In Cormac McCarthy's 'Blood Meridian' the character of Judge Holden is something of an anomaly; an enigma; not only in the eyes degenerate outlaws we come to know throughout the novel, but also to the reader themselves. A contradiction of inhuman proportion, in both his strength and intellect. A man proficient in botany, geology, tracking, hunting, music, law. A masterful multilinguist, a keen purveyor of knowledge, a murderer, pedophile, and a rapist. He claims the title of "judge", one who is sworn to uphold justice and morality, but Holden is immoral - morality is useless to this Judge.
Naked as man's first day in the Garden, The Judge is something other than human; a huge, hairless, pale, heavenly body. Akin to the devil, Glantons gang have all met Holden during violent, tumultuous moments in their pasts. The Judge has pulled the threads of each of their lives to concoct this aggregation of killers, in order to observe - out of some morbid curiosity, or in the interest of satisfaction - the desolation they will lay to the world, and to humanity.
To Holden, War and violence is the ultimate expression of man, of freewill; a dance humanity must partake in, lest they perish underfoot. War is God. Freedom is something The Judge values, but only so long as he is the dictator of it. Freedom outside of his bounds is an insult, it represents to him something that is out of his control, something that exists without his knowledge, or his consent, and thus sullies his vision of the world.
In essence, Holden is the judge, the jury, and the righteous executioner of man, of the Earth as we know it. He, the great favourite, dictates the worth of things, which exist only as he allows them to.
Judge Holden rescues James Bell (the imbecile for lack of a better reference) from drowning, hauling him from the depths of the river in an action akin to a baptism; an act of mercy unlike himself. The Judge spares James Bell only as he is a being whom the judge can dominate/control completely, a trait that is pointedly missing from The Kid; who does not worship War and bloodshed as the others do, and does not play entirely to The Judge’s ideals. Due to this, The Judge is fascinated by The Kid.
Holden condemns The Kid for the “clemency” he shows the Glanton gang, clemency which The Kid had ironically granted The Judge himself several times. The Kid is provided many opportunities to murder Holden, but each time the circumstances are unjust. People tell The Kid to save himself, to leave them to death or to kill them - he refuses out of what we can only assume to be an innate sense of morality.
If War is the ultimate game, a "dance", the stakes of which being: partake, or die - then The Kid absolves himself of the call to dance, retorting “even a dumb animal can dance". He is confronted with the Judges unmoving view of the world - that the steps of this “dance” of bloodshed have been dictated and deemed mandatory by something far greater and far older than humanity - and spits in the face of it. This is blasphemous to the Judge, and thus, this sacrilege must be corrected; It must be destroyed, desecrated, and made right.
Holden is the king of counterfeits. Be it money, wealth, knowledge, power, or even the falsification of ownership, of sovereignty - a personification of colonisation.
Faust knew the power of knowledge when he sold his soul to Satan for all the world’s wisdom, The judge covets this knowledge. He copies ancient, native artifacts of rich cultures of which he is not a part, studies plants, and people - consuming all they have to offer him before destroying them. Greedily and selfishly Expunging them from the memory and mind of man.
The Judge claims ownership of the wisdom these people and objects once held, and in doing so owns more and more of the world to himself. He is a false messiah, a copycat - tracing the likeness of the world, but lacking its originality. In his mind he wants to claim the world that God has created, and lay waste to it. He is the purveyor and thief of reality. He wants to own perception, and in each act of destruction and desecration he cements his place and power as keeper of the Earth.
The Kid is the final victim of The Judge’s hunger - he is devoured as he steps into the jakes, lit as he was on the day of his birth in the unending darkness only by the star fall overhead. The Judge gormandizes the last of the "true" ones, the last loose thread in his quest for dominion; The Kid. He is the last Beast on the stage.
Just as The Judge will never die, and never sleeps; in the minds and hearts of man, evil will never cease to exist. War is man's favourite game, and there is no winner; there will always be evil in the world and evil men who perpetuate it. The world turns, and The Judge continues to dance.
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