and six of the gang is alive in total the story then cuts to toadvine and the kid who are limping Out of the Woods getting away from the castle I keep calling it a castle I think it's more accurately like a fortification but Castle sounds cooler as they're running away the kid is limping because he caught an arrow in the leg and it's making it hard for him to run can you walk said toadvine I ain't got no choice how much water you got not much what do you want to do I don't know we could ease back to the river and lay up said toadvine Till what he looked toward the fort again and he looked at the broken shaft in the kid's leg and the Welling blood you want to try and pull that no what do you want to do go on similar to how at several points in the Story the kid wouldn't leave men that he was with even in Dire Straits right here toadvine won't leave him it's wild to look at this scene and think that the story began with the two of them ready to kill each other in the mud because they were walking on planks in the rain and now standing here running away from their burning Empire and the ashes of it being chased for dear life toadvine won't leave that kid as they make it to a clearing several of the yumas are closing in on them so the kid spins to the ground and pulls his pistol and begins to fire at them slowly one at a time eventually dropping all of their pursuers the attack was quick and Swift and the men didn't think to grab all of their gear and equipment so they're pretty much on foot and the only weapon they have is the pistol that the kid is using they make it to a well that's up ahead in the clearing and whenever they get there Tobin is already at the well how many are you he said what you see said toadvine all the rest gone under glanton the judge they did an answer they slid down to the floor of the well where they stood a few inches of water and they knelt and drank as they're sitting there more of the Yuma attack so the kid lays up in the tree line and once again begins to shoot them as they arrive seemingly the yumas think that there's far more of them than there is of the yumas even though it's just one kid shooting back so the yumas begin to retreat and for a moment the three of them can rest as they're resting there Tobin asked how much ammo they got and the kid says not much only a few shots near Sunset as the three men are standing there they see two figures walking up on them in the distance the kid looks and his gun to see who it might be and sure enough it was the judge and the imbecile they were both of them naked and they neared through the desert dawn like be of a mode little more than tangential To The World At Large their figures now quick with Clarity and now fugitive in the strangeness of the same light like things whose very important renders them ambigous like things so charged with meaning that their forms are dimmed the three at the well watched mutely this Transit out of the breaking day and even though there was no longer any question as to what it was that approached yet none would name it they lumbered on the judge a pale pink beneath his talk of dust like something newly born the imbecile much the darker lurching together across the pan at the very extremes of Exile like some scarless King stripped of his vesture and driven together with his fool Into the Wilderness to die man McCarthy's got such a away with words so as the judge makes his way to the rest of the men one of maybe the most impressive moments in not only this book but any book I've ever read happens all at once as I've explained it I probably haven't done a great job at pointing out the subtlety with which a lot of the information I've shown you has been delivered like I have highlight highed the parts that I find to be important for an analysis of the story I've read sections about the judge's declaration of war and things like the missing children but keep in mind everything I've told you about is strewn together with dozens of accounts of blood and death and murder and every other atrocity humanity is capable of committing so while I'm cherry-picking them to show you everything that I talk about is muddled under this web of awful things and what's so interesting about this story is it does an incredible job of convincing you that some things are simultaneously important and unimportant it culminates in the scene that follows where toadvine is standing in front of the judge and the judge is asking to buy toad Vine's hat because the judge is pale and being sunburnt eventually toadvine asks for 100 and a quarter and the judge agrees and as this entire thing has happened Tobin and the kid are standing at the edge of the well several feet back from the judge just glaring at him and it was as I was reading that that I almost supernaturally came to the same conclusion they were in real time as they were the judge has always been this figure who exists not in the background necessarily but as a constant within everything the gang does glinton may have been the leader but the judge judge has certainly been a driving force in the gang's actions and in this moment where the three of the men who were sitting around the well barely got out of the attack from the yumas with their lives we have the judge who comes up and it's in that moment I realized the judge certainly has a knack for getting out of troubling situations we've seen time and time again that the gang instrument scenarios to get their best outcome if it's either killing the Apaches for money or making a deal with them to get more money I mean we saw that very recently with glanton making a deal with both the yumas and Lincoln and in the end double crossing both so don't you think it's a little suspicious that in this attack by the yumas the judge justess so happened to be standing there with a cannon he dragged off of the Mountaintop and into his quarters for just such an occasion see we have the judge's philosophy laid out in plain ink he believes that war and murder is the most righteous and meaningful Conquest that a man can Aspire towards so how do you think that guy felt when his gang leader decided to stop doing that and instead just Rob people who come to the river the night that glanton comes back and the night they all have a massive party and are drunk and hung over that is the day that the yumas attack I think that the judge orchestrated all of this and I think that he decided if he wasn't going to get his murder in Bloodshed with glanton then he'd simply get glanton out of the picture and of course the judge wouldn't just leave the gang as we saw at several points in the story if there's one thing that he does have Valor in it's the gang sticks together and to him glanton left that narrative so there's only one solution for deserters even though it's never said in the text I picked up on what Tobin and the kid were picking up on that it's really convenient glanton managed to back out of all of that completely naked through the woods and now in spite of everyone that he has known for years being dead at the side of the river he's arguing with toadvine about a hat and this level of tension that exists between the judge and every other person in the world starts to make itself known the judge wiped his mouth and looked at the figures above him how are you fixed for weapons he said the kid had set one foot over the edge of the pit and now he drew it back Tobin did not move he was watching the judge we've just the one pistol Holden we said the judge the lad here the kid had risen To His Feet Again the ex priest stood by him the judge in the floor of the well likewise Rose and He adjusted his hat and gripped the valis under his arm like some immense and naked barister whom the country had crazed weigh your counsel priest he said we are all here together Yonder son is like the eye of God and we will cook impartially upon this great salous griddle I do assure you I am no priest and I have no counsel said Tobin the lad is a free agent the judge smiled quite so he said he looked at toadvine and he smiled up at the ex priest again what then he said are we to drink at these holes turn about like rival bands of Apes the ex priest looked at the kid they stood facing the sun he squatted the better to address the judge below do you think that there is a registry where you can file on the wells of the desert ah priest you know those offices more readily than I I have no claim here I've told you before I'm a simple man you know you're welcome to come down here and to drink and to fill your flask Tobin didn't move let me have the canteen said the kid he taken the pistol from his belt and he handed it to the ex priest and took the leather bottle and descended the Bank there is a palpable tension between the men at the well the judge is telling Tobin and the kid that they can just come down to the water and drink to their fill and there's no need to worry and the kid who is openly cautious of him now hands his gun to Tobin before he goes down to the water to fill his canteen that way the judge can't try to attack him and just take the gun because if the judge gets a hold of you there's nothing you can do to fight back eventually the kid fills the canteen with water and as he backs away from the well he looks at tow toine and says are you going with us toine looked at the judge I don't know he said I'm subject to arrest they'll arrest me in California arrest you toadvine didn't answer he was sitting in the sand and he made a tripod of three fingers and stuck them in the sand before him and then he lifted and turned them and poked them in again so that there were six holes in the form of a star or a hexagon and then he rubbed them out again looked up you wouldn't think that a man run Plum out of country out here would you the kid Rose and slung the flask by its strap over his shoulder his trouser leg was black with blood and the Bloody stump of the shaft jetted from his thigh like a peg for hanging implements upon he spat and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and he looked at toadvine it ain't Country you've run out of he said