October '10 Reading: Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

Is the kid meant to be a sort of Christ like figure?

Throughout most of the book he lays low and there is a large portion in the middle of the story in which he isn't mentioned at all giving him the appearance of not really taking a very active role in the actions of the others and than suddenly he emerges near the end of the story for this sort of showdown with the judge.

Being in the company of the priest gives the whole thing this air of the epic battle of good vs evil, and that whole encounter with the judge, of them being alone out in the desert and the judge trying to tempt the kid to come back to him does seem to be a bit reminiscent of the last temptation.

Just finished it after about 4 weeks, which says a lot, though i have been heavily preoccupied with my newest trivial pursuit - archery, fittingly.

My opinions haven't veered much from my initial thoughts really. The prose is largely mesmerising but the atmospheric sparseness and the tangential approach to what is actually a very linear narrative left me struggling to engage with the story and characters - a potential protagonist effectively disappearing for 200 pages didn't help! Looking back, it seems i've remembered the novel in terms of separate scenes rather than a whole - Toadvine and the burning down of the hotel / clash with the apaches / scene in the abandoned church / stand off with Judge at the Creek / final scene at the dance. These would have worked well as short stories on their own, especially considering McCarthy's poetic tendencies. That said, the novel still works, and impressed me deeply, it was just a big struggle to get through as i couldn't just dip into it for 20 pages at a time without feeling detached from any kind of narratiove progression.

I DO get the doggie scene though, as, for me, i was warming to Judge and the idea that he was a lover of the Earth and nature etc. This scene blew that out of the water, and, as with others forumites, had me thinking along the God and/or Devil (incarnate or otherwise) lines re: his symbolism to the whole.

Just realising as i type how deeply this book has affected me and how it will stay with me for a long time. Should've given it 5 stars rather than 4, despite the feeling that i've just finished a marathon.

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Originally Posted by Rores28

**MAJOR SPOILERS**

The ending.

So it seems as if the judge and the kid had homosexual relations in the outhouse and that the some men walked in on it. Then the judge may or may not have killed the kid.

And it seems the judge knew the entire time. When he says something like "if Glanton knew he would have killed you" and "you thought no one could see you" and the kid says something like "you seen me"

It seems to be implied too then that the kid was having a homosexual relationship with Tobin. In the end though why get with the judge. The judge is the only one he knows that he can safely approach to get out his desires? Like even though the judge is completely sadistic and bloodthirsty he still to all the possibilities of the world, which is maybe one of the things that makes him so disarming.

Sorry to beat a dead horse, but this then also has a parallel to the homosexual relationship between Queequeg and Ishmael.... I don't know if I said that before.

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What purpose does the homo-erotic suggestion serve to the story at large? It seems to just sort of come out of left field at the end. I did not even initially pick up on it until you mentioned it and I had to go back and reread over the scene. But I don't get what exactly is being said in that scene?

I didn't pick up on the homo-eroticism either, though i was very sleepy when i finished the book. Think i thought Judge had killed the kid, but wasn't really convinced as the climate at that time/location was not one of wreckless violence as it was 30 years earlier on the malpais and they wouldn't have let Judge just stroll back to the dance. Perhaps it's just deliberately ambiguous as we read no more about the kid. I like the fact that it was left open to interpretation.

Part of me wants to say it was ambiguous for ambiguity's sake. Like Cormac knew there would be more mystique and scholarly discussion if he created a very ambiguous event.

I think there is definitely more than enough to lead one to believe that something more than simply killing him took place. I mean why is it necessary that the judge is naked and also why embrace. Furthermore, in the scene preceding there is some implication that the kid could not perform with women.

But yea if it is... I'm not quite sure I'm getting its significance.

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Originally Posted by Rores28

Part of me wants to say it was ambiguous for ambiguity's sake. Like Cormac knew there would be more mystique and scholarly discussion if he created a very ambiguous event.

I think there is definitely more than enough to lead one to believe that something more than simply killing him took place. I mean why is it necessary that the judge is naked and also why embrace. Furthermore, in the scene preceding there is some implication that the kid could not perform with women. .

