Dog-Eared Dialogues: Warfare and Deceit Blood Meridian By Cormac McCarthy Part 2
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Part 2 of our Dog-Eared Dialogues on Blood Meridian By Cormac McCarthy.
Ever pondered over the alluring power of war? Why does it beckon young and old alike, despite its gruesome realities? Get ready to explore this paradox and more in our comprehensive discussion on Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. Journey with us as we delve into the intimidating world concocted by McCarthy, a world teetering on the edge of salvation, laden with dark yet thought-provoking themes. This literary masterpiece, though saturated with offensive and gruesome scenes, artfully reveals the capabilities of humankind. Brace yourselves; this conversation isn't for the faint-hearted.
Strap in for a rollercoaster of emotions as we dissect the endless cycle of meaningless violence and its role in the narrative. We'll dive into why war, despite its atrocities, seems to hold a magnetic pull, often bestowing men with an almost god-like status. As we navigate through concepts of nihilism, the devil, and fleeting moments of mercy in an otherwise merciless world, we hope you'll emerge with a fresh perspective on this harrowing tale.
Finally, we put the spotlight on the implications of evil and the disheartening faltering of justice. We'll traverse through the pits of despair and hopelessness depicted in Blood Meridian, punctuated with unexpected sparks of mercy in the grimmest of situations. Yes, our discussion may be shrouded in darkness, but it's in darkness that we often discern the most profound truths. So, join us in this enlightenment journey, as we unravel the allure of war, the shock of nihilism, and the might of mercy. Despite its unsettling themes, we promise you'll find immense value in our discourse, appreciating the book as an unparalleled pillar of literature.
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Hey guys, thanks for tuning in. This is going to be part two of our Blood Meridian review, so if you haven't listened to the last one yet, you should hop back and listen to the previous episode that we did on that and then you can come back and join us for this. This is part two of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian and this is our new series we're putting out, which is Dog Gear Dialogues, and that's where me, pat and Mick are coming to you with books that we find to be of some bit of value and or entertainment and that we think are worth getting together and talking about and think it's worth you all also giving a listen or a read. We consume most of our stuff via Audible, but also, if you're a quick reader unlike me, crack one open and read it. So we're glad you're here with us. We already have covered a couple parts of this book and we've gone through, you know, kind of some plot summary stuff. We've gone through some of the character breakdowns and some of the things we think about, what we already think about some of the themes of this book and we've alluded to them, but we're going to get into the key points and the themes that Cormac McCarthy breaks down in Blood Meridian, and so we're glad you're here and I think that you're going to find some value in this by the end.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I would say you know this is definitely going to be prime spoilers, like part one. You know you could listen to and probably wouldn't feel like most of the book spoiled for you. We're going to get into a lot of. I mean, like Passett, it's all the key points and the themes of the book. You know what is MacArthur alluding to, what does he touch on and perhaps what does he want the reader to take away from such a grandiose horror epic, you know? I mean I feel like it's fair to describe it as like a it's the Odyssey in the Wild West, but also a horror film. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's not a feel good book. You know, I think I'd listen to another book before this. And then I listened to Blood Meridian and I showed my wife like a few brief clips of it and she just looked at me and it goes so are you depressed? I was like I don't know.
Speaker 2:I'll be honest, bro, like Blood Meridian is a book that makes me want to sit down in the shower. You know it's a book that, like you, just like I, need to sit and just feel the water on the back of my head.
Speaker 1:You should sit and let Daniel Craig suck the blood off your fingers. So it's a casino Royale reference, but was that blood?
Speaker 2:I thought he just sucked her fingers because she was cold. No, he was.
Speaker 1:I don't know what was going on. I don't think it was blood, bro.
Speaker 2:Whatever I wasn't sure, it was a very interesting scene. I was really confused I was very young when I saw that, me too.
Speaker 1:I was like is that romantic?
Speaker 2:The girls want me to suck their fingers.
Speaker 1:I think he was cleaning the blood off. It was we need to review that one, but anyways it does. I do feel like that lady sitting in the show after traumatized you know, but I do think that no one's sucking my fingers. Yeah. Still loaded traumatized, further traumatization, but the. So something we like to do on this show is we do delve into the underbelly things of the world, and I think that you can spend too much time down in those areas and it can mess you up. Also, I think that it is worth spending a little bit of time getting to know what what people are capable of in this world, and while this is a fiction story, the there's nothing that happens in this story that has not happened to a human being at some point.
Speaker 2:No, in fact, this story is offensively violent because it happened, right.
Speaker 1:And so and so, while we get into, we're going to get some, you know, some dark things, some gruesome things, and there's beautiful parts of life too, but that's not what we're talking about today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I would. You know I would go a step further and be willing to like, provoke. You know any listeners out there, but I believe in every word of the Bible. I'm not perfect and I don't follow it to the tea and I wish I did but I believe in every single word in the Bible and there's much in the themes of this book that challenge, contest, perhaps even undermine or allude to a world loss beyond saving. And all that said, if you find yourself, whether you're a Christian or not, if you find yourself incapable of entertaining the thoughts and philosophies of something you don't believe in, you're stupid. Sorry, I'm just going to say like, like, it's a mark of, it's a mark of intelligence to be able to listen to someone else's perspective, point of view, experience, entertain it, consider it and still be able to like, respectfully, disagree at the end. And I would say there's a lot that McCarthy posits and his writings that I disagree with, but I find fascinating, I find entertaining. I don't think this is going to be an episode where you are where anyone's offended, but it might be one of those things where people who are like I don't know, man, that's pretty dark, I'm just.
Speaker 1:I would challenge you to consider a well, go read versus Samuel and get back to us.
Speaker 2:Hey, ecclesiastes, that's wild out there. Um, already, we'll dive in right on in past, so we've gone over these characters and, uh, I think um getting into the key points and themes. You know I'll be referencing the characters from the previous episode and such, but I think the most uh, important aspect when we get into this is that it's always been debated what is the theme of this novel? What does McCarthy want us to take away? Because it's it is. You know, it's one of those things where you can make a case of like, well, there's no theme in any book. So all books cover a variety of themes and you know it's they're all stories with their own beats and paces and climaxes and resolutions, in that many things could be covered. But McCarthy's book is is genre lists. Uh, you know, uh, blood meridian has always been always struggled to be put into a proper genre and it's always hard to kind of decide what is the overall theme that McCarthy's trying to discuss. And certainly I wouldn't say that the overall theme is war and succumbing to death or succumbing to, uh, the hopelessness of death. But that is certainly uh, iterated over and over in this book and I'm not again, I don't think it's the final message, but I do think it is certainly a message throughout the book, um, and so in the novel, as we've already discussed, you know, the reader uh and I say I say this, uh, the reader along with the gang are witness to absolute violence and unpunished depravity. Um, because there are times where the gang reacts to the depravity that occurs around them. The same way, uh, coincidentally, the reader's probably feeling, but the majority of the time the reader is witnessing the gang's lack of reaction, the gang succumbing to desensitization from violence and death, to being desensitized by, you know, the, the trade of war, as judge Holden places it. Um, in fact, one of these quotes that I have here, uh, is a quote from the judge, um, that essentially uh is about, you know, war in its form, um, and he says war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one's will and the will of another within the larger will which, because it binds them, is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game, because war is at last a force of the unity of existence. War is God. And what is that saying? You know? I mean, war is, at its core, one versus another, one nation versus another, one individual versus another and because they are uh, testing one another, the larger will, which could be the will of the rest of the people, the will of the crowd, the will of the other nations, the will of God, the will of the universe, the will of nature, whatever that larger will will always have to select one or the other, is kind of the illusion he's saying, um, in that larger will must be something that binds the other two together, the two that are at odds. And essentially, in that, any game you observe chest sports, uh, anything even individual sports, uh, like track, swimming, uh, martial arts all of these are essentially war. They are two entities which exist, uh, within a larger entity that binds them together and they are at odds. In this time, and in that time, the