then he made his way across the sink and up the bank the judge followed him with his eyes and with the kid reached the sunlight at the top he turned and looked back and the judge was holding open the Satchel between his naked thighs $500 he said powder and ball included the ex priest was at the kid's side do him he hissed the kid took the pistol but the ex priest clung to his arm whispering and when the kid pulled away he spoke aloud such was his fear you'll get no Second Chance lad do it he is naked he is unarmed God's blood do you think you'll best him any other way do it lad Do It For the Love of God do it or I swear your life is forfeit the judge smiled he tapped his Temple the priest he said the priest has been too long in the sun 75 and that's my best offer it's a sellers Market the kid put the pistol in his belt then with the ex- priest at his elbow importunate he circled the crater and they set out west across the pan toadvine climbed up and watched them after a while there was nothing to see this is the breaking point for a lot of characters and a lot of tension that's been building through the story there's been these brief mentions by Tobin the ex- priest whenever the kid mentions the judge out loud or whenever the kid goes to help the judge it seems Tobin is trying to protect him from something he's trying to keep the kid away from him and in this moment that all culminates see this is the part of the story that uh even people are really big fans of the story find controversial because it's never outright said uh but I think it's pretty well applied um or implied especially because of the historical aspect of this so believe it or not as I mentioned earlier the glanton gang is based on a real gang that was recorded by Samuel Chamberlain and on top of that judge Holden the judge seems to be a real person at least according to Chamberlain's report in his book My Confession which again is about Samuel Chamberlain's time with the glanton gang Chamberlain in one section says this the second in command now left in charge of the camp was a man of gigantic size called judge Holden of Texas who or what he was no one knew but a cooler blooded villain never went unhung he stood 6' 6 in his moccasins had a large fleshy frame a dull Tallow colored face destitute of hair and all expression while he's described here as being very tall and large terms like do Tallow just mean he was kind of pale and the phrase hairless is a phrase that was used back then or a word that was used back then to describe men who didn't have facial hair so Chamberlain isn't saying that the judge was a albino man with alopecia that there's no hair on his body instead he's just saying that he's a pale guy who's clean shaven uh but in McCarthy's rendition he takes that to the extreme limits and makes him a completely hairless man who's also albino further to mystify this portrayal of the character Chamberlain continues his account and says Holden was by far the best educated man in northern Mexico he conversed with all in their own language spoken several Indian lingos at a Fandango would take the harp or the guitar from the hand of the musicians and charm all with his wonderful performance and out Waltz any pabl of the ball he was Plum sinner with a rifle or revolver a daring Horseman acquainted with the nature of all the strange plants and their Botanical names great in geology and minerology in short another admirable kryon and with all an errant coward not but that he possessed enough courage to fight the Indians and Mexicans or anyone else where he had the advantage in strength skill and weapons but where the combat would be equal he would avoid it if possible I hated him at First Sight and he knew it yet nothing could be more gentle and kind than his deportment towards me he would often seek conversation with me and speak of Massachusetts and to my astonishment I found that he knew more about Boston than I did for one it's insane to think that judge Holden was perhaps a real person someone who was firsts in art and language and politics who was out among these killers these monsters hunting the countryside for Native scalps and eventually Mexican scalps and anyone who has dark hair that's something that actually comes from the historical record as well but you already knew all of that as related to the story right you knew all of the stuff about him being a master of the Arts and a guitarist and what have you so why am I bringing this up now well I'm bringing this up now because there's a portion of Chamberlain's account I skipped over that I wanted to save now because this is the part that's relevant while continuing his story about Judge Holden Chamberlain says this his desires was blood and women and terrible stories were circulated in Camp of Horrid crimes committed by him when bearing another name in the Cherokee Nation and Texas and before we left Frontier a little girl of 10 years was found in the chaperel foul violated and murdered the mark of a huge hand on her little throat pointed him out as the ravisher as no other man had such a hand but though all suspected no one charged him with the crime so it seems that both the historic judge Holden as well as the judge Holden of this story is a Serial child predator all those mentions that I brought up of wherever the gang went there would be children found naked and bloody crushed to death it it's hard to explain whenever you read the story through normally but you don't instantly connect all the dots see again there's so many mentions of murder and descriptions of carcasses that are found horrifically mutilated and all manner of atrocities against people but everywhere the gang goes there is this continuous wrapping of children being found uh either dead like the boy who was in inside of the house with the vagrants um who it says he was naked and found dead in one of the cubicles there's the mentions of the Cities they go to whenever they're out on the bender and they find the either remains or just the clothes of little girls who go missing and then there's things like the judge holding candy out to kids who are passing on the street trying to hand it off to them but all of them being too afraid of him or that mention whenever the judge walks out of the Fortress holding the cannon under his arm that he was completely naked and there was a naked child in the room with him as well and it seems that everyone else in the gang is aware of this remember that line I pointed out earlier whenever they are in that office building uh or like the the cubicles the place where the the five vagrant were staying with the horse that had its face bit by a snake that whole thing whenever they get in there the judge looks at the boy and asks who's is it and the men say they don't know and it says the glandon spits and shakes his head when I initially read that through I thought that was glanton shaking his head at the concept of this child being orphaned but what it seems it actually was is that glanton knew what the judge's intentions were with that child it seems that a lot of men knew and they just never said anything about it toin constantly trying to keep the kid back from the judge time and time again and it seems that throughout the story not with everyone else because everyone else in this gang might as well be you know child murdering Savages anyway but whatever little part of religion or morality or sanctity is left inside of Tobin no matter how small it seems that now standing between the kid and the judge that piece of him ignites and standing there even though there is no evidence the story has not said anything explicitly the judge is responsible of those crimes or that he planned the massacre of Clanton and most of the gang in that moment it snaps for Tobin and he yells to the kid shoot him shoot him now your soul will be forfeit if you don't and again it's really hard to explain how well this story puts it together even though nothing is ever said about it the moment that Tobin yells that you know exactly why he's saying it you connect the pieces at the same rate the characters do or more specifically at the same rate the kid does and then that final conversation between the kid and toadvine where the kid ask toadvine if he's going to come with him and ton Vine says I'll be arrested in California you wouldn't figure a man could run out of country out here and the kid says it ain't Country you've run out of oh it's so good toadvine perhaps none the wiser to what's going on or perhaps just willing to accept whatever fate lies in front of him decides to stick behind with the judge until until Tobin and the kid leave and it's almost it it's like the kid and Tobin because toadvine won't come with him it's like they're leaving toadvine to a a monster like a lion they're leaving him in the Lion's Den as they slowly back out and I'll go and tell you this is the last time that they ever see toadvine alive they see him sitting there with the judge of the well they walk away and the kid never speaks to toadvine again so as Tobin and the kid are walking away who do they run into but David Brown who is still riding back from his jail escape in San Diego again Brown has no idea of anything that's happened the two walk up to Brown and say we heard you were in the Jato said Tobin I was said Brown I ain't now his eyes cataloged them in every part he looked at the piece of Arrow shaft protruding from the kid's leg and he looked into the ex priest eyes where's your outfits he said you're looking at him you fall out with plon clanton's dead Brown spat a dry white spot in the vast and broken pland he had a small Stone in his mouth Against The Thirst and he shifted it with his jaw and looked at them the yumas he said I said the ex priest all rubbed out toadvine and the judge are at the well back Yonder the judge said Brown the horses stared bleakly at The Craze Stone floor whereon they stood the rest gone under Smith dorsy the black man all said Tobin Brown looked east across the desert how far to the well we left about an hour past Daybreak is he armed he is not he studied