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Did the judge also have relations with the idiot? Becasue were not they seen on more than one occassion naked together?

Hah, I hadn't even thought of that... you're sick. :)

Yea I guess I took their nudity to be a product of the heat, but I mean the company wasn't typically walking around naked... so perhaps

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Originally Posted by Rores28

Hah, I hadn't even thought of that... you're sick. :)

Yea I guess I took their nudity to be a product of the heat, but I mean the company wasn't typically walking around naked... so perhaps

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LOL!

At first I presumed that their nudity was just part of the judges naturalistic tendencies, but I do recall one scene in which they seemed to be just hanging around naked together for no apparent reason, and after the discussion about what he may have done with the kid, well it just cast those moments in a rather different light and made me start to wonder.

Not sure if anyone is up to discussing this novel further. I completed it in the last week and really want to put out my thoughts. I'll do this in a couple of different posts. On this post I really just want to highlight McCarthy's incredible prose style. Let me focus on this passage, the opening seven paragraphs from chapter XII.

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For the next two weeks they would ride by night, they would make no fire. They had struck the shoes from their horses and filled the nailholes in with clay and those who still had tobacco used their pouches to spit in and they slept in caves and on bare stone. They rode their horses through the tracks of their dismounting and they buried their stool like cats and they barely spoke at all. Crossing those barren gravel reefs in the night they seemed remote and without substance. Like a patrol they condemned to ride out some ancient curse. A thing surmised from the blackness by the creak of leather and the chink of metal.

They cut the throats of the pack animals and jerked and divided the meat and they traveled under the cape of the wild mountains upon a broad soda plain with dry thunder to the south and rumors of light. Under a gibbous moon horse and rider spanceled to their shadows on the snowblue ground and in each flare of lightning as the storm advanced those selfsame forms rearing with a terrible redundancy behind them like some third aspect of their presence hammered out black and wild upon the naked grounds. They rode on. They rode like men invested with a purpose whose origins were antecedent to them, like blood legates of an order both imperative and remote. For although each man among them was discrete unto himself, conjoined they made a thing that had not been before and in that communal soul were wastes hardly reckonable more than those whited regions on old maps where monsters do live and where there is nothing other of the known world save conjectural winds.

They crossed the del Norte and rode south into a land more hostile yet. All day they crouched like owls under the niggard acacia shade and peered out upon that cooking world. Dustdevils stood at the horizon like the smoke of distant fires but of a living thing there was none. They eyed the sun in its circus and at dusk they rode upon the cooling plain where the western sky was the color of blood. At the desert well they dismounted and drank jaw to jaw with their horses and remounted and rode on. The little desert wolves yapped in the dark and Glanton’s dog trotted beneath the horse’s belly, its footfalls stitched precisely among the hooves.

That night they were visited with a plague of hail out of a faultless sky and the horses shied and moaned and the men dismounted and sat upon the ground with their saddles over their heads while the hail leaped in the sand like small lucent eggs concocted alchemically out of the desert darkness. When they resaddled and rode on they went for miles through cobbled ice while a polar moon rose like a blind cat’s eye up over the rim of the world. In the night they passed the lights of a village on the plain but they did not alter from their course.

Toward the morning they saw fires on the horizon. Glanton sent the Delawares. Already the downstar burned pale in the east. When they returned they squatted with Glanton and the judge and the Brown brothers and spoke and gestured and then all remounted and all rode on.

Five wagons smoldered on the desert floor and the riders dismounted and moved among the bodies of the dead Argonauts in silence, those right pilgrims nameless among the stones with their terrible wounds, the viscera spilled from their sides and the naked torsos bristling with arrowshafts. Some by their beards were men but yet wore strange menstrual wounds between their legs and no man’s parts for these had been cut away and hung dark and strange from out their grinning mouths. In their wigs of dried blood they lay gazing up with the ape’s eyes at brother sun now rising in the east.

The wagons were no more than embers armatured with the blackened shapes of hoop-iron and tires, the redhot axles quaking deep within the coals. The riders squatted at the fires and boiled water and drank coffee and roasted meat and lay down to sleep among the dead.