larger entity must start selecting which one they wish to win, and in that it is a force that is a unity of all of existence, all of existence is unified by war and that all of existence must accept that at some point, two will face and they must choose a side. They must have choose one. They wish to prevail over the other, um, whether that's the lesser evil, the righteous, the uh undignified, whatever it may be, and in that, uh, the judge eludes that war is God and that's because what is the ultimate will that is posited by mankind, the ultimate one that, uh, essentially unites us, that we are made in the image of, well, that is God, and at the end of the day, god knows which one of these wins and the you know, illusion that God must choose one of them to be the winner. You know, one of them must have this destiny, which again is another theme in the book manifest destiny, the, the, your destiny is before you and it is your right to move in, uh, in its direction. And anyone in that way is simply, you know, must be overcome in order to manifest your destiny, to make your destiny a reality. That's certainly a theme that's alluded through the book, but, like, really at its core. I think that this running theme of war is God, and it comes down in many forms, but ultimately, war is what makes God make a choice, who wins. Or, you know, however small you want to make God, war is the thing that makes a city decide who they want to win a nation, a people, a gang and in that war is God, because it seems to have a power over, it, seems to have an ability to force everyone to have to make a choice. Again, you can disagree with that, that's fine. I'm just saying that is a, that is an argument that the judge makes and that we see extrapolated throughout the book several times. And we see extrapolated at a small scale with the gang and at a large scale among two nations. And, as, pat, you know, you spoke on like this this is a gang that is continually trying to keep kind of this Mexican American war alive in the pursuit of wealth. Right, but again, in this idea of also succumbing to death, is that the acceptance that not all death has purpose, not all violence has purpose. Vengeance alone is, you know, something that few are lucky to have. And I say that as someone from the perspective of like, trying to understand the philosophy here is that, like, no one in this book, ever, I think, gets vengeance as a justification for violence. Majority of violence is meaningless. Majority of violence does not get to have the privilege of any meaning assigned to it, and vengeance is easily the easiest meaning to assign any violence. And in that this carnage is meaningless and all men are capable of it, all of them are capable of. There is no one who isn't capable of it. And the absence of this narrative of honor, because I must commit violence to honor my country, honor my woman, honor my creed, honor my tribe. That is absent. The absence of justice. We must commit this violence for justice because these people are savages, these people are outlaws, these people don't belong here, these people are the criminals, these people are the war mongers. It's absent. And the revisionist views which a lot of people have talked on as being like somewhat, you know, counter cultural to you know a lot of the narratives today, but there's an absence of this revisionist view that all of the Native Americans or Mesoamericans were innocents who were slaughtered by the villainous white man. Both are villains in this book and sure you could say this tribe of Native Americans pursues the gang or pursues the American Army cavalry out of protection of their land, but also they're scalping their own people to turn in the scalps with the Mexican or American government for gold. And so all of it is war for profit, war for gang, war for overcoming the other and none are innocent of it. All are capable of perpetuating it. And we see, like at first you know we mentioned it last but getting into it the kid joins, kind of gets run wrapped up in this American Army cavalry unit that is led by this prestigious and kind of almost counter of the judge, or maybe counter to Glenn. But this man that has an air of confidence and a creed perhaps, perhaps in the, in the manifest destiny of like America is a good thing and it must be expanded for the sake of civilization. And he is butchered, along with the rest of his cavalry easily, without putting up almost any fight, at the hands of the Apache. The Apache just come out and annihilate them. And in that there is just this, I would say this vacuum that is very loud as the reader or listener, in which the, the, the absence of justified violence, the absence of integrity and honor being a means for violence, is so loud that the reader is kind of, I think, waiting. I think, for the majority of the book, up until the very end, I was waiting for honorable violence, violence that is justified, and never do I get it. I don't know how, about you, before I move on, and I want to know kind of, from what I'm saying here, like, yeah, what are your thoughts? You know, what are your reaction from what you can recall, is there anything I might be missing here.
Speaker 1:No, yeah, I think that I caught on early to that in the way he was writing this, it's just violence for the sake of violence, meaningless and meaningless and violence, you know, and in the same way that and that is actually the way that the kid is described in the beginning that he has a taste for mindless violence. But the very beginning of it he's a taste for mindless violence. So we kind of get that little window. At the beginning he has a taste for it and he's going to get it throughout the rest of the book and the yeah, there was no, you know. Oh man, the good guy, man, he would never shoot somebody, but those guys just put him in that position where he had no, no choice but to, you know, defend himself, or they had just had no choice. But to you know, seek justice, right, it was just it's in meaninglessness, mindless too, in the fact of like how we said this in the last podcast, but the letter, the first part, but that they had there was like an exit strategy. It wasn't like, all right, we're going to go like do this unto you know an end. There was no end game.
Speaker 2:Well, in fact, you know to that note the allegory of abatism by violence, or a renewal for the pursuit of violence, is this idea that you know they commit so much violence, get these scalps or evidence of conquest, turn it into the government. They're awarded in gold and one of the first things they do is go and bathe and when they bathe it's described that they turn the bathwater into bloody filth, into liquid gore because there's so much viscera on them. You know these are people who have with their hands, with their knives, with their axes, with their guns, plain, blank, murdered and scalped and drew blood and it's baked on them in the desert sun. And they ride into town and people celebrate, people cheer, people play the guitar and you know the drums for them and reward them with gold. And after they bathe they step out, they put on fine clothes, their pockets full of gold, they go and buy cigars, whiskey and women ammo and they ride out to do it again and do more. And it's like, it's just like unending pursuit of like I kill to bathe, make myself clean, restore appearance in order that I may go and kill and bathe, and it's like this cycle of meaningless violence there, like there is no end. It is simply a cycle of violence to afford to commit more violence.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think what's, as you're describing, that in suburbia or in America, whatever, like we have no context for what that guy looks like. No context, dude, but I actually do, because here's what happened one day to me. I got a buddy, right? So he, he, he gives me a. I get a call at like 10 o'clock at night. He's just like, hey, and he's living down south in Denver. And he's like, hey, I'm coming down from, like Cheyenne, I need to take a shower at your house. And I'm like, okay, I'm like all right, bro, come on, come on over. So, um, and he comes in and, dude, no joke, head to toe drenched in blood and and all the other stuff that's inside of something, oh my God. So I mean like, unless you've seen it, you you don't know.
Speaker 2:You don't know unless you've seen this under the fingernails in the.
Speaker 1:he had long hair in the hair in the face and I mean I'll, I mean someone once told me you know to this point of how foreign an alien this is.
Speaker 2:Someone's once told me that they. One of the things that they think about the most is the texture of dried brain. Yeah, because it's not like blood or no anything. It doesn't a scab. Yeah, they're just like. The foreignness of that, and how unsettling it was to me has always stuck with me.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, and so I think now I knew what he had just done. But if he had walked in any other place in the world, someone would just call the cops.
Speaker 2:Okay, but what have you just done? Hit an animal with his car, on his motorcycle.
Speaker 1:So he, he, he had just butchered a bowl for a guy, oh okay, but but he got in a little westerly, got a little rowdy. I mean like, usually you don't get covered in that much of blood at all when you butcher an animal. If you have a good work environment, you know you get blood on you, but not like this. I mean he was truly like soaked in blood. It was. It was a. I wish I had a picture of him. But and he, he came into the house and he is a, he is a butcher, and he got an emergency call about this, this bowl that had died and he'd be butchered right away or everything's going to go bad. But he came in the house and he bathed and I fed him. You remember the smell. Yeah, you could smell him. You know like it was like that coppery. It was a less copper because it's not the blood so much as it's the. The insides stink different than the copper. Blood smell, yeah, like them, like big blood smell. But then you know it's like he came in, he bathed, he ate dinner with us, hit the road, did it again the next day, you know, and not that he's, he's not living a life of violence, but it was like this like I'm like, you are always just covered, in contrast.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I was just like nobody has context for this, nobody knows nobody, nobody sees this anymore.
