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/lit/ - Literature

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4891708 No.4891708[DELETED]  [Reply] [Original]

I just finished this book but I'm too stupid to understand it
Can somebody explain it to me?

>> No.4891730

google 'warosu lit'
search for the thread you wanted to make
don't make thread
just read old thread

>> No.4891760

It was about war, or socially acceptable violence.

>> No.4891833

Well APPARENTLY the Judge is a god of war and this is McCarthy explaining the nature of violence or something.

but to me it was just hilarious story of hicks and one jolly fat gay fuck

>> No.4891863

http://www.bookdrum.com/books/blood-meridian/9780330510943/index.html

>> No.4891874

>>4891760
Nothing in the book involved "socially acceptable" violence.

>> No.4891904

>>4891760
>>4891874
i think it's more about how completely repulsive acts of violence are treated as mundane.

>> No.4891921

>>4891904
doubt mccarthy would be that socially conscientious or moralizing

>> No.4891936

It seems like nobody knows what this book is about. Not even the people who liked it.

Everyone's dissecting this damn thing down to its paper and ink composition and at the end of every essay about it nothing new comes to light.

I'll just accept the fact I didn't like / understand it and move on to simpler reads.

>> No.4891938

>>4891904
It was anything but repulsive, they were fantastic pieces of viol§ence.

>> No.4891962

>Violence is awful, hugely dehumanising but tempting and (to some extent) inherent in mankind's nature
>Hobbes/Darwin/Nietzsche were right
>the world tends toward chaos

>> No.4891965
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4891965

>>4891962
< and of course, the book's main message

>> No.4891966

>>4891936
>I'll just accept the fact I didn't like / understand it and move on to simpler reads.

That's surprisingly reasonable for this forum.

>> No.4891978

>>4891938
"Fantastic" as in "the prose was fantastic" or "I have morbid issues"?

>>4891962
Sounds good.

>>4891965
I laughed out loud.

>>4891966
I get that a lot

>> No.4891985

>>4891978
>Few men killing hundreds of people not amazing feat.

It was amazing.

>> No.4891991

>>4891936
/lit/ doesnt exist to entertain and educate you at your beck and call.

Sorry you missed out on the hundreds of Blood Meridian threads we have every month. What you're looking for is wikipedia and "notes on blood meridian." All we ever do here is speculate on what happened in the jakes and whether or not the judge was satan.

Here's a nugget of brilliance as your parting gift: the dance was a metaphor for war. Even a dumb animal can dance.

>> No.4892099

After years of death and horrible violence, the Kid has had enough and tries to redeem himself.

”The kid rose and looked about at this desolate scene and then he saw alone and upright in a small niche in the rocks an old woman kneeling in a faded rebozo with her eyes cast down. He made his way among the corpses and stood before her.
She was very old and her face was gray and leathery and sand had collected in the folds of her clothing. She did not look up. The shawl that covered her head was much faded of color yet it bore like a patent woven into the fabric the figures of stars and quartermoons and other insignia of provenance unknown to him.
He spoke to her in a low voice. He told her that he was an American and that he was a long way away from the country of his birth and that he had no family and that he had traveled much and seen many things and had been at war and endured hardships. He told her that he would convey her to a safe place, some party of her countrypeople who would welcome her and that she should join them for he could not leave her in this place or she would surely die.
He knelt on one knee, resting the rifle before him like a staff.
Abuelita, he said. No puedes escúcharme?
He reached into the little cove and touched her arm. She moved slightly, her whole body, light and rigid. She weighed nothing. She was just a dried shell and she had been dead in that place for years.”

This is his confession. But she is dead. His possibility of redemption is long gone.

>> No.4892105

>>4891991
Tell me how do few dumb animals outpower a sheer number

No you cant do that

he was a brilliant

>> No.4892114

>>4892099
After this failed attempt of salvation, he then goes full on depression and and realizes that nothing matters anymore.

He then kills a kid, I think his name was Eli, after a slight provocation.

This is his final act of cruelty, and he proceeds to go to hell, Fort Griffin, where the Judge is waiting for him. After the Kid still shows defiance against the Judge, The Judge finally consumes him, bringing great happiness to the town.

That is my general take on it. There are more details, but I simplified it, as I am quite tired.

>> No.4892125

>>4892099
>>4892114
I missed that entirely. How was I supposed to pick it up? (It's a serious question. I'd really like to learn how to enjoy this kind of book)

>> No.4892141

>>4892125
What do you mean? You don't just take everything you read at face value.

You need to think of the meaning behind the events.

The kid goes to confession, but the "priest" is dead, and has been for many years. The kid is too late for redemption. He is beyond saving.

He then goes to hell. The place the Judge has been leading him to for the entire book.

>> No.4892208

>>4891874
>>4891904
ITT: projecting

>> No.4892213

>>4891936
It's just a war narrative.

>> No.4892976

I have not read this book, and I try not to prejudge books I have not read, however, based on Internet commentary it seems to be Apocalypse Now set in the Wild West. Judge Holden sounds like a carbon copy of Colonel Kurtz -- a man consumed by war.

That's not a disparagement as AN is truly one of the greatest films ever but what does Blood Meridian bring that Heart of Darkness and AN have not already covered.

>> No.4893045

>>4892976
Judge Holden really isn't anything like Kurtz. Kurtz has a sort of broken mental state as far as I recall, in that his dialogue is full of a vague uncertainty and his ideas are the product of shellshock. Judge Holden is very calm and collected and knows his place as the supreme entity of the group of scalp hunters he's with. I suppose there's a similarity between the two in that they both accept their base nature but Kurtz seemed more reluctant to do so. Judge Holden never really falters on his beliefs and he can always explain himself in a persuasive, almost logical manner. The difference between Charles Marlow and the kid is staggering as well.