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What a magnificent passage, and the more I look at it, the more intricacies I see in it. First the whole passage is formed around the clause “they rode.” Notice how three quarters of the sentences have “they” as the subject and most of the action sentences have “rode” or something that implies riding forward as the verb. There is even the short “they rode on” sentence in the second paragraph that is the central core of this, the rest mostly a fleshing out of the scene.

Second what is striking about McCarthy’s style is just how often he uses similes. I can’t help but feel he picked that up from Faulkner, but I think McCarthy takes it even forward. There are at least two kinds of use for similes here. One just to be descriptive and visual: “they buried their stool like cats” or “dustdevils stood at the horizon like the smoke of distant fires.” This creates vibrant imagery for the reader to sink his teeth into. Second McCarthy seems to use the simile as a comparison that leads to a thematic association: “They rode like men invested with a purpose whose origins were antecedent to them, like blood legates of an order both imperative and remote. “ I would argue that such a comparison outside of a reader’s experience. Where does one know men whose origins are antecedent to them? And why would such men ride with a purpose? What purpose? And then he doubles up the simile by comparing the men with “blood legates.” What are blood legates? A legate is a legal agent, and I guess that fits as a description the mission the men are on, but a “blood legate” is a poetic crafting of the language. McCarthy is suggesting through this simile that the men are riding by some unconsciously driven impulse. And this connects to the simile in the first paragraph, “Like a patrol they condemned to ride out some ancient curse. “

Other distinctions of his prose are the original use of metaphor, imagery and diction. There are the metaphors, the sun as a circus (a disk), hail as a plague, and castration as menstrual wounds. Some of the imagery is so sharp: filling the horseshoes holes with clay or drinking jaw to jaw with their horses. Only McCarthy could come up with that. As to the diction, look at his use of adjectives, “gibbous moon” or “niggard acacia” or “cooking world.” Ignore those writing books that tell you to eliminate adjectives. They don’t know what they’re talking about. And look at his verb choices: “spanceled,” “stitched,” “armatured.” Hardly common words. The metaphors, diction, and imagery charge the language so that it’s really poetic prose.

And there is the rhythm of the sentences, rhythm partly based on polysyndeton, or the frequent use of the conjunction “and.” I think this gives it a particular American sounding quality. 19th century American style was largely based on the language from King James Bible, and there are echoes from it. I think also the sentence lengths tend to repeat, not just the sentence lengths but also the phrasing lengths seem to come at constant intervals.

And finally I love the repeated use of images and actions and words. Notice how cats are mentioned twice, squatting of the men are mentioned twice, eyes are repeated, and moon and sun as discs in some fashion are repeated. These repetitions stitch the narrative together, interlock it as a unified piece. This is top notch writing.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

Not sure if anyone is up to discussing this novel further. I completed it in the last week and really want to put out my thoughts. I'll do this in a couple of different posts. On this post I really just want to highlight McCarthy's incredible prose style. Let me focus on this passage, the opening seven paragraphs from chapter XII.



What a magnificent passage, and the more I look at it, the more intricacies I see in it. First the whole passage is formed around the clause “they rode.” Notice how three quarters of the sentences have “they” as the subject and most of the action sentences have “rode” or something that implies riding forward as the verb. There is even the short “they rode on” sentence in the second paragraph that is the central core of this, the rest mostly a fleshing out of the scene.

Second what is striking about McCarthy’s style is just how often he uses similes. I can’t help but feel he picked that up from Faulkner, but I think McCarthy takes it even forward. There are at least two kinds of use for similes here. One just to be descriptive and visual: “they buried their stool like cats” or “dustdevils stood at the horizon like the smoke of distant fires.” This creates vibrant imagery for the reader to sink his teeth into. Second McCarthy seems to use the simile as a comparison that leads to a thematic association: “They rode like men invested with a purpose whose origins were antecedent to them, like blood legates of an order both imperative and remote. “ I would argue that such a comparison outside of a reader’s experience. Where does one know men whose origins are antecedent to them? And why would such men ride with a purpose? What purpose? And then he doubles up the simile by comparing the men with “blood legates.” What are blood legates? A legate is a legal agent, and I guess that fits as a description the mission the men are on, but a “blood legate” is a poetic crafting of the language. McCarthy is suggesting through this simile that the men are riding by some unconsciously driven impulse. And this connects to the simile in the first paragraph, “Like a patrol they condemned to ride out some ancient curse. “