Speaker 2:It reminds me of, especially when you said I wish I took a picture back in middle school when we all had flip phones you know, lg flip phones with like a super bad like two megapixel camera. I I had ripped, we were playing capture the flag not sorry, not capture the flag flag football and I had gone down to rip this kid's flags off. It was awesome, it was a great catch. I mean, he made a great catch. But I was like right there and I got him and as I did, he his cleats came up and just split my forehead open and it was weird because it was like an immediate, like dull ache. I put my hand up. I was like oh my gosh. And I was just sitting on my knees for a second and I just remember like I hear someone who's like. Someone was like, uh, all right, let's go. Uh, it was like turned over, right. I was like all right, I'll get up and I started like running with my hand on my face and I moved my hand away and I saw my whole palm, just blood down to my elbow, and I remember looking in and like just seeing the horror on every other middle school boys face of just like this kid Spencer. He was the kid I ripped the flags off of. He was like, oh my God, somebody shot Mick and he thought I got shot in the head by like someone like uh, it was awesome, I had a great coach. I was like, hey, man, just hit inside, get yourself cleaned up. We'll like all my friends just were like so shocked by it and I took a picture on my phone when I got into like the locker room to like take a photo in the mirror and there was so much blood like my whole shirt was covered. It was like my whole face was just like war paint red and I was. You know, I was a little boy, I was middle school boy, so there's no facial hair to break it up or anything. It was just everywhere running down, dripping off my chin. And for years I had friends who like even after, like iPhones and stuff came out there like dude, do you still have that picture? Oh yeah, that was the most blood I've ever seen in my life, but like it ended up being, like you know, like a two inch gash across my forehead, but it was just, you know, good forehead bleeder, but that's the thing is like it's so unfamiliar now you know what I mean, that people want to see it, right, people like I need to remember what that looked like, because I've never seen anything else like that in my life and I still wish I had that photo, bro, cause it was like, it was like the most horrifying. It looked like out of a horror movie, you know, like out of carry, oh man.
Speaker 1:That's a and yeah, we don't, because that amount of blood not a lot compared to like what people used to see all the time go through, all the time, maybe what goes on in the ER. But and I think about this phrase that war is the truest form of divination, and I was thinking about like the, the, uh, there's all the stuff you were speaking to, and then there's also this part where it's like man in there being a non supernatural being. We cannot create life. The only thing we can do to like come close as we can to God in this McCarthy in context, is to extinguish life or like take it away, like that's like. The only thing is to be like we made life cease.
Speaker 2:You get close to being sent. You're right, yeah, but you send the other guy, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I agree, um, um, you know in in that too, uh. Another kind of uh quote here from from judge Holden is that war contains within it all of the trades of man, in that any trade you can think of and by trade you know career, all of those exist in the trade of war. That war calls upon all, and that is why nations, tribes, towns, individuals, gangs, desire war, because in war each has purpose, each can manifest their trade. And like I really thought about that when I heard that, I was like, you know, maybe that was probably true for the Wild West, like for the trades that were available with the technology at the time.
Speaker 1:Like they didn't have sales reps. But wait a second. Who sells? Dude, the Tomahawk missiles, Exactly dude.
Speaker 2:Keeps on turning right. And so, with that like I just I just sat and I thought I remember was in my car and for like five you know, stop lights. While the rest of the book was playing, I ended up having to rewind it because I was just like so deep in thought about, like can I even think of a single trade that doesn't find use in war? I couldn't, dude, I could not think of a single one, like a single one that doesn't end up being used like even especially the humanitarian ones, like humanitarian ones, get the most bonus, like health care and or like chaplains, or would you know like? think about just any infrastructure thing. What's the result of war? Destroyed infrastructure. Guess what that's? Plumbing, electrical water. You know it's just like. It's one of those things that, like within he's right, the judge is right and I can, I can, I can agree with him without agreeing with his philosophy. You know what I mean. You flip burgers, hey, someone's got to feed him, yeah. The other quote that I I wrestle with and I want to know kind of what you think of it, pat. I wrestle with it because I think it offends me. I think it offends me because of how true I think it is and how much it it darkens reality. But Judge Holden says war endures because young men love it and old men love it in them. Mm hmm, and I don't know. Old men love it in them because that, that passion, that spirit, that desire allows those old men to, to catalyze it and send them, and the old men get to profit off of the young men's death. Or is it just that the old men envy, they love the passion, the ferocity, the life that young men have and they can't help but to encourage it? You know, a father can't help to be proud of his son as he goes to war and it's like dude, I want to say I'm the youngest man, not 30, but I'm also not like you know a 14 year old. I can tell you this, bro when I was like 12, saw Red Dawn the first time. It's the best thing.
Speaker 1:I loved war ever.
Speaker 2:I loved war so much. Yeah, I wanted war more than anything. Pray for Red Dawn, dude. Yeah, exactly, would like. I remember in high school thinking it'd be so great if Red Dawn happened and I didn't have to debate, like I didn't have to deal with like homework, didn't have to deal with getting a job or taxes. Just kill communists, right. My More mountains, yeah. And like, why, man? Why does the young man love war and why does the old man love it?
Speaker 1:in him. I don't know, because my three year old he loves it he doesn't.
Speaker 2:He doesn't know war, but he loves it already.
Speaker 1:It's and it's, I mean, I don't know, I think about this and it's just like there's an inherent thing in there. That's just like you know. I don't know the answer to it. You know, because we could get all really like you know, all right, like you know, since we were primordial super, since we were four or since we were, you know, apes, like you know, because we exist today, we all had to go through a lot of like fighting and war, and you know, and so it's just, it's just in you, you know, inherently right, or you know, or you could get over to just like I don't know, like two, three year olds, like in only one tootsie role war, war, you know like there's that too, and so I think that boredom.
Speaker 2:Boredom at the airport was the card game you play before. Exactly, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:And so I don't know what it is. And especially, I was thinking about this too, as somebody who, like, hasn't been to war or necessarily serving the military, being like I think that I may even someday be a 85 year old man who still has, like the I never got the glory of it like beaten out of me. I think there will come and I am, I have transitioned to, matured my thoughts, all these things too. But you know, the young men do love it, and there's just, I mean, what is fortnight War? It's war.
Speaker 2:War to the last one, bro. Easy, easy war Last me and standing war. Yeah, you know it's like, and that dude like war, the only way it's appropriate to yell and swear at children Live yeah, my video game combat, but then the an old man love it in them.
Speaker 1:I was saying about this phrase too, because he says at the end of the book in the there is the like classic. You know, like old men send young men to die thing. And then, there's also this like war pig, yeah, like the war machine machine.
Speaker 2:Thing.
Speaker 1:But then there's also like the judge has an ability to speak to the heart of man, deeper than just like. Maybe he's not talking about like force on force. Maybe he's also talking about like just the, the fury, and that's going on within an old man, the combustion inside of themselves. Sure, yeah, I get what you say of a war within them.
Speaker 2:just like this, like the fury that doesn't have the body to carry it. Yeah, and there's.
Speaker 1:You know there's like there is no outward fight, it's just an inward fight. Now, that's why he's a bunch of grumpy old guys around. You know the war can't be carried out. Yeah, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no way to be carried out. Yeah, yeah, it's just just warring inside yourself, inside your mind, inside yourself, with it within yourself, and so, and then you know I can't explain it, because I it's the same thing, is the same reason why, when I'm sitting on the couch watching saving private Ryan or something, and I'm just like thinking to myself, I wish I was there right now, and you're like I don't know why, you're like that'd be great. And then also you're like if I was there right now, I'd just be wishing I was watching Netflix.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh yeah, wishing you were doing anything else.
Speaker 1:Exactly, you know what I mean. And then even the guys who've gone and done it, a lot of them still wish they were back. It's like I don't know a single one who doesn't want to go back. It's like the hurt locker thing. Yeah, you know, it's like that.
Speaker 2:I I the only ones who I know who don't want to go back are the ones who wanted war, didn't get war. Oh yeah, like the jarhead experience, right, yeah, wanted war, never got war.
Speaker 1:They just did the, the and you feel unfulfilled.
Speaker 2:The silly green machine.
Speaker 1:Thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the last thing you want is to go back and not get war. What you really want is just to get what you first signed up for, and just get it.