Of course I could just be misremembering Kurtz as it's been a while since I've read Heart of Darkness or seen Apocalypse Now.

>> No.4893151

>>4893045
I think you might be selling Kurtz a bit short. The Army brass considered him insane and that what the viewer is lead to believe until his actual appearance when he calmly waxes on his philosophy of man and war. Dennis Hopper's American reporter character is basically only there to point out that Kurtz is an enlightened man and revered as a prophet by himself and the natives.

Kurtz was reluctant though. We know this through the telling of the story of inoculating the natives against malaria and how the viet cong had subsequently stormed the village and hacked off the arm of any villager who received a vaccination from the Americans. It was only then, he says, that he realized the true nature of war. How far he would have to descend into brutality to beat the enemy.

Thanks for the reply, Holden sounds like a born sociopath whereas Kurtz was made.

>> No.4893181

>>4893151
Yeah it's been a while, so I probably am. I think you're right in saying that the Judge was a born sociopath and Kurtz was made. I'd say you should read the book and see what the hype is. If you find the ideas expressed in it to be old or familiar or whatever, you'll still have the amazing prose to fall back on for enjoyment.

>> No.4893206

>>4893151

'Blood Meridian' really has nothing to do with 'Heart of Darkness' or 'Apocalypse Now'.

It has everything to do with 'Moby-Dick'.

Where the white whale in Melville's work represents nature's lordship and refusal to ever be fully conquered, in 'Blood Meridian' Judge Holden represents the opposite human perversion to the right - man's unending disdain and drive to conquer the natural world and remake it in his image.

Read the book. It's pretty great.

>> No.4893226

>>4893181
>>4893206
I plan to read it. Again, I feel kinda dickish discussing what I haven't read.

>> No.4893290

>>4893206

Have to agree with this synopsis.

>> No.4894980

>>4891708
Don't listen to anyone who says that The Judge is the devil, it makes the overall message of the novel completely redundant
At its core, the novel is about mankind's inherent lust for violence, and both the ending and the epilogue essentially claim that the violence of human nature will never change the judge dancing and never dying, and the cyclical nature of the holes in the epilogue - 'a validation of sequence and causality as if each round and perfect hole owed its existence to the one before it'

>> No.4895235

>>4894980

Nicely put.

>> No.4895240

>>4894980

It is about many things.

>> No.4895250

Someone please tell me why I should respect the insights of a writer who isn't even smart enough to write a good story?

Succesful storytelling requires human intelligence. You have to know how people think and feel about things to make it happen with words. This guy can't write a story to save his life.

>> No.4895594

I never got how the kid and co. "betrayed" the judge? He comes looking for them after the yuma attack and says they betrayed him

>> No.4895598

>>4895594
He was just berating them and messing with them for the sole purpose of his own entertainment.

>> No.4895602

>>4891708
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgyZ4ia25gg

Here is the Yale lecture on it, pretty great. Its two parts, like 45 min.

>> No.4895607

>>4895602
>pretty great
No it's not. That cunt lecturer is an utter pleb.

>> No.4895611

>>4895607
>Says undergrad anon about the Yale Professor

Yeah OP she covers McCarthy's motivations, inspirations, plot points, and who the judge is.

>> No.4895632

>>4895611
She utterly misunderstands McCarthy which is not much of a surprise because what could a woman know of war and violence and man's relation to both of these.

>> No.4895644

>>4895632
/r9k/, please go. You probably spent your childhood learning of war playing call of duty or battlefield 2. on the off chance you were a veteran, you were a US merc whos biggest problems were roadside bombs and no air conditioning in the base taco bell.

>> No.4895660

>>4895250
Several million people disagree with you. The odds are against you, but if you're not trolling, go and tell us how he is unintelligent. I'll be waiting.

>> No.4895667

Why do people think the value of this book or any other lies in a decoded message about the nature of man? As if it were some ridiculously meandering essay.

>> No.4895778

>>4893151
>Holden sounds like a born sociopath

I guess someone could say that. I prefer to to think of him as Satan.

>> No.4895897

>>4895598
Are you certain? I feel like that isn't the case at all

>> No.4895906

>>4891708
It was a zero punctuation story about unremitting ramblings in the desert. What's to understand?

>> No.4895960

>>4895778
>I prefer to to think of him as Satan.
Holden isn't Satan. Reducing him to a character, especially an established character, kind of misses the mark. He just *is*. Like a hurricane or some other force of nature that exists and always has existed and cannot be tamed.

>> No.4896116

>>4895632

Ok shut up.

She's teaching at Yale, you are fucking around on 4chan.

Who am I going to take seriously.

>> No.4896119

>>4895250

Gr8 b8 m8.

>> No.4896121

>>4895667

People go crazy look for meaning in things. It's a game.

>> No.4896154

>>4896116
>She's teaching at Yale, you are fucking around on 4chan.
This isn't fallacious at all.

>> No.4896186
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4896186

>>4891708

The book's message is that there is no message. /lit/ is so full of terrible opinions.

>> No.4896783

>>4895778
>I prefer to to think of him as Satan.
Have fun being wrong then.

>> No.4897104

>>4893206
this is correct

>> No.4897105

>>4896116
dat appeal to authority doe

>> No.4897127

>>4897105
Who has more credibility, though?

>> No.4897134

Niggers with big tits

>> No.4897141

>>4897105
Appeals to authority aren't necessarily fallacious. I haven't read the thread so I don't want to say what the case is here, just think about it and decide yourself.

>> No.4897148

>>4895667
>decoded message about the nature of man
I'd say it's pretty fucking obvious
Do you not like subtext in literature?

>> No.4897171

>>4895660

Oh, cool, the Justin Bieber defense...

Nobody's answered me, btw.