their faces the priest don't lie he said no one spoke he set fingering the scalp of dried ears and then he turned the horse and rode on leading the riderless animal behind he rode watching back at them then he stopped again did you see him dead he called glanton I did called the ex priest for he had so he rode on turned slightly in the saddle the rifle on his knee he kept watch behind him on those pilgrims and they on him when he was well diminished on the pan they turned and went on it's like brown coming back and hearing that the judge is alive the first thing he asks is is the judge unarmed it's like everyone knew that the judge had always been on a leash under his own will he had decided to be tame compared to what he would be as long as glanton was alive as long as glanton was the leader but now that glanton's dead it's like the judge is a rabid dog for the first time Unchained everyone is afraid of him and what he might do and it seems that brown even though he has guns and he knows the judge is unarmed is scared making his way towards him the next day the kid and Tobin are kneel down next to a River drinking water when suddenly a bullet skips off the water right next to the kid's face he throws himself back on the ground and spins around to see that the bullet came from the judge now wearing the clothing of both toadvine and brown and holding Brown's rifle the judge is reloading as he's making his way towards them and Tobin and the kid both Scamper off into the brush next to the river trying to hide the scene that follows I cannot do justice here I highly recommend again if any of the story is interesting you read this part for yourself the judge is tramping through the brush holding a rifle while looking for the kid in Tobin and the kid who's still injured from the arrow in his leg can't stand up to run so instead he's crawling through the grass hoping that the judge won't step on top of him as the judge begins to yell and mock him hello called the judge his voice off to the West as if there were New Riders to the creek and he addressed them the kid lay listening there were no New Riders after a while the judge called out again come out he called there's plenty of water for everybody the kid had swung the powder flask around to his back to keep it out of the creek and he held the pistol up and waited Upstream the horses stopped drinking then they started drinking again when he moved out on the far side of the creek he came upon the hand and foot tracks left by the ex priest among the prince of the cats and foxes and the little desert pigs as he crawls through the grass he sees the horses stop and look at something then look back down he hears brush break in the other direction everything around him implies that the judge could be on top of him at any minute eventually while crawling around the kid finds Tobin's tracks and begins to follow them when he catches up to Tobin he sees that Tobin has used bones to construct a makeshift crucifix thinking that perhaps the judge is the Devil Himself Tobin stands up and holds the cross up and begins yelling incantations at the judge and as he does the judge pulls out his rifle and shoots Tobin he found Tobin kneeling in the creek bathing his wound with a piece of linen torn from his shirt the ball had passed completely through his neck it had narrowly missed the cored artery yet he could not make the blood to stop he looked at the kid crouched among the skulls and upter red tines you've got to kill the horses he said you've no other chance out of here he'll ride you down we could take the horses don't be a fool lad what other bait has he we can get out as soon as it comes dark do you think there will be no day again the kid watched him will it not stop he said it will not what do you think I've got to stop it the blood was running between his fingers where's the judge said the kid where indeed if I kill him we can take the horses you'll not kill him don't be a fool shoot the horses the kid looked off up the shellow Sandy Creek go on lad I like that mention of the line when the kid says they can leave it dark and the priest says what do you think it will never be day again as long as there is a sun on the earth the judge will hunt us down so the kid sneaks his way around finds the judge's horses and kills them as soon as he fires he Ducks back into the grass and begins to hide once more more throw that gun out now said the judge he froze the voice was not 50 ft away I know what you've done the priest put you up to it and I'll take that as a mitigation in the Act and the intent which I would any man in his wrongdoing but there's the question of property you bring me the pistol now the kid lay without moving he heard the judge weigh the creek Upstream he lay counting slowly under his breath when the royed water reached him he stopped counting and let go on the current a dry Twist of grass and told it away Downstream at the same count it was scarcely out of sight among the bones he moved out of the water and looked at the Sun and began to make his way to where he'd left Tobin you want to talk about a smart move he heard way up the river that the judge walked through the water and as soon as he heard him step into the water he started counting for when the ripples of water got to him at the same time he reset the count and dropped grass on the water and counted to see how far it went in the same amount of time so he could have an idea for how far up River the judge is the kid makes it back to Tobin and as the two of them are hiding it says while talking about the judge he called out points of jurist prudence he cited cases he expounded upon those laws pertaining to property rights in beast mansu and he quoted from cases of a tender in so far as he reckoned them Germain to the corruption of blood in the prior and felonious owners of horses now dead among the bones then he spoke of other things the ex priest leaned to the kid don't listen he said I ain't listening stop your ears so now the judge is just Stamper around in the grass talking about case law of dead horses and gun property and all kinds of stuff just I guess trying to convince the kid that it's safe to come out eventually at night the two of them slip away and they get into the open desert and then when they think they're safe the judge and the fool show up again until the afternoon Tobin and the kid hobble their way through the desert and they're slowly running out of water and between their injuries they can't keep going much longer it's at this time that the kid begins to notice that the wind's picking up and the wind itself is covering their tracks in the sand making it hard for the judge to track them even though they can still see him out on the distant Horizon we got to hide he said hide yes where do you aim to hide here we'll hide here you can't hide lad we can hide you think he can't follow your track the wind's taking it it's gone from the slope Yonder gone ever trace the ex- priest shook his head come on we got to get going you can't hide get up the ex- priest shook his head ah lad he said get up said the kid go on go on he waved his hand there's again been several points in the story up until now where people have done the same thing to the kid he they continue to brush him off and say oh go on without me and the kid never leaves him but this time the kid is getting tired of hearing people close to him tell him to leave them so the kid spoke to him he ain't nothing you told me so yourself men are made of the Dust of the earth you said so it was no par par par Parable no Parable that it was a naked fact and the judge was a man like all men face him down then said the ex- priest face him down if he is so and him with the rifle and me with a pistol him with two rifles get up from there Tobin Rose he stood unsteadily he leaned against the kid they set out veering off from the drifted track and down past the wagon it's fulfilling that after so many times of the kid being told to leave and to save himself and him ignoring their request and the kid's very short winded through the story he doesn't speak a lot but here with Tobin someone who he probably arguably with toadvine cares about more than anyone else in the group when Tobin tells the kid to leave him the kid yells back and says he ain't nothing the judge ain't nothing it's not like one of your Parables that you always tell me about this is a true fact the judge is made from dirt and dirt can bleed whenever the judge comes up over the hillside into the Little Valley that Tobin and the kid are hiding in it says that the judge he has all his weapons and the clothing but that he has made a small parisel out of Bones and old hide and he also has the idiot chained to a leather leash so not only is he decked out with guns walking through the desert but I guess on count of his you know albino nature he has a small umbrella to Shield himself from the Sun and he has a crazed man on a leash like a dog it's some like weirdly Bizarro version of a woman with an umbrella walking her poodle during a day out shopping but it is this judge this massive man this monster hunting down a child and an ex priest the judge and the idiot glance around them and then walk through the area and after they leave Tobin and the kid begin to discuss what they're even going to do now as they're discussing going back to the creek they look up and the judge is now walking back towards them as the judge is walking through the area he begins to yell that priest has led you to this boy I know you would not hide I know too that you've not the heart of a common assassin I've passed before your gun sights twice this hour and will pass a third time why not show yourself no assassin called the judge no partisan either there's a flawed place in the fabric of your heart do you think I could not know you you alone were mutinous you alone reserved in your soul some corner of clemency for the Heathen the embil stood and raised its hands to its face and yammered weirdly and sat again you think I've killed Brown and toadvine they are alive as you and me they are alive and in