In The Brothers Karamazov, when Ivan and Alyosha are discussing God and religion, Ivan remarks of the devil, "I think if the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness." In many of the incarnations of evil in literature and other media, evil has appeared in very readily understandable human forms, even while it appears superhuman. Robert Pippin, in a class I took on Heidegger's Being and Time, said that the world is intelligible even if it were to stop making sense; if, all of a sudden, a tear appeared in the sky and squirrels began spitting fire, it wouldn't make sense, but it wouldn't make sense in a way that we can comprehend. Three incarnations of evil that we should consider:
Iago from Shakespeare's Othello, who declares "I am not what I am," rendering himself formless;
Colonel Hans Landa from Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, who, aside from being an intimidating figure, appears formless as well -- he shifts allegiances, is able to speak several languages and thwarts all the best-laid plans;
and Jason from the Friday the 13th series, though he could be replaced by any number of villains from horror movies, such as Michael Myers from Halloween, who possess preternatural speed, appearing to teleport from one place to another (think of all the Last Women Standing who run as fast as they can, only to be met by the slow-walking serial killer).
I'm choosing to focus on villains because Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian is perhaps most memorable for the character of Judge Holden, the giant, hairless antagonist who speaks innumerable languages, has expertise in every field of science and engineering (causing the expriest to note, "I've never seen him turn to a task but what he didnt prove clever at it"), possesses superhuman strength and agility, and is really just the most evil dude ever created.
And that's saying a lot, given the omnipresent evil that blankets the landscape of the novel like the clouds in the Sonoran desert sky. While McCarthy's other novels like The Road and even No Country for Old Men provide us with respite from the evils of men through familial love and fatalism, respectively, there's no escape in Blood Meridian. Evil is everywhere, and it will find you.
Entropy
Blood Meridian is an anti-Western, a book that showcases the tropes of the Western while simultaneously subverting them (an idea for a tumblr: "Thanks, Postmodernism," in the vein of "Thanks, Obama.") The most well-known trope of the Western is lawlessness, the notion of the Wild West, where citizen-vigilantes try to bring law and order to evil train robbers and their ilk (fact: I don't know a lot about Westerns). Here, that lawlessness is foregrounded, but the romanticism is abandoned. The Glanton Gang as they're called begin by scalping Indians who have been raiding wagon trains and killing settlers, but quickly devolve into killing anyone in their path.
Laws are an attempt at bringing order to an unordered world. Hence, a land without laws will be subject to the same entropy that is chipping away at the foundation of the universe. Here's a passage:
“Far out on the desert to the north dustspouts rose wobbling and augered the earth and some said they’d heard of pilgrims borne aloft like dervishes in those mindless coils to be dropped broken and bleeding upon the desert again and there perhaps to watch the thing that had destroyed them lurch onward like some drunken djinn and resolve itself once more into the elements from which it sprang. Out of that whirlwind no voice spoke and the pilgrim lying in his broken bones may cry out and in his anguish he may rage, but rage at what?”
Recall the opening of the Iliad: the Rage of Achilles, Rage with direction, with purpose, with object, Rage that begins a spectacular war, but a war unlike the wars in Blood Meridian. In McCarthy's universe, there is nowhere for man to direct his rage. (Also, "drunken djinn"? Damn, that's good.) Recall also that in the Old Testament, God frequently appears as a pillar of smoke and/or fire, and in the book of Job, he speaks to Job from a whirlwind.
In a universe that actively resists law and order, what can the purpose of the Glanton Gang, residents of the universe, be, even at its most noble? We get a sense of the purposelessness of their endeavor here:
"And so these parties divided upon that midnight plain, each passing back the way the other had come, pursuing as all travelers must inversions without end upon other men's journeys."
Perhaps the most eloquent (and simultaneously horrifying way of describing the lawlessness of McCarthy's vision is in this quote from the Judge in response, I think, to the question of whether life exists anywhere else in the universe:
"And so these parties divided upon that midnight plain, each passing back the way the other had come, pursuing as all travelers must inversions without end upon other men's journeys."
