Blood Meridian Explained Video #4 || Chapters 9 - 12 || WTF Does This Even Mean?

Welcome to the fourth episode of WTF Does This Even Mean? covering chapters 9 - 12 of Blood Meridian, or The Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy. Blood Meridian was published in 1985. It is often viewed as not only as McCarthy's most complex novel, but his masterpiece work.

In this video, I discuss chapters nine, ten, eleven, and twelve. I summarize the chapters and go more in-depth on chosen passages within these chapters. I will not cover EVERYTHING these chapters have to offer, because every chapter offers a lot, but the things I find to be pretty interesting, important, or I just plain like.

It is my hope that these videos offer something to those reading along, those reading for the first time, and those who have read it several times before. It is one of my favorite novels of all time. Every time I read it, I pick up on something new.

This season of WTF Does This Even Mean? Will be approximately eight videos long. I will be posting a new video every Sunday morning. Next week’s video covers chapters 13 - 15.

_________________________________

The music in this video comes from Earth’s album inspired by Blood Meridian called Hex; Or Printing in the Infernal Method. Every song title on the album is named after a phrase found in the novel.

Intro music: "Raiford (The Felon Wind)"
Background music: "Land of Some Other Order"

______________________________

#BloodMeridian #CormacMcCarthy #AmyGetsLit #booktube #literature #WTFDoesThisEvenMean #bookdiscussion

Let’s connect!

Inquiries:

[AmyGetsLit]

This video on Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy covers chapters 9 - 12. I found these chapters so very interesting, especially as we learn more about Judge Holden. Do you have any interpretations different than mine? What is your take on Judge Holden, ESPECIALLY in chapter 12? I hope that you enjoy!

[gavinborden]

This is terrific

It's so disgraceful how the Glanton gang would never take on an equal opponent willfully.

[Inuhater]

These videos have been super helpful. I’m listening to the audio book while driving for my job and my mind will wonder off, leaving me clueless of certain details that I’ve accidentally missed. Thanks!!

[wellreadandhalfdead]

Judge Holden is so intensely fascinating. I'm not sure what he is but I feel like he's been around for a long, long time. One thing he said stood out to me, and that's that he wants to learn everything and then strike it from the memory of the world like he only wants that history to exist in his record.

[plaguepandemic]

Another detail about the scene where Brown has an arrow in his leg, one that flies over most people's heads, is that Brown asks Holden if he'd help him and the judge just says "No, I won't. But I'll tell you what I will do. I'll write a policy on your life against every mishap save the noose."
Way later in the novel, after the Yuma massacre, the Kid finds Brown and Toadvine being hanged to death in a public execution. It's as if the judge knew the future and was toying with him.

[Issen_Mode]

I had to stop and think for a while why Holden went out of his way to spare an Apache child, entertain him and show him a sliver of kindness before murdering him and taking his scalp. After thinking about the way the gang met him and his own speech about the follies of goodwill and how cities will inevitably become ruins again, and that the world and humanity especially in it's state is proof enough of a godless existence, a philosophy he seems to fully embrace and enjoy even. He did it for his own sick satisfaction. It might be his own perverse way of mocking religion or morality in general. That's my take.

[jeffreyholmes]

Just a mind blowing book. Is it violent? Yes it is. I read this book and had no idea about it. I just couldn't believe it . Just a horrifying and stunning book. I have read that it might become a movie. I hope not. Just a incredible book.

[waylonjenninz]

Good connection between the Judge's idea of raising kids and the Kid's experience.

The scalping of the infant is also like throwing the artifacts into the fire in Ch 11 - (expunging them from the memory of man)

Chapter 11 has this great quote which reflects the theme of human nature being kind of an unstoppable geometrical dance. Like our nature's are much more at play than our minds or will (?).

“The judge smiled. Whether in my book or not, every man is tabernacled in every other and he in exchange and so on in an endless complexity of being and witness to the uttermost edge of the world.”

[MacSmithVideo]

I think the gang was gaining an attachment to the child, and The Judge, as the embodiment of war, killed him partly because of that. There is no room for compassion or love in his world.

[bookofkalamity]

Love how you found an underlining message about waste. Really incredible and one of the many reasons why I love literature. It's a beautiful perspective.

[BookishTexan]

Another great deep dive Amy!
Did you take any significance from the fact that the bear that took the Delaware was blond? I think this came just after a brief history of the Delaware Indians who were driven further and further west by US settlement.
Your connection of the judge to the kids father is brilliant. I never would have put that together.
I also think it significant how attracted the judge is to children in this section. The settler's child, the Apache child, eventually the kid himself (not to get ahead of where we are though).
I think the story of the harness maker predicts what happened to the dead among the wagons, as does Glanton's gang's acceptance mirror that of the harness makers son.

[theswordofaces]

I think in a lot of ways the judge is like the Randall Flagg Character in Stephen novel, The Stand.

[jefffromclapham]

Read it once and now immediately re-Reading it again with your comments and reflections and questions as a guide. Thanks so much.

[terratwotwo]

So glad I was able to finish chapter 12 last night lol! One thing I noticed about the writing in the final pages of chapter 12, is that throughout the book so far, McCarthy has drawn things out in the telling of the story, so many details and descriptions. And then, boom, the Apaches catch up to them and they fight on the run for 8 days with a brief stop on day 3 for Holden to kill the infant, and another on day 5 to show the gang bringing the Apaches down on the hacienda. 8 days in 3 pages. Is this just used to mimic the frenzied pace of being chased, or is there something more in this? I don't know, but curious to continue reading further.

Also, I forgot about Toadvine...lol. You don't hear his name for a long time and then he pops up and puts a gun to the Judge's head for killing the baby. As, for that, I am in the camp of him studying the infant and then discarding him. But I havent finished the book, so we will see.

[JzB]

Sign me up for future deep dives! This is fabulous, Amy.

[shermanbrennan]

In Paradise Lost by John Milton theres is a scene where Satan teaches a group of his fiends how to create gunpowder at a volcano in Hell

[orsonwellies]

I always envisioned the Judge as Cain, doomed to walk the earth for eternity, Maybe it's because when I picture the judge, I picture the wrestler Kane, unmasked and bald, seven feet tall and evil looking...I don't think he's the devil, McCarthy's writing is somewhat biblical mixed with gnostic ideologies, The Judge is much like Anton Chigurh in 'No Country for Old Men'...or nature itself in 'The Road, ' a parable, a myth, to define evil in the mind of those desperate to understand it.

[jleo]

Great commentary and insight into an amazing book. Thanks!

[brandonrite]

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
the Road by Cormac McCarthy
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
the Wind Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

[bighardbooks]

_love Love_ *LOVE! ! !* but ... Just you _wait, _ Amy, till you get to his debut, *_Child of God_* my my my_ . . .