Is the judge just Satan, or is he more complex? He does seem to not betray those who are loyal to him, but still

And in Child of God one of the sherrifs says that he thinks men are the same now as the day god first made one of them

He is more than what made him. McCarthy drew influence from Paradise Lost, Moby-Dick etc. but the judge cannot be reduced to these constituents ''for he would not go''.

Read the part when the Kid is tripping after the surgery and it will be somewhat clear to you.

Pa. Why are eggs breakfast?

What.

You can put bacon on lunch.

Ye.

But if you put eggs on stuff it becomes breakfast?

The man spat and said the eggs are not for this world or from this world they come from the chicken but the chicken knows it not.

He wiped his chin and spat.

I thought what the craftsman was doing in that scene was making a bust or metal sculpture of the kid's face, for the Judge, similar to how he would take drawings of things in his notebook. Otherwise that passage and part of the book (just looked it up again online) was really difficult and eluded me for the most part. My net conclusion from it was "He's the judge of .... idk wtf." I'm leaving it for a re-reading.

I am not convinced the Judge is supernatural at all. The book is extremely naturalistic, it's somewhat hard to conceive of a truly phantasmagoric character in there. I think he does betray those who are loyal to him, the kid was always loyal to him. The Judge is an exploiter and a man of malicious deceit. Contrast the Judge with Holden, who does horrible things, but can explain his actions by saying that he simply doesn't value life. In contrast, we have every reason to believe the Judge values and clings on to his own life, and yet he wantonly destroys those of others. The Judge is a sketch of evil, insofar as it can be said to exist; and a challenging sketch in the sense of his bearing the typically "positive" characteristics of politeness, education, and so on. The Judge will die and can die, or else he would not go to such grave lengths to try to protect his life. He has been blessed with precocious genetics and talents (with their odd shortcomings as well, e.g. alopecia universals) which are perhaps part of the very nature of evil, in that it twists what is good.

The Judge didn't (maybe) rape or disembowel the boy, he did far worse, and that's the whole point. If you say he was disemboweled, I say he was opened up all on the inside and studied in every part of his organs. If you say he was raped, I say he was made to embrace the Judge back in consensual sex. It is the psychological act of deceit, corruption, and emasculation that the Judge victimized the kid most of all. The kid was the most competent and blessed of intelligence and moral spirit of any of Glanton's men, and yet he held himself forever as an inferior and a complacent.

Your last sentence and claim is overly provocative and not funny, either, by the way. Not even droll. You could do better. This book is many things. One thing I particularly think about it is it is a study in contrasts, the beauty of nature and the cruelty and harshness of nature (in man), and their odd simultaneity and congruence. It is a travel book for an unusual journey. Anyone who would cringe at the violence in this book needs to think hard about what their ancestors have done and had done to them. We are all descended from five hundred thousand year old clans of murderers, rapists, and before that, pure beasts. The true question out of the book isn't the meaning of violence. It's asking more about how, when taking the violence and "evil" or real evil of the world into account, how can an evening sunset descending into the west -- be so God damned beautiful?

You're talking nonsense, you need to understand the reasoning behind the moneyer before you can understand the judge

Coins bear the faces of rulers within the country of their currency. The false moneyer is forging a coin for the Judge, and the Judge's country is the world itself. His currency is violence and materialistic attachment, at play in an endless cycle of competing wills, rising and falling. The moneyer believes he can achieve something in this work (the "dawn"), ignorant of its ultimate futility (the "night"). The Judge is judge of conformity to this order, this endless work. But the coin is false because the Kid is able to intuit that the Judge, and what he represents, is false. The true path to the "dawn" the moneyer fruitlessly hopes for, is suggested in the Epilogue, where a man symbolically pursues a spiritual road toward dawn by seeking out and kindling the "fire" of God residual in reality.

What's the original of this?

I honestly have no clue if I'm reading the same book as the people who think that the ending of the novel has anything to do with raping the man. Honestly, whenever I hear it, I think that it might be some subconsciously imposed wishful thinking on the part of the reader, rather than being a logical conclusion to the story thematically.

The Judge straddles the story as a physical manipulator (and thus most people would rule him out as being purely imaginary) and as a figure that is also likely transcendental in nature (through the various allusions to Gnostic/Satanic iconography attributed to him, as well as the various times where he appears to have almost supernatural power). McCarthy lays on the themes of godlessness and the evil in men heavy throughout the novel (many of the scenes take place in desecrated churches, destroyed/warped Christian iconography, intense violence throughout) and to me the Judge serves as a physical manifestation of these themes. As another poster pointed out, I think he very much is a manifestation of these themes in the same way that Ahab is in Moby Dick, but opposite in the dichotomy of physical/transcendental. While Ahab is purely physical, I posit that the Judge is purely transcendental. He is able to interact physically with the characters because he resides in all of them as the manifestation of Human id.