Perhaps the most eloquent (and simultaneously horrifying way of describing the lawlessness of McCarthy's vision is in this quote from the Judge in response, I think, to the question of whether life exists anywhere else in the universe:
“The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is
possible. Had 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 fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither
analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow 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 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.”
Or, put more succinctly, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio..."
Perhaps related to lawlessness is the division between those who know and those who do not; specifically, this amounts to a division between Judge Holden and the rest of the characters. The Judge knows all, or at least tries to: “Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.” (Can we just pause for a moment and let the brutality of that sentence sink in?) The Judge knows, and strives to know, and that sets him apart. Many of the others have given up trying to know. An old man explains it to the Kid: “It’s a mystery. A man’s at odds to know his mind cause his mind is aught he has to know it with. He can know his heart, but he dont want to. Rightly so. Best not to look in there." Neither can a man know his mind (cf. Russell's paradox) nor should he try to know his heart (Jeremiah 17:9 -- "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?").
Like Col. Hans Landa, who uses his polyglotism both to ingratiate and to deceive, Holden has no interest in knowledge that does not benefit him at the expense of others. And like Landa, Holden uses his knowledge in devastating ways. Compare the coolness of Landa's conversation with the farmer, first in French and then in English, to the Bacchanalian fervor of Judge Holden as he dances around a circle of urinating men, improvising gunpowder to use against the Apaches.
It's important to note also the expriest's opinion of knowledge: "Oh it may be the Lord’s way of showin how little store he sets by the learned. Whatever could it mean to one who knows all? He’s an uncommon love for the common man and godly wisdom resides in the least of things so that it may well be that the voice of the Almighty speaks more profoundly in such beings as lives in silence themselves.” In this way, Holden sets himself apart from God's will.
By the way, to Judge Holden, the expriest is just known as "priest." Can a man, once elected, ever lose his election?
"What's He A Judge Of?"
Much has been made of the identity of the Judge. Is he human? Superhuman? He's probably just the devil, right? If I can pretend for a moment to know anything about McCarthy as an artist, I would say calling the Judge inhuman would be too obvious and calling him the devil would be too stupid. As much as Iago exists, or Hans Landa, or even Jason or Mike Myers, so too does Judge Holden. If he were the devil, then he's the devil; big whoop, so what? I think the most terrifying answer is found in the Judge's own words: “Your heart’s desire is to be told some mystery. The mystery is that there is no mystery.”
Holden's assertion that there is no mystery should strike a chord with us, having just finished the Brothers Karamazov. Dusty filled the book with mysteries: Ivan is called a riddle, much as Dmitri claims that God besets us with riddles; Zosima speaks of the mystery of human existence; and the final mystery is of course that of human psychology. To Dusty, all the world is a mystery, and the mystery deserves our reverence. But Judge Holden? All is knowable to him. He does not sit agape like the Imbecile (who likely stands in for humanity, beating the bars of his cage and being a participant in trivialities like baptism): he writes, he thinks, he judges, and he knows. He is not content with mystery; he is Descartes taken to the nth degree, a true Master and Proprietor of nature.
Another guess I've heard is that Judge Holden is a judge of men, as we might think of God being. In some ways, Holden bears a resemblance to God. When the Gang arrives in town, welcomed as heroes, they are given new clothes, and the Judge and Glanton are cloaked in white and black, respectively. (You gotta feel like McCarthy was just beating you over the head with a bat called Symbolism with that one.) But Holden as a judge of men is also too boring, and that's according to the man himself: “What is true of one man,” said the judge, “is true of many.” Being a judge of men would imply that some men are one way and others another. Is that the universe as McCarthy sees it? I beg to differ.
What Is It Good For?