possession of the fruits of their election do you understand ask the priest the priest knows the priest does not lie the judge raised the parasol and adjusted his Parcels perhaps he called perhaps you have seen this place in a dream that you would die here then he descended the eser passed once more across the Boneyard led by the tethered fool until the two were shimmering and insubstantial in the waves of the heed and then they were gone all together I'm going to come back to that line the judge says about the kid being mutinous I'll come back to that at the end of the story uh but we have here for now is the judge of yelling he says that brown and toadvine are still alive and then he just continues to walk across the desert so Tobin and the kid continue to wander across the desert into the night until at the point where they're ready to fall to the ground dead they are saved by a group of Indians they were members of the diino tribe and they see these two people nearly dead on the floor of the desert and decide to bring them back into their homes the dianas feed them and treat their wounds and whenever they ask ask what happened to him Tobin and the kid just say that it was the umus and the members of the tribe simply nod and continue to take care of the two men I don't think I have to say how profound this is uh at least you know in sense of the narrative that both of these men made their living and became Successful by hunting down and killing Natives indiscriminately and now their life is saved at the point of death by natives of the region it also leans back on my theory for what the ending of this story is but again we're almost there eventually Tobin and the kid make it to San Diego and for the first time the two of them step out to see the sea something that the kid has never seen before as the kid goes to see the sea Tobin continues to work his way through the streets looking for a doctor while the kid no longer has a shaft sticking out of his leg the arrow head is still inside of his thigh after after the kid's done looking at the ocean he goes to a local Tavern and nearly as soon as he sits down a group of police come to arrest him the kid's thrown into jail and he wakes up the next day and who is standing outside of his jail other than the judge the judge is wearing a nice linen coat and it seems that he's been invited into the prison by one of the deputies of the prison itself looking down on the kid and smiling the judge begins well he said how are you the kid didn't answer they wanted to know from me if you were always crazy said the judge they said it was the country the country turned them out where's Tobin I told them that the creedon had been a respected doctor of divinity from Harvard College as recently as March of this year that his wits had stood him as far west as the aquaris mountains it was the ensuing country that carried them off together with his clothes and toadvine and brown where are they in the desert where you left them a cruel thing your companions in arms the judge shook his head what do they aim to do with me I believe it is their intention to hang you what did you tell them told them the truth that you were the person responsible not that we of all the details but they understand that it was you and none other who shaped events along such a calamitous course eventuating in the massacre at the Ford by the Savages with whom you conspired means and ends are of little moment here idle speculations but even though you carry the draft of your murderous plan with you to the Grave it will nonetheless be known in all its infamy to your maker and as that is so so shall it be made known to the least of men all in fullness of time you're the one that's crazy said the kid the judge smiled no he said it was never me but why lurk there in the shadows come here where we can talk you and me the kid stood against the far wall hardly more than a shadow himself come up said the judge come up for I have yet more to tell you he looked down the hallway don't be afraid he said I'll speak softly it's not for the world's ears but for yours only let me see you don't you know that I'd have loved you like a son huh I haven't oh I haven't read that line since I since I thought about what the judge has been doing to kids through the whole story oh that's so bad okay all right oh that sorry I got cold everywhere just that line spoken about that anyway okay sorry uh he reached through the bars come here he said let me touch you oh no it gets worse oh I have I haven't read read this portion since I thought about what the judge does oh no he says I'd love you like a son then says let me touch you throwing his hands through the bars oh my gosh imagine the judge this monster of a man okay ah this story bothers me in so many different parts this is one of them um the kid stood with his back to the Wall come here if you're not afraid whispered the judge I ain't afraid of you the judge smiled he spoke softly into the dim mud cubicle you came forward he said to take part in a work but you were a witness against yourself you set in judgment on your own Deeds you put your own allowances before the judgments of history and you broke with the body of which you were pledged apart and poisoned it in all its Enterprise hear me man I spoke in the desert for you and you only and you turned a deaf ear to me if war is not holy man is nothing but antic clay even the creton acted in good faith according to his parts for it was required of no man to give more than he possessed nor was any man share compared to anothers only each was called upon to empty out his heart into the common and one did not can you tell me who that one was it was you whispered the kid you were the one the judge watched him through the bars he shook his head said what joins men together he said is not the sharing of bread but the sharing of enemies but if I was your enemy with whom would you have shared me with whom the priest where is he now look at me our animosities were formed and waiting before ever we two met yet even so you could have changed it all you said the kid it was you it was never me said the judge listen to me do you think glanton was a fool don't you know he'd have Ked killed you lies said the kid Lies by God lies think again said the judge he never took part in your craziness the judge smiled he took his watch from his waist coat and opened it and held it to the failing light for even if you should have stood your ground he said yet what ground was it he looked up he pressed the case shut and restored the instrument to his person time to be going he said I have errands so there are two ways to view that section uh one of them is that the judge is crazy and while that kind of may sound like a copout I do think there is some maybe not evidence but there's some weight that opinion has from the text uh there's instances where the judge launces into di tribes that make sense to him but don't seem appropriate for the moment maybe he's so riddled with violence in his head that he kind of sees the world the way he thinks it should be rather than how it actually is or in other words he's not smart he's just making stuff up um which might be true in some part but I don't really agree with what I agree with more is this is the second emphasis on the judges belief system it's similar to in the desert when he called the kid mutinus here he's saying that the kid set out on something important something of a higher calling War Death destruction and that he turned his back on himself by not committing fully to the gang and I'll talk about what that means to me in a moment but by not committing fully to the gang he calls the kid a traitor that everything that happened was his fault the kid counters back and says you were the traitor you were the one who sold us out but the judge says that the kid betrayed himself and therefore the rest of the gang it also further lays on my theory that the judge planned everything out because it says what the judge told the police to have the kid arrested is that the massacre at the Colorado River was done by the kid who conspired with the yumas to kill everyone at the river that day now if the Yuma attack was completely random why would the judge come up with this story of there being an entire conspiracy that must mean the police are looking for a conspiracy or a planning in some regard right so I think the Judge planned with the yumas to kill everyone to the ferry and then just pinned everything on the kid over the next few days the kid explains to the men in the jail where all the treasures that the glanton gang had amassed are now located the court seeing that the kid is being honest and also realizing that he is a kid who was surrounded by much older much more evil men decide to just let the kid go eventually the kid finds a doctor to remove the piece from his leg and it says that during his dream while he's on the table and most other dreams he has after this he thinks of the judge the constant looming presence always in his mind in June while traveling through the city of Los Angeles the kid sees a public hanging of two people he's too far away from the hanging itself to see who they are or what they look like but after they're hung he comes back later that evening and it's none other but toadvine and David Brown so it seems the judge was right he didn't kill them out there in the woods he maybe just beat them or tied them up or convinced them to give to the judge their clothing and weapons but either way the judge was right he didn't kill him maybe the judge was also right about Toby and saying that Tobin simply went mad and was now locked up in some sanitarium it would explain why there at the end at the river he builds a makeship crucifix and holds it up and begins to yell at the judge uh but I also kind of interpret that as Tobin making a distraction so that the kid could get a shot off it depends on your interpretation but perhaps the judge was right in saying Tobin was crazy because here he was right about toadvine and brown not being killed in the desert but again nevertheless