October '10 Reading: Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

[Virgil]

The judge is naked at several times in novel. I think it's pretty clear the kid dies at the end. I have no idea where you got the sodomy part. That's a leap if you ask me. Where is there any suggestion that the kid is gay? Like I said before, he's with a female prostitute just before the ending scene. And what does the culture of violence have to do with homosexuality?

[Dark Muse]

The judge is naked at several times in novel. I think it's pretty clear the kid dies at the end. I have no idea where you got the sodomy part. That's a leap if you ask me. Where is there any suggestion that the kid is gay? Like I said before, he's with a female prostitute just before the ending scene. And what does the culture of violence have to do with homosexuality?

As Rores stated in his post just before this one, it is my impression as well that he did not in fact actually have sexual relations with the prostitute, but I was left the idea that he was left unable to actually perform with her. I reared over the scene a few times and I found nothing to suggest to me that The Kid and the prostitute actually had sexual relations with each other but he ended up walking away from her and that is when he sought out the judge.

[Virgil]

As Rores stated in his post just before this one, it is my impression as well that he did not in fact actually have sexual relations with the prostitute, but I was left the idea that he was left unable to actually perform with her. I reared over the scene a few times and I found nothing to suggest to me that The Kid and the prostitute actually had sexual relations with each other but he ended up walking away from her and that is when he sought out the judge.

Well, his pants are down with the prostitute. I took it as something having happened, sort of off stage. McCarthy doesn't suggest impotence there. It's just that the sex is not shown. But where is there any suggestion of sexual encounter with the judge? That seems to be a complete leap. Do you think the kid is gay?

I guess i'll have to go back and read that last chapter.

[Dark Muse]

Well, his pants are down with the prostitute. I took it as something having happened, sort of off stage. McCarthy doesn't suggest impotence there. It's just that the sex is not shown. But where is there any suggestion of sexual encounter with the judge? That seems to be a complete leap. Do you think the kid is gay?

I guess i'll have to go back and read that last chapter.

I do not currently have access to my copy of the book so I cannot go back to the part that I think indicates that the Kid in fact did not have relations with the prostitute.

When Rores first made the suggestion about the homosexuality at first I was taken by surprise by it and did not immediately see it, but I have to say upon reading back over a few scenes the idea did start to make sense to me and there were a couple of moments which did seem to indicate that possibility, but as I said I do not currently have access to my book to go to direct quotes.

[Virgil]

I do not currently have access to my copy of the book so I cannot go back to the part that I think indicates that the Kid in fact did not have relations with the prostitute.

When Rores first made the suggestion about the homosexuality at first I was taken by surprise by it and did not immediately see it, but I have to say upon reading back over a few scenes the idea did start to make sense to me and there were a couple of moments which did seem to indicate that possibility, but as I said I do not currently have access to my book to go to direct quotes.

The book definitely deserves another reading. I will be sensitive to that possibility when I reread it. Thanks.

[Rores28]

Yea check it out again... there is something awkward about the scene with the prostitute.

Also the fact that it is a culture of violence makes it unlikely that the men that look into the shed would be shocked simply seeing a corpse

[Dark Muse]

Yea check it out again... there is something awkward about the scene with the prostitute.

Also the fact that it is a culture of violence makes it unlikely that the men that look into the shed would be shocked simply seeing a corpse

You make a good point there which I had not thought of before. It seems very unlikely that the presence of a dead body, or even if they witnessed the actual killing, would truly be considered "shocking' to them.

Particularly sense they just finished gunning down the dancing bear it seemed purely for the sport of doing so and human life hardly seemed to have any more meaning to them than the life of an animal. They were desensitized to scenes of death, brutality and murder.

For the to have had such a reaction something more extraordinary would have had to taken place considering the violence and the apathy or even blatant enjoyment of the violence which carries throughout the book.

[Rores28]

Anyone care to throw out some opinions about the kids vision of the judge with the cold-forger... the false moneyer.... and what exactly that passage meant?

This was I thought the most beautiful passage in the book.... and maybe just the most beautiful piece of prose I've ever read.

[ladderandbucket]

I think that the coldforger passage is the key to understanding the book, or at least the dynamic between the kid and the judge, although, as with most things in this mysterious book, I wouldn't presume a full understanding of it.
My interpretation of it is that the coldforger is the kid. He is trying to counterfeit an image of himself which will meet with the judge's approval. It reminds me of the line at the start of the book:

His origins are become remote as is his destiny and not again in all the world's turning will there be terrains so wild and barbarous to try whether the stuff of creation may be shaped to man's will or whether his own heart is not another kind of clay.

It also prefigures parts of the final conversation between the kid and the judge:

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 warrior's right, and thereby will the dance become a false dance and the dancers false dancers. And yet there be one there always who is a true dancer and can you guess who that might be?

So I read it as the kid's soul being judged...but by what criteria? And what is the nature of the judge?
The preceding passage seems to identify the judge with some kind of immanent principle:

Whoever would seek out his history through what unraveling of loins and ledgerbooks must stand at last darkened and dumb at the shore of a void without terminus or origin and whatever science he might bring to bear upon the dusty primal matter blowing down out of the millennia will discover no trace of ultimate atavistic egg by which to reckon his commencing.

and implies his omniscience:

[the kid, looking in the judges eyes] could read whole bodies of decisions not accountable to the courts of men and he saw his own name which nowhere else could he have ciphered out at all logged into the records as a thing already accomplished, a traveler known in jurisdictions existing only in the claims of certain pensioners or on old dated maps.

Is the judge God? I think not.
I see the kid as being a person who has lost touch with God. This passage:

I aint heard no voice, he said.
When it stops, said Tobin, you'll know you've heard it all your life.
Is that right?
Aye.
The kid turned the leather in his lap. The expriest watched him.
At night, said Tobin, when the horses are grazing and the company is asleep, who hears
them grazing?
Dont nobody hear them if they're asleep.
Aye. And if they cease their grazing who is it that wakes?
Every man.
Aye, said the expriest. Every man.

seems to resonate with the image of the kid in the final chapter, wandering about with a bible searching for the expriest:

He enquired at every door for news of the expriest but no one knew him.

He never saw the expriest again. Of the judge he heard rumour everywhere.

So I see the kid as a lost soul. He has lost contact with God but retains enough vestiges of the honourable man who can recognize the sanctity of blood to disqualify himself from the judge's dance. In the dream of the coldforger the kid is trying to create some identity through an act of will but ultimately will find that his heart is of another kind of clay.
As the judge says to the kid in chapter 21:

There's a flawed place in the fabric of your heart. Do you think I could not know? You alone were mutinous. You alone reserved in your soul some corner of clemency for the heathen.

I think this is a fairly superficial reading of the book. There is certainly a lot more to it. I have really enjoyed reading this thread and seeing people who are obviously as enchanted with Blood Meridian as I was. I can recommend a book called Notes on Blood Meridian by John Sepich (the only piece of lit crit I have ever been tempted to buy) and also searching the messageboard archives of cormacmccarthy.com where scholars have been discussing this book for the last 10 years.