Eternal war ravages the novel, and the Judge is always there for it -- the novel's last paragraph where he is dancing naked is easily the most frightening thing ever put to paper. His assault (murder? rape? or symbolic swallowing-up?) of the Kid/Man at the end is all the more reason to believe that he represents the inescapability of war. But again, we have evidence to the contrary in the Judge's own words. I'll quote this at length, but all we need is the last sentence; it's long, but so, so good:
“All other trades are contained in that of war…It endures
because young men love it and old men love it in them. Those that fought, those
that did not… Men are born for games. Nothing else. 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 wage 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 principals and define them. But trial of chance or trial of
worth aspire to the condition of war for here that which is wagered swallows up
game player, all.
“Suppose two men at 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 hard 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 fate. The selection of one an 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 stake 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. Seen so, war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one’s will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god.”
“Suppose two men at 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 hard 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 fate. The selection of one an 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 stake 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. Seen so, war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one’s will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god.”
War is god. It is not you or me or the Judge. The Judge has never claimed to be God. He would probably laugh at the idea.
The notion that war is god is likely inspired by the Gnostics, who believed that "evil is everything that is," a quote that I shamelessly copied from the Wikipedia article on this book. It is supported by the opening quote from Jakob Boehme, Christian mystic and shoemaker: "It is not to be thought that the life of darkness is sunk in misery and lost as if in sorrowing. There is no sorrowing. For sorrow is a thing that is swallowed up in death, and death and dying are the very life of the darkness." Remember that Nabokov had a problem with Dostoevsky's "sensitive murderers," and that Cicero judged that we should not treat all wrongdoers as "trembling ninnies." McCarthy definitely doesn't.
At the end of the day, calling the Judge superhuman or inhuman or the devil or the incarnation of war is easy because it lets us off the hook. It is tantamount to us, the readers, saying, "Look at this person who I am not." McCarthy, on the other hand, made the Judge humanity at its most basic: pale, featureless, like a large baby. He is something of a prototype of man, a fetus in the womb before it is brought into the light of the world. In this way, he is more of a man than any of us.
And what is true of one man is true of many.
Stray Observations
- I usually keep from saying whether or not I liked one of the books on my reading list. I'm reading these books because they're masterpieces, and unless I have a strong, defensible opinion, I'll withhold my judgment, since you, the reader, should go through them yourself regardless of my unenlightened opinion. With McCarthy, however, I feel comfortable saying a few words. On the whole, I love Blood Meridian and highly recommend it. McCarthy is a master of the English language and certainly the greatest living prose writer that I've read. One criticism I've heard of McCarthy's style is that it feels unedited. Certainly, you can see from some of the passages I've quoted that his sentence structure varies between torturously structured to blithely fragmented, often within the same paragraph. While his command of language is unassailable, I can't help but feel that his editing leaves something to be desired.
- Also, lack of punctuation is a valid artistic choice, but when you make that choice in all your books? Come on, bro, commas aren't that ugly.
- Lots of people die in Blood Meridian, and it's impressive to read an author confident enough to kill off main characters without a second thought. (George RR Martin is the prime example of this; I would've included that asshole Joffrey in my list of unbelievably evil characters, but I haven't read the books.) Some notable characters and their deaths: John Jackson, the white guy, is killed by John Jackson, the black guy. (Ow, McCarthy, that Symbolism bat hurts!) When Bathcat, a character with a necklace made of human ears, is killed, Toadvine, who has no ears, steals the necklace.
- There's a lot of blue in this book, often unexpectedly. The desert is blue, the mountains are blue, this is blue, that's blue. If I had been more conscientious (probably on a second read-through), I'd highlight all the instances of blue.
- Another piece of support for the "Holden is God" theory: He sketches one of the members of the gang, who spits: "I don't want to be in your book." Revelation 20:12: "And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works." (Also, Revelation 20:12? 2012? The Mayans were right.)
- Judge Holden: “The world goes on. We have dancing nightly and this night is no exception. The straight and the winding way are one… Men’s memories are uncertain and the past that was differs little from the past that was not.”
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