Speaker 1:I don't know it's approving it's the proving ground thing and like, yeah, even the guys who've really been in the thick of all that, they'll be like that is hell. I really never want to be back there. But I just but they're like I don't want like that, like that is like they understand, like they look back on it now, being like they are the guys now who are in their forties or fifties who are like, oh yeah, the old men profiting from the oil sending me to go do that. I hate that, that's disgusting, it's horrible. But I want a just war and I would go do it again. Like you know, like if you could take out all the now they know the politics, but they think it just pulled out all those things are like I still want to go do that, but for the right thing, like you know, in this, like I don't know what it is in this, but that's just how we are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think too, like to the creative, like those who I've met, like I've spoken to quite a few. I used to hang out with a lot of World War two vets at retirement homes and I was in a youth program called young Marines and we would spend Veterans Day, morial Day, with veterans and I was young enough that there's still quite a few World War two vets and, like you know, disability and retirement homes. But I also spent a lot of time with Vietnam vets too. And I will say, like of all of them that I met, like I understand, I do believe them when they say, like I don't want to go back to seeing my companions die, I don't want to go back to like their pain, their screams, their fear. But I never have met one who didn't want to go back to like. I remember so distinctly this one guy. He was like a light skinned African American man. He somehow, you know, things were different back then, birth certificates were way more acceptable to be lost, but he enlisted at like 14. And he got. He got kicked out of the military during World War two, towards the end, because he was 17. And they're like you're too damn young. And they like, like he literally told this story is like I was in my tank and I heard a ring in the knocking. I opened the hatch and I look out there's my colonel. Colonel says Corporal, you are too damn young to be in this war. He gave me papers and sent them home and it was like after he bedded World War two for three years. But like he said he's like I would give anything to be in that tank with those men again, like I would. I would cry, tears and rejoice and I remember that. And like I don't even ever met that guy once. But like those words have stuck with me because I can't imagine what he saw. Being a young man in a tank in Europe, gosh dude, can't imagine the, the, the sights, the smells, what he heard. But to know, like that camaraderie of being in war, fighting the enemy, winning the game, yeah, like there is that handoff and I think that's like what you know. Back to the book, right, but meridian will offensively, without any like, without any justification, show you meaningless carnage. But I don't think. I wonder why they go back to it. I understand why they go back to it. Do I agree with it? No, but like do I understand why they continue to go back to the carnage, to the violence. I do, I do understand it At least I think I do and I say that as someone who's never taken another man's life, never been to war, and I'm thankful for that you know, as as a man who could recognize God's blessings. thankful for that, but at the same time, just like Pat said, it burns in me. It aches me, you know, um, but with that too, there's. There's this other illusion, or not illusion, but an alluded metaphor that we kind of talked about, this one, described in characters of the captain Glanton and the judge, judge Holden. All true servants of war end up becoming gods themselves, with dominion over the earth, and Glanton is a servant of war to his core. He, he, is characterized by finance. I don't think we see Glanton characterized by anything else other than a war machine, a man who will go to the ends of the earth pursuing war to keep war alive, and in that he retains an unwavering, unquestioned dominion over his gang. I don't cry me if I'm wrong, pat. I can't think of a single time anyone threatens Glanton's leadership. I can think of a couple of times where men threatened the judge in the judges position of authority, but none drew a gun on Glenn, and it's because Glenn had become a God amongst those men. The judge himself, though, is a God over at Glanton, a God over them all, a man who holds absolute dominion almost anyone he encounters, and we see this in this insane, primal, absolutely like vivacious, violent description of an epic provided by Tobin, where Tobin recounts how they were being pursued. I believe it was Comanches that were pursuing them. It might have been Apaches, but in this pursuit they had run out of ammo, they had run out of black powder. I mean, I guess they hadn't run out of ball, but they had run out of powder. And this is pre-Civil War. They're using black powder munitions which are not cased ammunition like today, for those of you listening. So you understand, black powder munitions used to be essentially where you would load the powder with a paper wad down a chamber, one of the holes in the cylinder of a revolver, and then you'd put the ball in front of that and at the back of the cylinder you would put the concussive kind of spark, the cap which the hammer would strike, and that that concussion spark would light the powder which would push the paper wad up behind the ball and both the wad and the ball would fly out the barrel into your target. And that said, you wouldn't run out of shells, because there were no shells really, mostly at the time you had some technology, had shells, but what you would run out of his powder, and the powder would be held in the hollowed out horns of animals or in pouches and leather bags and usually you would still have ball, you would still have paper, but you would have ran out of this black powder to load in your, into your gun and you'd be without the means to defend yourself. And so, with that, though, the judge, through the story of Tobin commands nature, takes mud and rock off the walls, tells and orders the gang to scrape with their nails and their knives against various deposits of rock in this cave into, compile it into bags and store it until they reach the base of this volcano. And as they begin scaling up to reach God knows what, the volcanoes erupting, there's legit lava veins coming down this volcano and starting to branch off and then reconnect around islands of rock and the pursuing forces of these Apache, after the gang start getting broken up as they try to kind of hop and move between these open areas of rock, to pursue the gang, and then, at the judge commands, holds a command and a knowledge over nature that baffles the men in which he gives these perplexing orders to to piss on this mud that he pulls out of the pouches and mixes together, and then to let it dry and bake next to the heat of the lava, and then, after that, breaking it up and using it. And essentially, you know, these men didn't understand, but the judge knew the recipe of black powder and they use it to load their, their weapons, load the ball and they killed every single one of the Indian who, indians, who came in pursuit of them. And this like image of the judge being a servant of war that has become a God amongst men, amongst his knowledge of how to conduct war, is this absolute, I think, like image that, like war, elevates men and those at the top seem to be beyond a man. I don't know, what do you, what do you kind of think? Do you remember that? I mean, it was such a long part of the book, it's probably the longest chapter in the book, but it isn't of its own self, a contained epic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's in some ways the origin story of the judge, in that it's the first time it's when the judge is first encountered by the gang and then joins the gang and so the the way that he is essentially saves the day, you know, for the gang. Heroic yeah, it's a heroic, and one sense and other sense, just like in, you know, he's like craze and perplexing, like you know, in in filth and using Bat Poo and all this stuff to like mix it together, it's like it's kind of like a bastardized hero story, you know it's just like it's just like it's like it's it is.
Speaker 2:there's no part of it that is glorious. You're on the retreat, you're fleeing, you're likely going to die and you're doing anything you could to survive, and at the end, there is only glory.
Speaker 1:And then also they win by like surrendering. He like, he like waves of, he waves a white flag. Oh yeah, leers the. He waves a white flag like, hey, like white flag here, and then just pulls out his gun and gets out of him. You know which is like. Also, like you know, pre Geneva convention, like there was like there used to be like wars again, there was one rule, there was like one rule in war. It was like white, the white flag. Yeah, it was like white flag means we talk, it will go back to fighting each other. You know, it's like nope, no rules, yeah, yeah. And so in the definitely I think that war is themed, this themed throughout this whole the book. But but then there's also no like there's no concept or discussion around like a just war. It's just like a total warfare.
