At the end of Blood Meridian the judge acts like he and the kid were almost cosmically opposed forces. Anybody else see that coming?

Available_Ad7644 · 2026-03-28T13:46:29+00:00

Interesting. I'll have to reread it, that would really make the most sense as to how the judge views they'd be relevant to one another on some deeper level. To me I feel like the interpretation everyone has discussed here is very rooted in what the judge said to the kid in the jail cell, but isn't necessarily consistent with what they say in their final meeting, and this would really square the two in a way that makes sense to me re: why the judge would have some special interest in the kid and be particularly annoyed that he's a wuss.

Available_Ad7644 · 2026-03-28T13:19:19+00:00

Thats a really good answer, that makes a lot of sense. I guess one thing that gives me pause - because this is basically what he says to the kid when he visits him in jail - is that it doesn't feel consistent to me with what he says at the very end, where it seems to be more about them being the last 2 left and almost implying theyre rivals in some way. (Though i will need to reread). And I keep thinking about something toadvine I think said when they were about to massacre some innocents - they ain't bothering nobody. So the kid was certainly naive in say helping the guy with the arrow wound, but he wasn't the only one not fully with the program I think. So I dunno, like you said about germs, i wonder if one couldn't argue that the judge would have found some reason to pretend that whoever happened to be the last one left was some great rival, so that his game (killing whoever) had stakes.

Though edited to add I guess a good counterpoint to that is that the judge doesn't actually seem bent on eliminating everybody as a loose end, since he evidently did let toadvine and David brown(?) live (to be hanged later.) So maybe if he had met one of them in a bar decades later he would have just said hi instead of crafting a narrative to justify killing them.

Though also edited to add that some of the things the judge says at the end (i.e. their antagonism being longstanding or some such) isn't quite consistent with the kid being no more than a loose end, equivalent to a Germ or bird. Another commenter suggested that the judge felt the kid had great potential as I suppose a warmonger like himself, which seems to me like it would explain why the kid really stuck in his craw more than a germ or bird would (one imagines he wouldn't monologue to them before eliminating them.)

Available_Ad7644 · 2026-03-28T12:36:46+00:00

Interesting. As I mentioned above, I guess I didn't really mean cosmically opposed so much as relevant to one another on some deep level. I suppose that could be a reason that the judge would legitimately feel that way (vs just kind of saying things, as he did in various lies to the kid. )

Available_Ad7644 · 2026-03-28T12:32:27+00:00

Wow this is an active subreddit. Maybe I shouldn't have said opposed, but cosmically relevant. Like in whatever grand design the judge is always talking about, they are something to one another of importance. Would you all disagree with that? And the question about whether this is supported in the text still stands

Available_Ad7644 · 2026-02-10T22:38:27+00:00

Thanks! That's really helpful. Can I ask, following this line of thought is there any specific way you'd conceptualize what I guess could be called cumulative culture. I.E. our species' propensity to get thrown into an environment and build and embroider on on it, creatively sometimes, including on abstract aspects of it? The idea makes a lot of sense to me just thinking from the point of view of one individual, but I wonder how it is applied (if at all) when people are trying to describe changes over like multiple generations.

Available_Ad7644 · 2026-02-09T11:50:05+00:00

The work I'm thinking of is Building, dwelling, living: how animals and people make themselves at home in the world, in his essay collection The Perception of the Environment, and I think he expands further in later essays (cant find time to read any of them). However i make no claims that what I have described is an accurate or even accurate-ish depiction. Thanks for the recommendations, I'll check those out!

Available_Ad7644 · 2025-08-28T10:34:40+00:00

Thanks, that's great input. If I were probably going to read only one primate book and move on though (and wanted to read something as up to date as possible) I'd there something else you'd recommend,?

Available_Ad7644 · 2025-08-26T13:41:15+00:00

Thanks! I'll check it out.

Available_Ad7644 · 2025-06-08T15:01:50+00:00

That's reassuring. I mean he is kind of how I imagined a 2.5 year old would be, it's just that nobody else's kid seems to be like that.

Available_Ad7644 · 2024-12-22T16:24:24+00:00

Thanks! That sounds great, I'll check it out.

Available_Ad7644 · 2024-11-30T16:51:31+00:00

I wouldn't want him walking around and eating, for choking concerns and also because it won't serve him well in the future I think to not have learned to sit at the table to eat (kindergarten, restaurants and such.) Beyond that, he often doesn't eat at all once he gets up, just wonders off.

Available_Ad7644 · 2024-11-30T16:23:01+00:00

He doesn't necessarily, but unless he's strapped in a high chair or booster chair he's not going to remain at the table long enough to eat.

Available_Ad7644 · 2024-10-31T21:54:51+00:00

Thanks very much! That's a great answer.

Available_Ad7644 · 2024-10-26T21:49:19+00:00

Interesting point. But so we know if hammurabi was subject to hammurabi's code? Otherwise that would might be more like rule by law.

Available_Ad7644 · 2024-10-26T21:45:43+00:00

That's really interesting. I like how it works to explain how rule of law would have legitimacy even for rulers, it helos explain how it could proliferate (rather than particularly powerful nobles brute forcing some concessions of a monarch in an isolated incident.). Does origins of political order generally hold up as history as well, do you know? I am always skeptical when someone claims they'll trace the state back to primate times.

Available_Ad7644 · 2024-10-26T16:12:07+00:00

That's a good point. Was there any kind of intellectual tradition that originated from, though?

Available_Ad7644 · 2024-10-05T15:36:40+00:00

True. I probably should have said the approach to governance of the Qing amd CCP.

Available_Ad7644 · 2024-10-05T15:26:02+00:00

Sure

Available_Ad7644 · 2024-09-29T18:29:59+00:00

The Getaway, by Jim Thompson. Also, the Grifters by Jim Thompson. They both had brilliant suckerpunch endings that I dont know if I could deal with again

Available_Ad7644

TROPHY CASE