they were killed here and the last time the kid ever spoke to toadvine was when he left him at that well sitting next to the judge during this time the kid seems to be destitute he saw a boy who kind of looked like the idiot or the fool in a window of house so he runs to the room to see who it is only to have the door opened and see that it's some other unrelated fool uh and the kid walks off defeated he asks about the priest and Tobin until eventually quits and decides there's going to be no way he can find him and Tobin's never mentioned again with his last $2 he goes to the coroner and buys the necklace of ears that was hanging on David Brown whenever he was hung these ears pass from bathat to Dave Brown and now to the kid so from here the kid grows and eventually becomes the man by the time he's 28 years old he's been working odd jobs for years throughout California and the American West everything from cattle Farmers to factory workers to Port workers it seems that as he gets older the kid has decided to change his life at least in small ways he never learned to read but regardless it says that the kid begins to carry a Bible he begins to take jobs escorting people through the American West who otherwise would be completely unprotected to do so one day while out on one of these Journeys he sees an an entire parade of people who have just been massacred there are bodies and blood all across the desert something that he's very familiar with but what the man previously the kid does now that he wouldn't have done back then is in the midst of all of this blood and bodies he sees an old woman curled up underneath a rock he made his way among the corpses and stood before her she was very old and her face was gray and leathery and sand had collected in the full of her clothing she did not look up the shaw that covered her head was much faded of its color yet it bore like a patent woven into the fabric the figures of stars and quarter moons and other Insignia of a province unknown to him he spoke to her in a low voice he told her that he was an American and that he was a long way from the country of his birth and that he had no family and that he had traveled much and seen many things and had been at War and endured hardships he told her that he would convey her to a safe place some party of her country people who would welcome her and that she should join them for he could not leave her in this place or she would surely die he knelt on one knee resting the rifle before him like a staff abilita he said he reached into the little Cove and touched her arm she moved slightly her whole body light and rigid she weighed nothing she was just a dried shell and she had been dead in that place for years this is so much different from what the kid was what any member of the glanton gang was he's now more of the stereotypical Cowboy the hero who's looking for people who need his help across the American West and he sees this woman who he thinks to be alone and he walks to her and starts empathizing he talks about how he's a man who has lost his country and lost his way but that he's a fighter that he knows how to come out of it and he's going to do whatever it takes to keep her safe and when he reaches out and touches her she is the bones of something that once existed but is now no more or in other words the kid seems to be too late the kid has conversations with Buffalo Hunters which is symbolic as both of them had a habit of hunting a thing nearly out of existence one night while out in the valley he's approached by a group of young men who are also out in the wilderness they sat around the fire with the man and begin to talk and eventually The Man shows the group his collection of ears that again he got off of David Brown one of the boys in the group a boy named Elrod says that the man's a liar and with everything the man says about his past Elrod continuously says that he's a liar eventually the man stops and says you ain't calling me a liar are you son I ain't your son how old are you that's some more of your business how old are you he's 15 you hush your damn mouth he turned to the man he don't speak for me he said he's done spoke I was 15 years old when I was first shot I ain't never been shot you ain't 16 yet [Laughter] neither again the kid now called the man just his matter of fact statements I was your age when I got shot well I haven't been shot oh you want to fix that you ain't 16 yet neither you aim to shoot me I aim to try to keep from it come on alrod you ain't going to shoot nobody maybe in the back or them asleep Elrod were gone I knowed you for what you was when I seen you you better go on sit there and talked about shooting somebody they ain't nobody done it yet the other four stood at the limits of the Fire Light the youngest of them was casting glances out at the dark sanctuary of the Prairie night go on the man said they're waiting on you he spat into the man's fire and wiped his mouth that night whenever the man goes to sleep he's awoken by the 15-year-old boy standing over his bed ready to shoot him with a rifle the man rolls out of bed and pulls his revolver and aims it at the kid and says you wouldn't have lived anyway before he pulls the trigger the next day the boy's friends come up and take his body away and the man sits there and watches as the 15-year-old's much younger brother looks at him and looks back at his dead brother and then walks him off the trail there is an intense nihilism about this scene at least to me other people interpret it different differ but whenever I first read this it's like at the beginning of the story The Man Who was then the kid was in this exact position he was young dumb and violent like he said there I took my first bullet when I was 15 at that river boat in Louisiana and there's something narratively like obviously understand why logistically the man shot the kid or the man shot the boy because the boy was about to shoot him like it makes sense but there's something so eratively dark about it that that kid was in the exact same position I was once in and I got better but this kid doesn't get that chance and he fires specifically with the phrase he uses where he says you wouldn't have lived anyway what a way to look back on effectively a figure a representation of yourself so one night after this the man is riding along the brazzo's river and he decides to stop in a bar that is hosting some kind of entertainment whenever the man steps into the bar he sees that this entertainment is a dancing bear a bear that is wearing a suit and it is doing a dance as a small girl spins a music box for the bear to dance to as the man walks in and sits down at the bar he looks into the mirror behind the bar men and who else does he see on the other side of the restaurant except for the judge the judge is staring back at him through that mirror and for a moment his blood runs cold as this man he's feared for years and years perhaps even convinced himself it was part of some bad dream is now right there in the reflection as this is happening the showman who is presenting the bear to everyone is walking through the crowd taking donations and gets into a fight with one of the bar patrons in response the bar Patron pulls his pistol and shoots the bear dead on stage as the man is watching this the little girl stops playing the music box and begins to cry over for the Dead bear saying it's all over it's all over do you believe it's all over son he turned the judge was standing at the bar looking down at him he smiled he removed his hat the great pale Dome of his skull Shone like an enormous phosphor and egg in the lamp light the last of the true the last of the true I'd say they're all gone under now saving me and thee would you not he tried to see past him the great Corpus enshadowed him from all Beyond he could hear the woman announcing the commencement of dancing in the hall to the rear and some are not yet born who shall have cause to curse the dolphin Soul said the judge he turned slightly plenty of time for the dance I ain't studying no dance the judge smiled the judge continues to make the man uncomfortable he leans over the bar now unattended and steals a bottle and begins drinking the man says I got to go the judge looked aggrieved go he said he nodded he reached and took hold of his hat where it lay on the bar but he did not take it up and he did not move what man would not be a dancer if he could said the judge it's a great thing the dance drink up he said drink up this night thy soul may be required of thee oh oh These l oh they're so brutal when you know where this goes okay I'm sorry I keep freaking out over it's a good book anyway he looked at the glass the judge smiled and gestured with the bottle he took up the glass and drank the judge watched him was it always your idea he said that if you do 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 ain't with you the judge raised his bald brow not he said he looked about him in a puzzled and Artful way and he was a passable thespian I never come here hunting you what then said the judge what would I want with you I come here same reason as any man and what reason is that what reason is what that these men are here they come here to have a good time the judge watched him he began to point out various men in the room and to ask if these men were here for a good time or if indeed they knew why they were here at all everybody don't have to have a reason to be someplace that's so said the judge they do not have to have a reason but order is not set aside because of their indifference the judge turns to the room and says this is an orchestration for an event for a dance in fact the participants will be apprised of their roles at the proper time for now it is enough that they have arrived as the dance is the thing with which we are concerned and contains complete within itself its own Arrangement and history and finale there is no necessity that the dancers contain these things within themselves as well in any event the history of all is not the history of each nor indeed the sum of those histories