Speaker 2:The justification is what it offers you as an individual, or you know the to to conduct war is the closest you can become a God. Yeah, and the fact that war will always occur and all in like, people will always need to be like picking a side is just, there is no meaning assigned to it. It's just like described as an aspect of reality, like as long as man is real, this is real, and like the last quote here, which I believe really kind of sends it home of like this philosophy of the judge that you know, war is God and through war man can become God. If God meant to interfere in the degenerate sea of mankind, would he not have done so by now? Wolves call themselves. What other creature could? And is the race of man not more predacious? Yet? The way of the world is to bloom into flower and die, but in the affairs of men there is no waning in the noon of his expression signals the onset of night, as you see here, these ruins wondered at by tribes of savages. Do you not think that this will be again I, and again with other people, with other sons, and this you know, the imagery of artwork and the depictions of these ruins of a tribe that had come before. It is all like a flower, blooming and waning and dying, but with man, man alone, there is no real waning, there is a repetition. But the noon of his expression signals the onset of night. And that, like the noon, is this idea of, like the expression after war, the expression of the desire to depict art, to depict symbology, is the signals that the onset of night for that man is arriving, that soon he, his evening will come, and after that, will there not, do you think, there will not be another man at the dawn to wage war? Certainly there will be, and there will be his sons that come after him, and those sons will each reach that noon time upon which they reflect on their war and they write their images and they build their stones, and they to go into the night and at the next morning, another man. You know what I mean. And like that cycle, I think is one is like it inclines one to subscribe to a succumbing, to give in, to give up, to give into death. Death will come every evening and it will come every morning, with every war, and in the, in the time of noon, when there's the reflection on the war, before the death, before the evening, that will be done, undone again, that will be destroyed, that will go away and tomorrow there'll be another to, to repeat the process and all that, like I think is. Again, you don't need to believe in it to understand what is being said, right, and I think it's. I think it is a complex and challenging thing, you know to interpret, like you know, outside a perspective of a potential eternity, right, if you were not one who subscribed to the idea that outside of this life, that after night, there is a new life, mm, hmm, I mean this is nihilism at its core. You know what I mean. And it's nihilism to like its most violent core, to like its absolute.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the he throughout the book, the judge kind of does, can tear down the idea of of a God's existence, and even in this is a part of his plan. What he's doing in this is he's saying if God meant to interfere with the degeneracy of main category, not done so by now. And he's using this example of if he is indeed the devil, right he's using. The argument is his argument is flawed in that from he being the causation of war in man, yeah, he is the cause of the source of conflict in man. Yeah, but he's saying, if one God had done something about this by now. But also, he's the one stern the pot.
Speaker 2:One thing I heard. I don't know, I have no idea who said this, but one thing I heard is that every truth the devil tells is a lie against himself. Hmm, and like the idea of that. Like the devil cannot speak truth without denying, essentially, his responsibility, and like what has occurred, right, hmm, like the devil cannot say, like you know the necessity of God without lying to himself that he had no hand in it, you know, but with that, yeah, like this analogy to you know, like what is the? Why do we need God? Degenerate animals like wolves kill themselves, call their population. And is not man greater? And is that not what we do? So who needs God?
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:You know. In that, though, I want to switch to the next theme, because I feel like we've kind of, really kind of engaged on that one quite a bit, and again, there's more than one theme in this book, because this is these two could certainly not be the predominant theme that you felt like were in the book, but I felt that these were the two most alluded to, at least, if not directly, but by the absence of direct conversation regarding them. But I think that the next biggest thing is like mercy and a merciless world, like if the world is really as violent and as brutal as this is suggesting it is, then mercy should just be, as, like my views, this term like offensively noticeable.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Like it stands out with such darkness in contrast to the norm, and in the book we see several examples of this, and I'm going to use some big words here. People so wrinkle your eyebrows a little bit, squint your eyes and make a couple wrinkles on your brain so that way you can hold on to these. I know our listeners usually don't have well developed brains. But the first term is Gnosticism. You might be familiar with Gnosticism If you're a Christian. You've heard of the Gnostics mentioned in the New Testament. They were kind of a sect of Christian that believed in more the concept of evil, unless the concept of Satan and the devil, but that, just like evil generically is a far larger, more pervasive presence in human life than the, than what we would describe in classical Christianity as, like Satan, the devil, and that evil is everything, evil is the majority and that there are just exceptions in our world of God's spirit. That is, that is that remains here and what we would see in the world of blood meridian. And the depiction that Kormac McCarthy provides is that this is a kind of a Gnostic depiction that the majority of the world and the majority of man is evil and that there are very few sprinkles of this almost offensively. Just goodness, and we see. You know we've used this example of Sarah Bourguinis when we talked about characters. Sarah Bourguinis is this Christian woman who, with another woman, take the idiot, as he's described in the book, out and they remove him from the cage. It's undignified for this man to be kept in a cage in his own filth, eating and covering himself in his own feces, people laughing and mocking him. It's one offensive and disrespectful to God to treat another man like this, but it's also just undignified treatment of this individual. And so, with the conviction of the Holy Spirit, you know, the conviction that this man deserves better, that he's made in the image of God, no matter how, how lost he is mentally, they take him and they dress him. And, it's said in the book, the Bourguinis woman waited out with her dress ballooning around her and took him, the idiot, deeper, and swirled him about grow man that he was, in her great, stout arms. She held him up, she crooned to him, her pale hair floated on the water, and there's this image of this baptism. And afterwards he seems not normal, but stoic, silent, perhaps at peace, perhaps treated, and later there is this panic that he has, in which he you know. As Pat, you mentioned last episode. He runs into the water and, just as he had been baptized by Sarah and Sarah's compassion and desire to raise him above the standards, she finds him in and he goes under the water with Sarah. When he flees from her, in this panic, this mental breakdown, he goes back into the water and who rips him out? The judge. Who pulls him from the baptismal waters to remove him from the situation, remove him from this? The judge, and it's kind of this idea of, like you know, the depraved man. He shows kindness and gentleness and submerges him and if he is not careful, the one who will rip him from the waters, not in rebirth but in rejection of what this symbology is, will be the devil himself. You know you go under the water, but just because you go under doesn't mean that when you come up you're new. You know someone, like the devil, will try to rip you away from those waters before you can become this new, new creature, right. But again, you know you could get into, like all the things. Well, like the idiot was mentally handicapped, he could never be a new creature. He's mentally so. So the imagery of it, right. Additionally, there is what is known as a theodicy, which is this idea of, it's a philosophy that you can vindicate the existence of God in an evil world, that an all powerful, all present and all knowing God is not only possible in its ability to exist with evil, but is plausible that the likelihood like it is. More, it is plausible that the existence of evil means there is an all powerful, all knowing, all present God. And I don't want to get into necessarily the philosophies of that because I think you know it's a whole nother conversation outside of the book. But the book has moments of what I would describe as like a theme of theodicy, but not in that God is present, but that goodness, offensive goodness, is present, that hope and passion can remain here. And it is in this like perspective of mercy and compassion that we see that occurs several times within the kid that the judge, judge Holden, is abhorred by. He hates it. He hates that the kid shows compassion to anyone. He he actually like, gets kind of a little off his usual format of like, a, of a very. What's the word I'm looking for when, when you're put together.
Speaker 1:He's just a smooth talker, like he's just saying complexion, yeah, yeah, sorry.
Speaker 2:That's what the word is. Yeah, yeah, like a smooth talker, this, this complexion or appearance of having it all together and then, like it's sometimes in these moments of mercy or gentleness yeah. Like that. He seems to almost become more unhinged or offended and he wants to quickly argue against it. And that could be also totally interpreted just by the narrator, richard Poe. If you're reading it, maybe that's not how it came off. That's totally fine. But it is clear that the judge hates it when the kid shows mercy and compassion, and it is the only thing that really saves the kid from blindly following the judge for the rest of his life is that we see he demonstrates his compassion, this mercy, which leads him to end up siding with Tobin in the great fallout of the Glanton gang. Tobin is killed and in the desert Tobin and the kid are pursued relentlessly by the judge. And the judge is in his absolute, most depraved form, where he has a parasail made out of flesh and the idiot is barely closed on a leash. And he continues pursuing, speaking out into the desert, knowing the kid can hear him with this foreboding, threatening language that he will find him and that he should have just surrendered in that if he surrenders now, I will show you mercy, and this ever growing threat of like last time might have been your last chance. Can he be trusted? Certainly he cannot, because he he's a liar, he's the deceiver, but he is also a tempter and so like. With that there is, you know, this idea that, like, the mercy within the kid is what allowed him to deny and resist the judge. In the end, tobin is quoted as saying you know, in a moment of compassion and reference to the idiot, I think the idiot had done something to upset the kid, like knocked food over or something, and Tobin said for let it go how it will. He said God speaks in the least of creatures, and the kid seems to listen, like we never see the kid take violence towards the idiot, if I remember correctly. No, no, he doesn't. He shoot the idiot in the end to like in protests, like he doesn't want to know that we don't know the fate of the idiot.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:I got you. I do remember. Oh, no, no, tobin told him to kill the horses. Yep, that's right, tobin tells him to kill the horses. I don't know if Tobin ever compels him to kill an idiot, does he? So? The idiot can't, like, sniff him out or something? No, okay, so, um, but uh, you know, in that too, in the last chapter of the book, before the kid transitions into the man and Pat, this is one that you kind of noticed, which isn't really talked about online. There's not a lot of context around this, but I think I think you nailed it In chapter 22, the kid sees this presep procession of people that are slaughtered. They're kind of like the small sect of you know, uh, I call them pilgrims of the book. They're pilgrims, but they're kind of isolated a little bit, and they have this procession that is very symbolic. There's a man on a rope leading the procession of people, like musicians, and then there's another man carrying a cross, um, and the next day the kid finds them on horseback, all slaughtered, all of them dead. And it seems that he's, you know, he's alone at this point in the book, no longer anyone from the gangs with them, the judges with them, and he looks over and it seems like he pauses to the horror of it and he recognizes the horror of it and that his horse pauses. His horse refuses to go any further and while looking across this he sees that there is an injured old woman and as he approaches he starts promising to escort her to a safe place and promising to get her out of here. He calls her a boyla and he demonstrates a sincerity like recognizing she's probably Hispanic and she doesn't probably recognize terms like miss or ma'am, but from his experience he would know these people would call a woman of this like stature and society of boyla and it's an endearing term, and he calls out to her. But when he, when she doesn't respond and he reaches out and touches her, he discovers that she's just a husk, that she has been dead and she will be dead for like forever and that he's been talking to a dead person and trying to comfort someone who's already gone. And it is in this that he says you know, she's been dead in that place for years. And I think the husk of the old woman is where we see the kid last show true mercy, true sincerity, and not that he became absolute degenerate evil in the next chapter at the beginning or anything like that. But it is here where I think we see the kid change and become the man. Like the last bit of mercy and innocence goes away because in the next chapter he's introduced as the man.