Other distinctions of his prose are the original use of metaphor, imagery and diction. There are the metaphors, the sun as a circus (a disk), hail as a plague, and castration as menstrual wounds. Some of the imagery is so sharp: filling the horseshoes holes with clay or drinking jaw to jaw with their horses. Only McCarthy could come up with that. As to the diction, look at his use of adjectives, “gibbous moon” or “niggard acacia” or “cooking world.” Ignore those writing books that tell you to eliminate adjectives. They don’t know what they’re talking about. And look at his verb choices: “spanceled,” “stitched,” “armatured.” Hardly common words. The metaphors, diction, and imagery charge the language so that it’s really poetic prose.

And there is the rhythm of the sentences, rhythm partly based on polysyndeton, or the frequent use of the conjunction “and.” I think this gives it a particular American sounding quality. 19th century American style was largely based on the language from King James Bible, and there are echoes from it. I think also the sentence lengths tend to repeat, not just the sentence lengths but also the phrasing lengths seem to come at constant intervals.

And finally I love the repeated use of images and actions and words. Notice how cats are mentioned twice, squatting of the men are mentioned twice, eyes are repeated, and moon and sun as discs in some fashion are repeated. These repetitions stitch the narrative together, interlock it as a unified piece. This is top notch writing.

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Nice analysis of the prose. Can you give me a page reference on that... I marked my book all to hell with passages that I liked and I somehow missed that one... the paragraph ending with conjectural winds is pretty amazing.

For me two passage, however, towered above the rest in poetic beauty. The entire first three pages with particular respect to the "or if their hearts weren't another kind of clay paragraph."

And for me the greatest passage in the entire book is the paragraph in which the judge is standing with the cold-forger, the false moneyer... I dont have the book on me but I'd really like to discuss not just how aesthetically stunning this passage is but also what exactly it means.

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Originally Posted by Rores28

Nice analysis of the prose. Can you give me a page reference on that... I marked my book all to hell with passages that I liked and I somehow missed that one... the paragraph ending with conjectural winds is pretty amazing.

For me two passage, however, towered above the rest in poetic beauty. The entire first three pages with particular respect to the "or if their hearts weren't another kind of clay paragraph."

And for me the greatest passage in the entire book is the paragraph in which the judge is standing with the cold-forger, the false moneyer... I dont have the book on me but I'd really like to discuss not just how aesthetically stunning this passage is but also what exactly it means.

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There are lots of great passages. Like I said in my post, those are the first seven paragraphs of chapter XII, pages 151-153 in my Modern Library edition.

As to the themes of this novel, it’s hard for me to grasp them at one reading. The constant and repeated violence, violence without any redemptive qualities, suggests to me just how low humanity can devolve and degenerate. This is nature tooth and claw of which one survives or dies. But it’s more than that. These men made choices to pursue their missions, to receive pay for the slaughter of Apaches. Naturalism, of which it reached its height at the beginning of the 20th century considers humanity to be brutish and completely immoral if placed in the right conditions. But this novel is more than Naturalism. Consider this important passage:

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They moved on. There were eagles and other birds in the valley and many deer and there were wild orchards and brakes of bamboo. The river here was sizable and it swept past enormous boulders and waterfalls fell everywhere out of the high tangled jungle. The judge had taken to riding ahead with one of the Delawares and he carried his rifle loaded with the small hard seeds of the nopal fruit and in the evening he would dress expertly the color of birds he’d shot, rubbing the skins with gunpowder and stuffing them with balls of dried grass and packing them away in his wallets. He pressed the leaves of trees and plants into his book and he stalked tiptoe the mountain butterflies with his shirt outheld in both hands, speaking to them in a low whisper, no curious study himself. Toadvine sat watching him as he made his notations in the ledger, holding the book toward the fire for the light, and he asked him what was his purpose in all this.