and none here can finally comprehend the reason for his presence for he has no way of knowing even in what the event consists in fact were he to know he might well absent himself and you can see that he cannot be any part of the plan if plan there be he smiled his great teeth shown he drank an event a ceremony the orchestration thereof the Overture carries certain marks of decisiveness it includes the slain of a large bear the evening's progress will not appear strange or unusual even to those who question the rightness of the event so ordered a ceremony then one one could well argue that there are not categories of no ceremony but only ceremonies of greater or lesser degree and deferring to this argument we will say that this is a ceremony of a certain magnitude perhaps more commonly called a ritual a ritual includes the letting of blood rituals which fail in this requirement are but mock rituals here every man knows the false at once never doubt it that feeling in the breast that evokes a child's memory of lonel such as when the others have gone and only the game is left with a solitary participant a solitary game without an opponent where only the rules are at Hazard Don't Look Away we are not speaking in Mysteries you of all men are no stranger to that feeling The Emptiness and the despair it is that which we take arms against is it not it's not blood the temporary agent in the mortar which bonds the judge lean closer what do you think death is man of whom do we speak when we speak of a man who was and is not are these blind riddles or are they not some part of every man's jurisdiction what is death if not an agency and whom does he intend toward the judge is saying that they are here for this dance people who are a part of this event are there for this dance and no one knows what the dance will entail whenever they step into it no one knows what the ritual is going to be but they know that they are a part of it and that's all that they can know when the men here showed up for a dance they did not know that a slain of the bear would be on the itinerary but they did show up for a dance and anything that dance may contain their place at the table was set before they even knew what was going to be served a man seeks his own destiny and no other said the judge will or nil any man who could discover his own fate and elect therefore some opposite course could only come at last to that self-same Reckoning at the same appointed time for each man's Destiny is as large as the world he inhabits and contains within it all opposites as well this desert upon which so many have been broken is vast and calls for largess of heart but it is also ultimately empty it is hard it is Barren its very nature is Stone he poured the Tumblr full drink up he said the world goes on we have dancing nightly and this night is no exception the straight and the Winding Way are one and now that you are here what do the years count since last we two met together men's memories are uncertain and the past that was differs little from the past that was not he took up the tumbler and the judge had poured and he drank and set it down again he looked at the judge I've Been Everywhere he said this is just one more place the judge arched his brow did you post Witnesses he said to report to you on the continuing existence of those places once you quit them that's crazy it is where is yesterday where is glanton and brown where's the priest he leaned closer where's Shelby whom you left to the mercies of Elias in the desert and where is Tate whom you abandoned in the mountains where are the ladies ah the fair and tender ladies with whom you danced at the Governor's Ball when you were a hero Anointed with the blood of the enemies of the Republic you elected to defend and where is the Fiddler and where's the dance I guess you can tell me I tell you this 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 warriors'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 you ain't nothing y you speak truer than you know but I will tell you only that man who has offered up himself entire to the blood of War who has been to the floor of the pit and seen in the round and learned at last that it speaks to his inmost heart only that man can dance even a dumb animal can dance the judge set the bottle on the bar hear me man he said 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 foot lamps bears that dance bears that don't the kid gets up to leave and he tries to take his mind off of this he walks into the back room of the saloon where there is a brothel and he quickly goes with the first woman who walks up to him and he goes and spends his time in the brothel and after it's over the woman tells him that he can't stay in this room anymore because they need to keep using these room rooms and she tells the man to get out and the man kind of sits there for a minute it's like he's afraid it's like he's afraid of whatever's coming next and he's sitting there on the bed looking out the window and eventually he swings his legs over the edge and gets up and goes back downstairs and then it says when he gets to the bottom he stood at the edge of the Dance Floor a ring of people had taken the floor and were were holding hands and grinning and calling out to one another a fiddler sat on a stool on a stage and a man walked up and down calling out the order of the dance and gesturing and stepping in the way he wished them to go outside in the darken lot groups of wretched tonas stood in the mud with their face composed in strange lost portraits within the sash work of the window lights Fiddler Rose and set the fiddle to his jaw there was a shout and the music began and the Ring of dancers began to rotate ponderously with a great shuffling he went out the back so this moment where the kid is trying to take his mind off everything the judge has said and he is now standing there before the Dance Floor ready to dance and the kid decides to leave it says the rain had stopped and the air was cold he stood in the yard stars were falling across the sky Myriad and random this is a call back to the beginning of the book when his father would tell him that the night he was born how the stars did fall speeding along brief vectors from their origins in night to their Destinies in dust and nothingness within the hall the fiddle squealed and the dancers shuffled and stomped in the street men were calling for the little girl whose bear was dead for she was lost they went among the darkened Lots with lards and torches calling out to her again the judges in town so it seems another young child has gone missing he went down the walkboard towards the Jakes again Jakes are effectively ouses he stood outside listening to the voices fading away and he looked again at the silent Tracks Of The Stars where they died over the darkened Hills then he opened the rough board door of the Jakes and stepped in the judge was seated upon the closet he was naked and he rose up smiling and gathered him in his arms against his immense and terrible flesh and shot the wooden bar latch home behind him in the saloon two men who wanted to buy the hide were looking for the owner of the bear the bear lay on the stage in an immense pool of blood all the candles had gone out save one and it guttered uneasily in its grease like a VOD of lamp in the dance hall a young man had joined the Fiddler and he kept the measure of the music with a pair of spoons which he clapped between his knees the hores a shade half naked some with their breast exposed in the mudded dog yard behind the premises two men went down the boards towards the Jakes a third man was standing there urinating into the mud is someone in there the first man said the man who was relieving himself did not look up I wouldn't go in there if I was you he said is there somebody in there I wouldn't go in he hitched himself up and buttoned his trousers and stepped past them and went up the walk towards the lights the first man watched him go and then opened the door of the Jakes good God Almighty he said what is it he didn't answer he stepped past the other and went back up the walk the other man stood looking after him then he opened the door and looked in in the they had rolled the Dead bear onto a wagon sheet and there was a general call for hands in the an room the tobacco smoke circled the lamps like an evil fog and the men bid and dealt in a low mutter there was a lull in the dancing and a second Fiddler took the stage and the two plucked their strings and turned the little hardwood pegs until they were satisfied many among the dancers were staggering drunk through the room and some had rid themselves of shirts and jackets and stood bare chested and sweating even though the room was cold enough to Cloud their breath an enormous horse stood clapping her hands at the band stand and calling drunkenly for the music she wore nothing but a pair of men's drawers and some of her sisters were likewise clad in what appeared to be trophies hats or pantaloons or blue twill Calvary jackets as the music saw up there was a lively cry from all and a caller stood to the front and called out the dance and the dancers stomped and hooted and lurched against one another and they are dancing the board floor slamming under the Jack Boots and the Fiddler grinning hideously over the caned pieces towering over them all is the judge and he is naked dancing his feet Lively and quick and now in double time and bowing to the ladies huge and pale and hairless like an enormous infant he never sleeps he says he says he'll never die he bows to the Fiddlers and S shaves backwards and throws back his head and laughs deep in his throat and he is a great favorite the judge he waffs his hat and the lunar Dome of his skull passes py under the lamps and he swigs about and takes possession of one of the fiddles and he paray and makes a pass two passes dancing and fiddling at once his feet are light and Nimble he never sleeps he says that he will never die he dances in light and in Shadow and he is a great favorite he never sleeps the judge he is dancing dancing he says that he