Speaker 1:And I think that because it he's described as a sort of priest is what it so, because he has Tobin's Bible.
Speaker 2:He's got Tobin's Bible, even though he can't read right he loves to carry it around.
Speaker 1:So he's got it with him and he's riding on his horse and he says he looks like a sort of priest. And then he kneels down and he says, holding his gun. He kneels down holding his gun, looking like a man holding a staff, and extends this like hand of mercy. And I think that McCarthy is also playing with these bits of mercy, the theme of mercy in this book, and also pointing to its meaninglessness. And these two accounts were one like the Bourguinus woman extends a hand of mercy and it's meaningless because the judge just undoes it, just undoes it. And the kid, who's now the man is like he's seen the world for what it is and he, he takes a moment out of his day to in life to try to extend. It's his last shred of ability to seems like he's really trying to connect with his humanity. Yeah, just connect with, like the war, what's good. But his whole expression it's not like he said all these things as she died and so it even counted for something it all counted for, like absolutely for absolutely nothing, absolutely meaningless. And so McCarthy is being a bastard. But meaningless violence, meaningless mercy, yeah, and so he's like, but the because I think I do there is that scene is beautiful, where he has this chance to change and it doesn't work out the way that you would hope in a happy ending. He does portray the kid now as a man. Is this, like you know, kind of this shepherding, protective figure? And then I think he realized it's like you guys, she's dead, and he just like well, that's the last time I'm going to do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah you know, I get that, I do, and I have a list of key points, but I'm going to let you kind of pick the ones that you want to talk about here, because I know we're going to talk about the ending and like each of our opinions a little bit on that and that's, you know, of course, absolute spoilers. But I'll let you kind of decide which of these nine key points I outlined here of the story that you feel like warrant you know a little bit, maybe not even conversation, but just expansion on it, Because I don't want to, we could spend a whole another hour on going through these key points.
Speaker 1:And the thing we haven't gotten into is you have on here the trial of Black Johnson, you know? Yeah, let's go into that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean the trial of Black Johnson is. You know, black Johnson in a single motion kills a man excuse me who failed to recognize the lethality of the gang there in a bar. The man owns the bar and the man fails to recognize that he is being offensive and telling Black Johnson that because he's a Black man, he must sit at a different table. He can't sit with the rest of the white people in this bar. That's just the rule of his bar. And before he even can realize that this is a Black man who's got a sense of dignity in a time where slavery still is prevalent, and that this man is simply not going to allow himself to be disregarded and disrespected in front of his gang where, you know, respect means much amongst their rank, this man is executed and there are people who bear witness. They go to the army and they tell the army you know the people who, like the army colonel or whatever who's stationed in the small town, and they go to then arrest Black Johnson and then the judge challenges their witness and he posits in his philosophy the challenges of witnesses being able to describe and witnesses of validity if the witnesses come from an institution of drink. You know like how good, how could, could you tell him what lights are in this bar, for not all men, black in color, with in the absence of light, you know, and it's like his philosophy really stumps this, like one that is supposed to be the embodiment of law and order and in that like it's, I like to me. I think that, like what you could really simplify it down, and the reason I like this key point is like there's a lot of conjecture, a lot of bullshitting, but you can really simple it down to like perhaps evil is so nonsensical and meaningless and horrifying that when law and order arrives to like to extradite justice, they are so perplexed by what they see they simply cannot act and therefore they leave because they can't make sense of it. And I think, like that's what happens when absolute evil, which is the judge, confronts an agent of justice. The reality is beyond logic and belief in that agent can. All they can accept is like there's nothing I can do to organize this. The best thing I can do is leave it behind me and move on. And like that's. That's why I talk about the trial of Black Jones, because it is objectively evil Not that that guy wasn't a bad dude or being an asshole, but Johnson guns them down in cold blood. And the reality is justice does not arrive. Sounds like the modern legal system.
Speaker 1:If you got a guy who could talk it up, right yeah.
Speaker 2:You're getting off. Yep, you got a better call Saul.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no kidding, I think if we hit all the other ones on here right, we talked about most of them.
Speaker 2:I think we've touched on everything, at least to some extent. You know. I'll say the key points that stood out the judges first appearance and the undermining of, you know, society's trust in Christianity or trust in the figures of Christianity. The death of Captain Wright's cavalry, Tobin's epic on the judge. The gang slaughter of the UMAs, which we really didn't get into, Probably the most graphic part of the book.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and talking about the depictions of the death of Captainampa's army, I'll say the depictions of Native Americans in this are this the most mad, maxi and scariest. Oh yeah, versions I've ever heard of. Oh yeah, it would be truly blood curdling to see the figures that he describes show up. To come, take you.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, and I think, though, too, like there's also this depiction of peace, like the humo's are depicted as like Men and women and children camped by the river.
Speaker 1:That's true for the humans. Yeah, I guess I'm thinking of the other.
Speaker 2:Humors weren't even the ones that they were dispatched to go kill. Like the right, the county hires and they go get a patches and they find a human, can't man? They're like Black-haired scalps or black-haired scalps and it's awful man and like. There's a question of like. I think it's black Johnson that does it, maybe it's brown, I can't remember who does it but someone takes two babes and in front of the kid, it bashes them against rocks and there is a. There is a blind or maybe several words that allude to that being mercy. And that like, rather than let those babes burn alive in a tent, or rather than let them starve and be eaten by jackals the next day because their mother's dead, it is more merciful to be the one to take action and give them a swift death so they don't suffer. And like, that Did that fucked me up. I remember listening to. I remember I was in the shower when I heard that I was just like you shouldn't be there in the first place, but at the same time, like, if you're there, I Hate that I'm saying this, but that's the. That is probably the most merciful thing to do Hmm, like, if their mother is dead, mm-hmm, and no one is coming, mm-hmm, and everyone else who could come you've drowned and executed in the river. Mm-hmm, I Mean coyotes and foxes and Scavengers of all kinds are gonna come down and eat those babies, mm-hmm, and they're gonna do a while they're alive, mm-hmm, and it's just like. It is such a dark premise that, like, did we see that person commit an act of mercy in the midst of absolute carnage and meaningless violence. Mm-hmm, maybe not an act of mercy, but an act of like, the closest thing you can get to it. And I don't know, but I that was hung, that is hung with me. Mm-hmm, you know, of like, what is? What have other men in history done in the middle of war, in the middle of absolute violence? That was the only like, was the most merciful thing they could do.