The judge’s quill ceased its scratching. He looked at Toadvine. Then he continued to write again.

Toadvine spat into the fire.

The judge wrote on and then he folded the ledger shut and laid it to one side and pressed his hands together and passed them 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 the dark forest in which they were bivouacked. He nodded toward the specimens he’d 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 yon 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 be properly suzerain of the earth.

What’s a suzerain?

A keeper. A keeper or overlord.

Why not say keeper then?

Because he is a special type of keeper. A suzerain is rules even where there are other rulers. His authority countermands local judgments.

Toadvine spat.

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.

Toadvine 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 erode the deeds of his life. But that man who sets himself the task of singling the thread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate.

I don’t see what that has to do with catchin birds.

The freedom of birds is an insult to me. I’d have them all in zoos.

That would be a hell of a zoo.

The judge smiled. Yes, he said. Even so.

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[from chapter XIV, pages 197-199 in my Modern Library edition]

Naturalism doesn’t contain the hubris that the judge shows in this passage. And while naturalism may or may not show a sort spirituality imbued in nature, this novel takes it beyond that. There is a linked relationship between the blood violence and whatever orders and holds nature together. Harold Bloom in the introduction to my Modern Library edition and in a Wikipedia entry on this novel it has been suggested that Gnosticism is the novel’s overarching belief structure. Gnosticism was a 2nd century Christian sect (actually not just Christian) that based their theology on secret knowledge. I don’t know enough about Gnosticism to make an intelligent judgment but the judge does seem to strive for knowledge beyond nature. You can look up the Wikipedia entry on Gnosticism and frankly I can’t see what it has to do with the events of this novel. But that’s what multiple readings are for.


In contrast to the human depravity theme—a contrast I think that illuminates the theme—the kid many years later while traveling about trying I think to find some meaning to life stumbles upon another slaughter scene.

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The company of penitents lay hacked and butchered among the stones in every attitude. Many lay about the fallen cross and some were mutilated and some were without heads. Perhaps they’d gathered under the cross for shelter but the hole into which it had been set and the cairn of rocks about its base showed how it had been pushed over and how the hooded alterchrist had been cut down and disemboweled who now lay with the scraps of rope by which he had been bound still tied about his wrists and ankles.

The kid rose and looked about at this desolate scene and then he saw alone and upright in a small niche in the rocks an old woman kneeling in a faded rebozo with her eyes cast down.

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 folds of her clothing. She did not look up. The shawl 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 quartermoons and other insignia of a provenance 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 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 countrypeople 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. Abuelta, he said. No puedes escucharme?

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.

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[from chapter XXII, page 315, Modern Library edition]

Finally we reach a point of human redemption. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I seem to recall an old woman popping up in several scenes through the novel. If so, then the old woman is a running motif which finally culminates here. Is this hollow redemption? The old woman is dead. But the kid’s compassion and humanizing impulse is real. This little scene in the second to last chapter, religious in its images and associations, recasts the whole novel and provides a moral core that was clearly and consciously absent. However this is not the final scene, and wow what a final conflict between the judge and the kid. I won’t spoil the ending, but that too recasts novel once again.

This novel is deep. I can’t believe it’s only 330-something pages. Reading it feels like you have gone through another world. Through its compressed powerful, symbolic scenes and compressed poetic language, this is the shortest epic I can ever remember reading. It is definitely up there as one of the great novels.

I agree that the novel seems as if it is much longer than 330 pages, which is strange considering how much of it is just landscape description.

The genuine events happen so quickly and with such little commentary that is capable of being very condensed...

As to the overarching theme. He uses the term man a lot and with the intent of Man with a capital M, he is constantly talking about obscure origins and destinies, and he often makes some sort of reference to some sort of holistic force. He often times mentions men's shadows, or avatars, or residues etc.. being cast amongst nature and he also refers to nature in human terms talking about rocks "seeing" I think at one point and describing the sun as a phallus I believe. I think the book implicitly posits that their is an inscrutable force pushing and pulling and governing the behavior of individual men who fail to see how. But this force or God is the emergent property of society both spatially and temporally... that is to say God is the aggregate of human activity occurring now and passed down through history. So men have the power to choose and shape their destiny but it is so suffocated by the juggernaut of society and culture at large that it is often obscured sufficiently that our intentions do not yield fruit and are squashed by the larger cultural currents.