will never die the end and that is the novel Blood Meridian so what was that ending um I am going to go ahead and ruin the game for you now I'm not going to be the final Authority on what all of that means I'm pretty confident in what happened uh but that doesn't mean I'm going to be the expert in the symbolism or the themes of it but I have a pretty good idea so to get it out of the way what logistically happened um is in the midst of all of this the bear dying on stage and the men wanting to scavenge its body for a pelt and the dance continuing to amp up and the people dancing and the judge joining them in the midst of that the man who was once the kid steps out of the brothel and he chooses not to dance and instead he goes out back to go use an ouse and oh man the visual is so terrifying as he opens the ouse door and steps in the judge is standing in there completely naked and we never are told what the kid looked like or exactly what the judge did to him but it's enough that whenever the men open the ouse all that they can say is good God Almighty the kid was horrifically murdered by the judge we saw in one instance earlier that in a split second the judge crushed a man's skull with his bare hand so imagine what he could do with given time and not to belabor the point but I think it's pretty clear that considering the judge was a horrific and prolific uh child predator and the man was a child that he had prayed on for quite some time you can use your worst parts of imagination to determine what he might have done to the man and the story ends with the room dancing that and the judge Dancing above all of them screaming of how he never sleeps and he will never die and he'll dance forever so what does all that mean so while we're talking about this story let's go ahead and get the big detail out of the way uh this is not something that is original to me at all this is probably the first analysis most people make of the story and that is Judge Holden at least symbolically is the devil not only with the symbolism I mentioned earlier like the tale of him making gunpowder being a reference back to Paradise Lost but also in other details like the judge is never seen sleeping uh and he's also never seen eating or drinking at least not directly mentioned he is known for dancing and specifically for playing the fiddle which what religious figure is famous for playing the fiddle his appearance to the glenning gang was almost Supernatural just appearing in the middle of the desert and then acting as their escort not only that but his appearance that he had at the beginning of the novel with the kid and then toin going on to say that everyone says they've seen the judge at some point before this the first thing said of the judge directly in the entire book is when the Reverend green looks at him and yells this is him cried the Reverend sobbing this is him the devil here he stands I mean the rifle he uses to shoot people is named after death the whole in Arcadia there I am he literally uses the gun of death to kill whoever he doesn't like and of course that combined with his conversations of selfishness of how the freedom of the birds is an insult to him and if creation exists without his knowledge it exists without his consent it sounds like a jealous Angel who once wished to be God his appearance itself is even snake likee he's hairless with this pale white skin and these Snake Eyes or Pig eyes as they're described somewhere else in the story he seems to have near infinite knowledge of different languages and cultures and politics as if he has lived a much longer life than his current form suggests even at the end of the story there's no mention of him having aged at all despite it being decades since they last met and there's also of course his philosophy regarding war and that war and death is the ultimate Merit of a man as well as a slew of short mentions of Bible verses he quotes or things and language that ties him into God as a matter of fact whenever Tobin is telling the story about the judge taking them to the volcano to make the gunpowder he describes the volcano as being something out of Dante's Inferno further implying that the judge is quite literally taking the gang through hell now do I think that it was always McCarthy's point to have the judge be the actual literal Satan in the story no I just just think that's what the Thematic element is that's what the judge feels like he feels like an embodiment of the devil I don't think the purpose of the story was that there was an explicitly Supernatural element in the midst of this historical horror what would you categorize it says it's definitely horrific probably just historical fiction but very dark historical fiction he didn't just throw the devil into the middle of that but judge Holden is definitely the proxy of the devil he is the agent of evil in the story and I say all that to say for one I think it's interesting that judge Holden holds so many characteristics in line with the devil but also if you get to the end of the story and you read that the judge murders the kid or the judge murders the man and your thought is oh that's annoying why didn't the judge get what he deserves I think you're missing the point and if you watching the video right now felt that way I'm going to assume that's not your fault and probably my bad and telling you the story because it's very different between reading a book and then however I've done trying to regurgitate that information anyway because that would be like getting to the end of a story and then hearing that death killed someone and then being frustrated that death didn't get what death deserves judge Holden is not so much a character and not so much someone that goes on a journey as much as he is an element within the peace he is not not a thing that might be he is a thing that is he is a collection of things that are of the horrors and the brutality that can exist within the world and the mindsets that some people can have that create these ultimate situations of brutality like blood meran said in it's like getting mad at an act of nature for taking someone's life it just doesn't make sense so whenever we apply it that way we see judge Holden as this Essence rather than a person then instead of asking what does the kid's death say about the judge the question is what does the kid's death say about the kid now I also want to emphasize in all of McCarthy's stories there is very very rarely a moral message or a definitive this is good guy this is bad guy uh every now and then you'll get one like the road had a few uh and that book's also a lot easier to read because of that but blood Mar isn't a story of good people and bad people it is entirely people who are predominantly bad but occasionally show moments of good and I think we can all agree that the closest to a good character we have within this story is the kid and I think that while the judge was evil I don't think he was crazy and I think within the rules of the world they inhabited a lot of what he said made sense like of course his whole speech about war being the only virtue that matters and men should fight and kill each other of course that's evil and barbaric to us but he's saying that to a group of people who cut off people's scalps to make money of course that would be the rule that would abide by them even if they don't like to hear it so again this is very much so up for interpretation if you enjoyed the story and just wanted to hear the story and don't care about my opinions on it then thank you for watching I hope that you enjoyed uh but whenever I first read it and as I read the story over and over over and listened to lectures about it and read reviews about this book or analysis of this book I continued to reaffirm my initial ideas with what that ending means in that final conversation that the judge has with the kid I know he's called the man but I'm going to keep calling them the kid for consistency sake in that final conversation he talks about how the dance as he calls it which is a metaphor for I mean you could say life Warfare events whatever U moment moments in time or all of time itself in this dance every participant who steps into that dance does not know what will happen he equates it to the moment they're in the people who came here for a dance didn't know that a bear was going to be shot but he explains that if any one member of the dance knew what his fate would be it would ruin the dance entirely because that one person could change the course of everyone else's Destinies so a dance only works at is only fitting if everyone doesn't know what will happen when they step into their role and as a matter of fact the only choice that people happen and this lies back on the themes the story is constantly brought up a faith Destiny free will the only choice according to the judge that people have is if they dance or they don't dance we're all going to step into that quiet night as the judge says Bears who dance and bears who don't fate and Free Will comes up a ton throughout this story again unless you think of the judge as a fully supernatural character which I don't think he is then there were several faithful meetings of the judge throughout the kid's life like again whenever he was in nakod doas and he saw him at the reverend's Revival but also like the little moments whenever the kid goes to draw the arrow to see if he'll put down one of the injured comrades the judge looks at him and stares him down and if it hadn't been for the judge staring him down which caused him to pick a different Arrow which caused him to stay behind which caused him to get stuck with Tate which caused him to go up onto the mountain and everything that followed after that which eventually came out that the kid wasn't there when the gunfight with the Mexican soldiers began which might have gotten him killed all of that came from the judge making eye contact with him and the kid choosing a different Arrow so there's so many moments of Fate like that that occur throughout the story and again as the judge said if any of those moments