Blood Meridian Character Analysis:

The Judge's Unnatural Appearance

Blood Meridian Character Analysis: The Judge

The Judge doesn't only have a disturbing sense of ethics, but he also has a disturbing appearance. Often described as "a large baby," The Judge holds an intimidating and unnatural appearance. Described as close to seven feet tall, pale white skin with absolutely no hair, and hands and feet the size of a child's, The Judge's appearance is as skewed as his mind.

The Judge in Correspondence With His Setting

The Judge's Omnipresence and God-Like Stature

The Judge holds a strange place in Cormac McCarthy's desolate western landscape. When the main character, a 14 year old knife-wielding runaway known only as "The Kid" kills some men in a village on the Texas/Mexico border, The Judge manages to recruit him into The Glanton Gang to become a Native American scalp hunter. The Judge himself acts as an adviser to Ike Glanton, the leader of The Glanton Gang. As the book progresses, The Kid steps out of the frame along with many other characters as they all meld into McCarthy's description of them as simply a group of people. All characters eventually meld into the gelatin of The Glanton Gang and lose individuality, except for The Judge. The Judge constantly holds the main stage of the book, where he becomes the only individual outside of the group. Throughout many pages of nothing but description as the group travels through the barren landscape, The Judge still stands out. As McCarthy begins to describe the group in an almost neo-biblical fashion and through elements like the wind and bones on the ground, The Judge still stands out as an individual. Also, as the book progresses, The Judge continues to study the landscape. He draws, or simply kills and takes all unknown objects and creatures in the landscape. Eventually, a friend of the kids and other gang member, Toadvine, asks The Judge why he does this. The Judge simply responds in an almost godlike fashion, and says “Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.” The Judge continues through the rest of the book like this, making him standout compared to all other characters.

The Judge

The Judge is not only chilling for his actions, but also for his stature throughout the novel. In one scene, The Judge becomes completely wet after standing outside in the pouring rain. However, only moments later, he is in a hotel bar, completely dry. When the group takes over a river crossing, The Judge is first noted as fully clothed, however moments later, he has lost all of his clothes and is stark-naked, and has taken an insane brother of one of the travelers and put him on a leash. Even later in the novel, The Judge wanders the desert for days with the insane man on a leash, devoid of clothes and supplies, and yet continues to survive without problem. At the end of the book, the main protagonist, The Kid continues to spot him around town, and see's that almost all actions are happening because of him. The Judge also has an immortal, god-like figure. He even stops sleeping at the end of the novel, and he knows that he will never die. He makes it through countless near death situations without a scratch, and never even comes close to dying. He has control over every situation in the novel, no matter the circumstance. The Judge is certainly a chilling figure.

The Judge is the primary antagonist of Cormac McCarthy's epic novel, Blood Meridian. In the novel, this character that goes only by the name of the judge appears as an almost Antichrist like figure, and acts in a complex way. The Judge is a complex character as he seems to switch on and off his moral compass at will. He possesses incredible knowledge, and talks like a scholar in a land of the uneducated. The Judge may simply be one of the most complex characters in modern literature, along with one of the most chilling.

The Judge's Motivation

Ethics and Moral Compass

The Judge is also a strange character, because he in many ways appears to have absolutely no motivation for his actions. The Judge does the exact opposite of what his name entails, he judges things, and then kills them based on prejudice, instead without bias like a real judge. At the end of the novel, The Judge finds The Kid, now The Man in a bar in a far off village. The Man has aged nearly 30+ years and does not recognize The Judge, but The Judge, just like usual, has not at all aged and remembers The Kid like they had been traveling together the day before. He proceeds to follow The Kid outside of the bar, where he traps him in a bathroom. The narrators before completely omnipresent view is suddenly unable to see inside, and whatever happens is lost to imagination. A man walks by and opens the door and only says "oh dear god" in response to the site. This is in stark contrast to the rest of the violence in the novel, as the majority of it is described in full, gory and unbelievably disturbing detail. However, what The Judge does to The Man is so terrible, that it only warrants an "oh dear god" and nothing more. The murder and possible rape of The Kid could be considered The Judge's motivation throughout the novel, as afterwords he proceeds to celebrate and dance inside the bar, shouting that "he will never sleep" and that "he will never die," and then the narration changes to present tense for a moment saying that The Judge does in fact, never sleep now and that he will never die. The Judges immense celebration to this could mark The Kid/Man's brutal death to be The Judges one goal throughout the novel.

The Judge lacks any sense of morality or ethics, making his name a most likely purposeful example of situational irony. His ethical decisions are in many scenarios dark, and purposeless. In one situation in the second section of the book, The Glanton Gang, or the group that the judge travels with are in a Mexican village. The Judge decides to buy two puppies from a street vendor, only to then take the puppies and hurl them as hard as he can over a bridge, and then move to the shoreline to shoot the corpses of the already drowned animals. The Judge has no moral compass, and in many cases brutally slaughters friends and enemies alike. In one scene, after the group of scalp-hunters raids a village, The Judge kidnaps an Apache child. For days, he cares for it like a parent would, only to proceed to scalp and burn the child in a matter of minutes. In conclusion, The Judge is anything but a judge, he's simply a psychopath with no sense of morality.