**SPOILER** At the end, the kid's coming to terms with his homosexuality I think exemplifies the needs to break away from the social machine as well as demonstrating the consequences and futility of doing so.

The Judge to me is basically head of that juggernaut. Think about the chanting at the end when he says he will not die over and over. I don't think this is a simple "evil will never die there will always be bad men" theme, despite the reference to Paradise Lost. Even think about how the judge seems to possess so many skills, maybe the skills of all men? The judge is not all powerful. He can't shoot lighting from his fingertips, or teleport, or fly. But he does seem to possess skills at the genetic limit of every human capacity.

In one interview I remember hearing Cormac basically saying he didn't think society would last another x amount of years, before we ended up destroying ourselves.

Technology vs Nature ... or Modern vs Primitive as well as Good vs Evil seem to be apparent but maybe too simplistic, but maybe I'm just being swayed by the aesthetic quality of the writing

In the yale lecture series Prof Hungerford offers a pretty cool interpretation that has more to do I think with Cormac than the narrative.

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Originally Posted by Rores28

I agree that the novel seems as if it is much longer than 330 pages, which is strange considering how much of it is just landscape description.

The genuine events happen so quickly and with such little commentary that is capable of being very condensed...

As to the overarching theme. He uses the term man a lot and with the intent of Man with a capital M, he is constantly talking about obscure origins and destinies, and he often makes some sort of reference to some sort of holistic force. He often times mentions men's shadows, or avatars, or residues etc.. being cast amongst nature and he also refers to nature in human terms talking about rocks "seeing" I think at one point and describing the sun as a phallus I believe. I think the book implicitly posits that their is an inscrutable force pushing and pulling and governing the behavior of individual men who fail to see how. But this force or God is the emergent property of society both spatially and temporally... that is to say God is the aggregate of human activity occurring now and passed down through history. So men have the power to choose and shape their destiny but it is so suffocated by the juggernaut of society and culture at large that it is often obscured sufficiently that our intentions do not yield fruit and are squashed by the larger cultural currents.

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Hmm, that societal point you make is interesting, but you would have to provide some examples of that. I don't understand your point about shadows, avatars, whatever. What does that have to do with "holistic forces?"

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**SPOILER** At the end, the kid's coming to terms with his homosexuality I think exemplifies the needs to break away from the social machine as well as demonstrating the consequences and futility of doing so.

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What? I must have missed the homosexuality. I think the judge's sexuality is questioned throughout, but the kid? In fact, the kid is with a female prostitute at the end, isn't he? There is constant mention of the Gang going to whores throughout the novel.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

Hmm, that societal point you make is interesting, but you would have to provide some examples of that. I don't understand your point about shadows, avatars, whatever. What does that have to do with "holistic forces?"


What? I must have missed the homosexuality. I think the judge's sexuality is questioned throughout, but the kid? In fact, the kid is with a female prostitute at the end, isn't he? There is constant mention of the Gang going to whores throughout the novel.

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Sorry, shadows etc... was more adding concrete examples of the symbolism of hazy destinies and causal chains rather than directly supporting the holistic theme.

As to the ending... there are two fairly common competing theories about what happens at the end of the novel,which of course is intentionally ambiguous, (I'm being increasingly convinced of what a self-conscious writer Cormac is) that either the judge kills the kid in the shed, or sodomizes him.

I'm pretty much in the camp of sodomy (I hope that isn't quoted out of context) briefly for these reasons.

1. The scene with the prostitute actually seemed to imply to me that the kid couldn't perform
2. The judge is naked when the kid embraces him in the shed
3. The men are shocked by what they see in the shed... this still seems to be a culture in which simple violence would not be so surprising but homosexuality may be
4. There is constant reference to the judge being able to "see" the kid when others couldn't and I dont think this is simply referring to him having some sort of moral reservations about the gang's activity relative to the other gang members