were known by the kid going in he he could have changed them and fate for everyone could have gone completely differently so if fate is to be real and if the judge analysis of it at the end is true then that means the only choice this kid has in his life is if he participates in what Fate has for him or not if he dances or if he doesn't and this is kind of subjective like even more so than an analysis see whenever I I kind of mentioned this earlier I said the hardest part to adapt of this entire story if you were adapted into the film is the kids level of participation in everything that's happening because if you have the kid just murdering people doing the exact same with the rest of the gang then he's no different but like I said earlier the kid is never mentioned explicitly in these moments of violence he's just present that's as far as the story will definitively say so this kind of changes depending on what version of the kid you have in your mind mind but because of what the judge says at the end of the story a few times when he's in the jail cell and whenever they're in the desert when he calls him mutants a mutinous against the cause and when he also says that the kid has betrayed himself that leads me to believe that the kid never fully went along with what the gang was doing sure he'd fight back against Apaches who fired on him first and Mexican soldiers who fired on him first but it makes me feel like the kid was never a part of the slaughter of unarmed civilians and because of that fate God whatever element you want to think is orchestrating this story began to set him apart it began to provide him with a way out if you think about it several times whenever he was walking with the band of American soldiers in the beginning of the story to again that mention of Tate on top of the snowy mountain top uh whenever he wins the draw with the Mexican Soldier and time and time again fate has instrumented everything to keep the kid alive and it seems that the greatest moment of instrumentation was immediately after he showed his most successive acts of kindness he stays behind and decides not to kill Shelby whenever they're being chased by the Mexican Army and then leaves him water from his own canteen then whenever he gets to Tate further up the road he decides instead of going on and saving himself to stay behind and help Tate as well it is after that after they get stranded on top of the mountain and the kid begins to run and I know I mentioned it earlier but this is why it sticks with me the kid comes to the Burning Tree the metaphorical voice of God standing before him he stands among it with the spiders and the snakes who are all equal to him in this moment or I should say he's equal to them and as he stands there he sees this and he gathers warmth for it it is another moment of Fate providing for it for him keeping him alive and I think it is the most until the end of the story it is the most direct example of the world telling the kid to get out to do something different but instead the kid goes back to the group he goes back to the group of people who had to burn the scalps because they don't have any use for him anymore and eventually would just take over a fairy and decide to rob and kill because they've got nothing else to do even that moment with Tobin and the kid hobbling across the desert and the wind begins to pick up and covers up the tracks behind them so that the judge can't find them time and time again the world has moved mountains to save this boy's life and I think the final moment happens there in that last chapter of the book the final chance the world is giving him we already see that he's trying to be better the notion that he carries a Bible that he can't even read or he goes to the old woman who's actually dead but he thinks is alive and talks of how he'll do everything he can to save her we see these moments of someone who wants to do better someone who is trying so desperately to be good and the killing of the 15-year-old that can go both ways and honestly I'm not smart enough and don't have opinions that strong one way or the other some people think that killing the kid is a good thing because it shows a severance from what the kid once was and some people think that it's a bad thing like I mentioned earlier I had on my first reading where I saw it as kind of an act of nihilism of betterment over your past self in a bad way um I'll leave that up to you I like I said I don't feel that strongly one way or the other but what I do feel strongly about is that moment after the conversation with the judge after the kid and the judge meet in that Saloon and after the kid leaves him to go to the brothel and then when he comes back down he is standing in front of the stage and there are two options he can dance or he can walk away and the kid chooses to walk away now this kind of depends on how you interpret the idea of dance or at least as the judge puts it forward when I read it I see the dance as being the proliferation the doing something with your life it is a neutral act because it can be used for good or evil you can be like the judge and dance and by dance the judge means wage war and kill as many people as you can or you can be like what the kids started to be helping others trying to be a hero something in spite of the world that falls apart around him being something greater than the makings that you were supposed to be or as the world originally had you to be rising to the occasion both are equally a dance it's just if you choose to dance or not again as the judge said our Fates are set out from us for the beginning none of us can control them we can only choose if we participate or not and I think there was a higher calling for the kid I think that from The Burning Tree in the middle of the woods or the multiple times he was saved I think so badly that the Universe had something great for this kid perhaps even a hero dare I say to rise up in this broken world and to make something of himself and to make something of the people around him and in that moment the world presented him the stage he can dance he can rise to the occasion or is the judge says did you think that if you never said anything no one would recognize what you are he can continue to be afraid of what the world might be continue to think that he's not worth it or he doesn't deserve it and he can walk out the back door and here in this moment the kid walks out the back door and in that moment where the judge kills him I don't see it as a man killing the boy I see it as death itself or the world itself destroying something that had so much potential to be so great and is now eaten up and chewed up by the Sands of the desert just like everything else I think that the final moments of the story are saying that there will be those like the judge those who continue to dance in spite of what we do at the end of the story the judge was dancing he'll never get old he'll never die and he'll never sleep evil will always be there monsters will always be in the dark the most evil and depraved of humanity will continue to thrive in spite of us and the only way that that can be kept from happening the only way the judge is kept from winning is good men deciding to dance good men deciding to rise to the occasion to not shy away from what the world has to offer them or what they have to offer the world and instead to make something of themselves to be something greater or to be consumed by the evil men who do choose to dance Bears who dance and bears who don't I see the story of Blood Meridian of being about the tragedy of not only the old west and of America but of humanity itself there will always be evil in the beginning of the story The Hermit talked about how man can make a machine and a machine to perpetuate evil for a thousand years evil will always exist the changing factor is when good people who in spite of the evil around them like the kid step up to the pl and decide to dance for themselves and that's why I think the ending of the story is a tragedy not because the kid died but because he decided not to dance and because of that what future did he have but death it's a very brutal story it's a bloody story but every aspect of it from the blood and gore to the beautiful imagery the scenery the characters the hate it all goes to paint the picture of how morbid and evil the world is and how desperate it is for a hero who decides to dance and that is why I love blood marid and love Cormac McCarthy um I'm not going to spoil you know I was going to talk about the epilog it's like a paragraph and my theory with it but it's even more fun if I tell you to go read the epilog for yourself online and good luck with that cuz it's a doozy uh but if you watch this long into a video of me explaining this novel from 1985 that I think is really cool then I just want to say you're really cool for being here and that means the most and I just want to say thank you for watching uh normally at the end of these videos I like to ramble but I have been filming this for a total of like 10 or 11 hours at this point and I'm really tired and need to get it edited so I won't ramble for that long I will say thank you all so much for watching uh as you could see this book really did mean a lot to me and hopefully I was able to convey that over to you guys uh I hope that you enjoyed I hope this wasn't boring if you stuck around this long you're great this is way too long hopefully the green screen goes well we'll see how it turns out maybe I'll use it again maybe I'll burn it just depends on how you all like it but for real thank you all for being here it means the world uh so with that I think we'll be done I will say World of Tanks remember to download World of Tanks it is a fun game uh the people I worked with were very kind and respectful to me and they're great guys and they make a great product so go get World of Tanks download that at the link in the description but other than that that should do it so I just want to say thank you for watching I hope that you enjoyed and I will see you in the next next one but