Speaker 1:Right, though the lesser of two evils. Yeah, in the right and we talked about this few weeks ago, it was that Well correct makes you choose evil. There's only two choices yeah for lots of this, which is evil, or maybe a little lesser evil, because you can reason yourself into it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, slippery, mm-hmm. Anyways, outside of that one, then we you know, trial of black Johnson, glans, gangs and Pursued by the judge, the man's shred of mercy and the dancy beer in the fate of man, which we haven't really talked much about, and I'm pat at the end. I'm gonna do what you did, bro. Hmm, you sauce the Judge over in me. I'm a sauce this one over to you. Yeah that's last key point, because I think I'll say this I'm pretty sure I know what you believe, yeah, and I want to believe it, but I don't know if I do be. Oh yeah, I don't know if I do, but I wish I want to. So the.
Speaker 1:In the last chapter of the book we have the kid who is now the man and he Finds himself in this city of sin. Even like that, to get to this city, you, you go through these Kind of Giant there's. There's giant hills made of buffalo bones and skulls, and that's the way you walk into this city, almost as like the, as the gate to this city is through these giant hills of the bones and it's supposed to be a place of just kind of like complete debauchery of prostitution, gambling, drinking right, and this is where it's been years and years and years and, as far as we know, he hasn't seen the judge for like 20 plus years, decades. Yeah, but the judge is in this place, looks unaged.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:It doesn't look any different. So these dressed real fancy. He's hanging out with these men of all sorts in the spot and then the judge comes over and Starts talking to him and here's a quote he says Says the judge watched him. Was it always your idea? He said that if you did not speak you would not be recognized. Said you've seen me. The judge ignored this. I Recognized when I first saw you and yet you're a disappointment to me then and now. Even so, at the last, I find you here with me, I ain't with you. That's what the man replies, and Something interesting about this is like the it might be the greatest honor to say, like the judge for to say you disappointed me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know you're like some might be the last like stroke of pride you ever have.
Speaker 1:Like what's, what's supposed to be the thing you get told on Judgment Day of pearly gates? Oh yeah, like you know, god tells you well done, my faithful servant right, you disappointed me, which is it's like all right, I hope I did disappoint. You see, disappointed like good. And then then the man's on sponsors. I ain't with you but. And then in the end of the book, while they're having this exchange also, there's a dancing bear and the bear, died, gets shot dead.
Speaker 2:Still that sheriff. It was like a person in a bear seat or somehow like some other. Corby McArthur was like so there's this dancing bear like I just don't know what to believe.
Speaker 1:I think that there is like a Month's worth of uncovering the dancing bear. I think the dancing bear was real and the way that he describes the design girl.
Speaker 2:Keep the bear in control if she's a little girl.
Speaker 1:Because there's the owner, and then there's the owner of the bear and the bear trainer, and then the girl.
Speaker 2:And it's her. I really don't remember the other two, I just remember the girl and the bear.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so I think that's a whole like exchange on. You need some college professor to really like dig into each word of that. The bear is real and the bear is real, but then the bear also represents all this in that of the death of the American West and the death of wild things in America and the death of Of maybe. For this girl it's like the death of Something that's beautiful purity, purity and just. You know well, she gets it too right. She knows she. They don't know where she went, she runs off and they can't find her. Got you. But also Then, after the judge gets the man real liquored up, he keeps making him drink during the whole conversation and he tells them, and he tells him, keep drinking. And he alludes to this maybe being his last day While they're drinking. Like you better drink up. You know, you never know. Anything like this is. This could be them, you know, for tomorrow we die exactly. And so the man goes and he's sleeps with a dwarf whore. Yeah, I think it was, and then he leaves her and he goes to relieve himself in the bathroom, down the road and out house and.
Speaker 2:When he opens the door there's a naked judge the judge naked, wraps him up, wraps his arms around him and squeezes, closes the door. That's all we know.
Speaker 1:Well, it's not all, what's all.
Speaker 2:It's all they of that scene is the last time the man is mentioned.
Speaker 1:And so then, and then it concludes with the judge Back in the bar dancing and fiddling, but the I think that you know there's. He could be said here, you know, getting back to like, was the judge real or fake or this or that you know? Did the man just meet his demise, kind of? We talked about Glanton and the last episode about the the judge just got his hooks all the way in to Glanton and that drove him into the to the end. But In this one the man met his demise in an outhouse at the hand of the judge. If we don't take it metaphorically, mm-hmm, the judge.
Speaker 2:Awaited the man in the outhouse, mm-hmm, raped him, murdered him. Mm-hmm left his body there for someone else to find. Mm-hmm, which other people find something in the house? That for fun, we know that much. Yeah, they're like don't go in there, man.
Speaker 1:And then the the judge goes in to dance and fiddle, mm-hmm take a metaphorically.
Speaker 2:It may be that In this city of sin the man sees the judge unaged. Okay, so that's either supernatural or metaphorical. Mm-hmm. Approach him and review the life, the years, mm-hmm. And in this city of sin, this final opportunity of temptation, when the man goes to the outhouse, rather than a physical judge being there, the metaphorical. So coming mm-hmm to evil is coming to the meaningless and he does. And in that Someone is left behind Mm-hmm. Someone is left behind mm-hmm. We know there is a physical body that people are horrified about, mm-hmm. The man taking a piss outside of the outhouse is Not described as the man or the judge, mm-hmm. We just know there is a man taking a piss outside of the house that tells others don't go in there, mm-hmm. And when they open the door they're horrified at what they see, mm-hmm. And then we're told the judge is dancing and fiddling inside mm-hmm, while everyone's swept up. Everyone is a Prostitute on their lap and another in their arm, beer in the hand, mm-hmm. Given a given, a weighted debauchery. And Is the judge physically there? Or is the essence of the judge, the spirit of evil amongst them? Mm-hmm, the music continually playing keeping them moving in this, this repetition of evil, mm-hmm and I. I'm so offended at the possible Truth, mm-hmm, the physical truth, mm-hmm, that I want to believe what you allude to, mm. That it is metaphorical, mm-hmm. Because the idea of mercy being absolutely meaningless, mm-hmm, and undone in a file in a final violation by the judge, mm-hmm, is so hurtful, mm-hmm, especially as a listener, I don't know. Can you tell me like I Hurt when I reached that point? Mm-hmm night, a very good friend he was actually the best man in my wedding who said, have you gone to the ending? I was like now he's like. I didn't finish the book and then I found out what the ending was and I'm glad I didn't finish it, mm-hmm, because it was a. It was very offensive, mm-hmm. I was like, hmm, interesting, this is a very like based dude, mm-hmm. And then I I got to the end and I was like this hurts, this physically makes me sick. It hurts Because either it's literal or it's not. Mm-hmm and I.
Speaker 1:I. It just could be both. God that's awful because, just like in the same way doesn't use the punctuation. He just lets it, leaves it up to it. Could be what it. It could be Whatever you want it to be. You know, and it's like the guy dancing on the stage at the end Could just be the man Drunk be the man drunken fiddle little way can. He's fiddling just on the stage and the and raptured in the judge has just taken him over, you know, but you know it's so. You know, in the it's a. I think it's left for us to just wonder about you know, Well, that's what happened.
Speaker 2:I don't know the physical reality or the spiritual reality, full, absolute full surrender of the spirit, mind and physical body to evil, mm-hmm, or an individual who denied that and Was punished by it, right punished and violated. and it's like to me, mm-hmm, I Know spiritually, mm-hmm, the concept of having surrendered to it is worse mm-hmm but my human Experiential, like you know what I've seen in life, what I've experienced in life, who I've talked to, tells me the physical is worse. The idea that in that someone who has become good meets their demise by the end of Violation, mm-hmm, is worse. Mm-hmm, and I it's, and that's probably why this book is so fucking famous. Right, because both are bad. And like, if you're someone who's in touch with both your mental, physical and spiritual sides, like there's no, there's no ending, that it feels good, mm-hmm, like all of them hurt. Mm-hmm and like I don't know, what do you think, pat dude? What do you? What do you think? How did it make you feel at the end? Well, did it hurt? Did it offend it?
Speaker 1:did, and and here's the last line of the book- Okay, give it. So give it to us, not including the epilogue, no, not yet look, he dances in the 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. So I, I, it's ominous, so ominous, and the light and the shadow, he's a great favorite, and he never sleeps. He's dead. Always dancing, always dancing, always there, and there's just people. Just because the last scene yet is these like just kind of a debauchery bar scene, just have you seen the artwork? No, but I could imagine it, you know it's just you should look it up right now. You know just these people, just Basically, any fleshly Pursuit is going on in this place. But what I think is interesting about the last line of the book Is there's a big difference between I'm gonna say two sentences of the what the book says. He says he will never die. It does not say he will never die. So In according to the judge, he says he'll never die. He says he'll never die. But that's a flawed, you know.
Speaker 2:It's a lie as a flawed source.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's a source that lies right as a flawed source and, and you cannot know, but nothing Can say of itself it will never die. And it necessarily be true it in that the end isn't written in that way either. So there is a even a glimmer of hope for goodness in that last, simple sentence, I think.
Speaker 2:I had never thought about that, but you're right, he's an unreliable narrative. You know, I should have kept that as one of the themes.
Speaker 1:Unreliable narrative.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the like untrustworthy, hmm, you know narration and Unclear, and of individuals. Do check your. Do you have your eye messages or whatever pulled up? I Send you a link to some artwork it's like someone who has a lot of experience doing graphic not novella artwork of. You know like it looks very like modern-day conic artwork. They drew the judge in the end. His feet are light and nimble, he never sleeps, he says that you'll never die and it's like one of the most compelling pieces of art I've seen of like that scene, of like what that image is in the end. But anyways, no, I agree, man, I'm happy you said that because you're right, the last lines are from his own lips and he's a, he's an unreliable narrator. But with that, I think it's fitting to just give the people you know, of course we recommend the book, but like, what is our final takes here? I'm gonna be honest, we, you know I'm more than happy to devote this book conversation. I love talking about this book with friends, but at the end of the day, man, I, I don't look forward to reading. I don't know if I'll ever listen to this book again. I don't know if I'll ever read it like one time is so Impactful and like lingering that like I just don't know if I'll need to do it again right, or if I want to do it again Now. It is, objectively, an absolute Penical of literature. I can't think of a single book or anything else I've read that comes close to it in regards to the ability to demonstrate pros and coherency with a restriction of grammar and Punctuation and all that you could be like. Well, that's self-imposed and you're right it is, but it also lends itself to the narrative, whether you realize it or not, and so I Love it. It's a great book. Micah's gonna say you should read it because I was gonna say you don't need to read it twice right.
Speaker 1:I think it's worth actually like listening to something like this first and Then listening to it, or reading it, like, oh, reading it after listening to it, or like or I mean like, either read it twice or like Listen to a review like this and then go into it, to even have some sort of like Framework of what's going on, because it is very, I think very confusing or hard to understand what's really going on, and you don't get into the groove until about halfway through, yeah, to be like, oh, now I understand kind of what's happening, what's going on, yeah, but Also yeah, I think that it's a I love Books about cowboy, cowboy, adjacent Western American, west things about Texas at this point.
Speaker 2:I think, I've read more anti-westerns than westerns, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, incident, oh yeah, and it's like, but it is still like a. It just has it's a dark take on the what the world was like in that time and in that place. But then you could. Any book like this could be written about any time in any location, yeah, depending on what underbelly you want to write about. But uh, you know, I agree, but I think it's good. I, because I heard about this book for years and I just never read it and I had no idea what it was about.
Speaker 2:I'd never heard of this book until this year. Really, I watched a five-hour Breakdown of it by a dude, I like on YouTube when to goon, and I was like, well, that was, that was well done enough that my interest is peaked. I'm gonna get it, let's do it. Didn't remember anything, mm-hmm, and I still loved it right. And now here we are to go and over it. I'm like, look, people, you may have listened to Pat and I discuss it. Mm-hmm, just get it. You probably won't remember anything because it's such a journey, mm-hmm for sure.
Speaker 1:I agree and I think that it's. If you're someone who, like, spins all their time in darkness, you don't need to also read this now. Read the Bible, you know. Yeah, exactly. But like, also, if you're someone who, like, only has live, laugh, love things over your like toilet, wake up to reality, yeah, just you know, grab a copy of this and and expand your understanding of Humanity.
Speaker 2:I'm curious. I want to before. I don't want this to be the last thing that we say right. I do want it to be the kind of the last note on this. Imagine the gospel mm-hmm. Jesus doesn't resurrect mm-hmm. That's in vain with this, right yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're just be like there's no resurrection.
Speaker 2:There's just a good person is Unjustly at murder, like you know, died. Like there's just evil in the end, mm-hmm. And like that is more often the time of the reality. You know what I mean. Like there's only one, jesus, right, you know the majority of the world's history is cloaked in Good people meeting brutal ends and there's no meaningful like there's no purpose to it, mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:It's least hard to find it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what do you say, pat? Recommend it, recommend it, at least give it. You said a couple reads, maybe two.
Speaker 1:Reads you might need. It's either like a you know, read it and then Be done with it.
Speaker 2:Probably you know yeah, I would say this I think it's a book that I think warrants conversation with someone, like if my son ever comes to me, like while he's in middle school or something, mm-hmm. Or my daughter, like Because you know, whatever. If I don't come to me and mention, like interested military or law enforcement, yeah, let's read this, yeah, let's read this, and I'm gonna go through it and be like in middle school. I just want you to understand like we can break it down. Mm-hmm, it doesn't have to be middle school. I could take years, yeah.
Speaker 1:However, whatever pace it is, I just might be a little early for like a Before they less in the military before they go into law enforcement or first responders.
Speaker 2:I just want them to like have an understanding of how evil and meaningless the world is. Hmm, you know, on its own right, you know the world on its own is incredibly evil, incredibly meaningless. That said, hey, folk kin, we love you. You know we love more than anything else in relation to this podcast. Hmm, hearing from you. Oh yes, I Enjoy hearing from you and getting feedback from you more than I enjoyed doing the damn thing. Hmm, and. I mean not that I don't love Pat Mm-hmm, but it's just good to interact with you all, so let us know your thoughts on the book. Rather, that's leaving a voicemail online through our website, or sign up for an email, giving us an email feedback, or hitting us up on any of those socials. And with that, pat, I'm handed over to you, man, to you know. Maybe are we ready to tease the next book.
Speaker 1:We could, I think so.
Speaker 2:Next book. We're gonna ready All right.
Speaker 1:Are we keeping it Western or are we going to the stars? That's the question. I don't think we're ready to go to stars yet. All right, then we're keeping it Western, which I would like to do, so we're. The one we've talked about a couple times on the podcast has been a Larry McMurkrees lonesome dove, a Beloved book by Americans and also a beloved many series featuring Tommy Lee Jones and a couple other humdingers, and so it's a long book and it it's a, it's an upper from this one, which is nice, you know, because it still an anti-western, still still could be Western, but it's also it's an upper from here.
Speaker 2:Way upper from here. In fact, I would recommend the reading. Or to be blood meridian, lonesome dove. I would not do lonesome dove blood meridian. Yeah, that's a little, that's dark.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what I did. It took me down at just a down downward downward trend. We got to bring you, we got to deliver you out of there. But it's a story about a bunch of a couple. It's a story about a couple old, washed up Texas Rangers who get a band of boys together and drive some cattle north and and their many adventures along the way. And we love about it is how it really brings out Humanity and there's faults of men in it, but then that may be in tears is more towards all these characters. So, yeah, we're looking forward to putting that one together for you guys. It may be a while till that one comes out, but be looking forward to that one. You can start reading it now or start listening. It's a 36 hour listen, which is at least watch the mini series. At least watch the mini series. Definitely worth your time. Don't judge the old special effects. It was made for old TV. Yeah but it's a good one, and it's got guys riding horses, which I'm always a fan of, and the as much as we talked about death and despair in this, I think there's always hope and good at play, and part of that's good men at play too, and so, yeah, I think that's what we also let all these things point us towards, but we're looking forward to the next dog ear dialogue with you guys. Until next, time can.