If the Judge is a manifestation of Human id and not a physical being, the ending begins to make far more sense in the context of the book. Throughout the story the Judge has a deep thematic connection with children, seemingly pedophilic and violent in nature. These events most often occur during the periods of violence that the Glanton gang participate in, but if the Judge is not a physical being in the regular sense, then there must be another character who thematically ties in with children-- The Kid. The Kid is a character that we never observe during these moments of intense violence, rape and revelry committed by the Glanton gang. The Kid is one of the only two characters who does not totally succumb to great evils in the Glanton gang, the other being the Expriest Tobin (representative of the superego, the polar opposite to the id. It explains why he has such a deep hatred and mistrust of the Judge, even where the Kid is occasionally tempted). The Kid, the ego, is constantly pulled to choose a side between these two forces-- And in the final chapter, it's clear which force he succumbs to.

The ending chapter has a lot of interesting, easy-to-miss iconography that ties in to the thematic tie between the Kid (now the Man) and children, as well as pedophilic themes. One of the first major scenes involves the man shooting a boy with his gun, which is a psychoanalytic field day for a Freudian. The boy that he kills is so much like a younger version of himself that it could almost be viewed as the confirmation of the death of his childhood nature.

(Pt. 1)

isnt that shit the worst??? but at least you know you're on par with McCarthy, at least you didn't find your ideas in some John Green quote or something

Later, the Man beds a prostitute in the upstairs part of the saloon. The women are described as both childlike and lewd, and the Man takes presumably the smallest and most childlike of these women (a dwarf) to bed with him. The final straw, however, is the young girl with the bear. The altercation and the scene of the girl is given great attention before she suddenly goes missing. On the way to the jakes, The Man overhears the other men searching for her. I think that in the jakes, the Man finds both the Judge and the girl-- The girl in the physical sense, the Judge in the transcendental sense. The Man, who had been linked with themes of children and pedophilia (quite heavily through this last chapter) finally commits to the rape and the violence that the Glanton gang had all those years ago-- The Man is no better than any of them, they have submitted to the id, the Judge.

The final moment of the novel, in this light, is very powerful. The Judge can never die because Kids must grow into Men. After the Kid kills the last vestiges of his childhood ego through the killing of boy, the Judge is finally able to manipulate The Man as he had the other members of the Glanton gang, and Tobin is no longer around to guide the ego to balance.

By no means do I think that this is all correct to McCarthy's vision, but thematically there has to be much more for the ending in the jakes to make any sort of sense, and I believe there is.

Again, I'd love to hear what you guys think about this. This has been one of my favorite books for the last three years now, and I notice with every reading there are deeper depths and potential connections to be made with other texts (there's an allusion early on in the novel to the "mud men" of Mayan creation mythology that I found two months ago on a fourth or fifth rereading).

(Pt. 2)

[The Kid also raped this turkey probably idk]

This is absolutely a valid interpretation as well. There's the very specific shift where the judge goes into the hall for dancing and the narration makes a very awkward move to the kid (so I believe). It's like they have become one and the same or at least the kid has followed him into the hall. That's where the whore finds him.

Right after, as he walks through the hall, "there was a shout and the music began...." So it is possible that the judge rapes the girl in this instant while the man is in the hall or the music simply represents his intention on what he is about to do. The judge is not present at the beginning of the festivities. Sort of like how he goes off from the group to kill the little boy before returning. Another possible piece of evidence for this reading is the second fiddler joining in the music, as if the kid has fully given himself over to sin and raped the girl and the second fiddler represents the addition of his soul to some sort of pot of evil.

"Why are breakfast foods breakfast foods?" I asked them. "Like, why don't we have curry for breakfast food?"

"Hazel, eat."

"But why?" I asked. "I mean, seriously: How did scrambled eggs get stuck in with breakfast exclusivity? You can put bacon on a sandwich without anyone freaking out. But the moment your sandwich has eggs, boom, it's a breakfast sandwich."

Dad answered with his mouth full. "When you come back, we'll have breakfast for dinner. Deal?"

"I don't want to have 'breakfast for dinner,'" I answered, crossing knife and fork over my mostly full plate. "I want to have scrambled eggs for dinner without this ridiculous construction that a scrambled eggs-inclusive meal is breakfast even when it occurs at dinnertime."

"You've gotta pick your battles in this world, Hazel," my mom said. "But if this is the issue you want to champion, we stand behind you."

"Quite a bit behind you," my dad added, and Mom laughed.

Anyway, I knew it was stupid, but I felt kind of bad for scrambled eggs.

- John "Donne" Green

The Judge is nature incarnated.

Thanks this was very informative

Fantastic interpretation friend. Best I have read.

I think it's interesting that the judge is the most educated man in the book. With McCarthy relegated as "literature", most people reading it would be very educated individuals. It might be easy to dismiss the violence the other character's perform as ignorance and lack of culture or empathy, but the fact that the judge is the cruelest and most violent goes contrary to this idea.

Perhaps McCarthy is trying to say that violence is inherent to humankind, and our level of culture will not change that, and can only lead us into becoming much crueler and despicable. We should be wary to not be like the judge, and wary also of influence of people like the judge. At the end of the day, mankind will rape us all in an outhouse.

I never read Cormac McCarthy, but I thought this image was pretty funny.

That's an interesting take, if not fully convincing. The main thing is that Glanton definitely has a physical, non-transcedental role in the book; you can posit that he also represents an "Id", but I don't think you can say that's what he solely represents.

The kid killed the boy because the boy came to kill him, mainly out of ignorance and foolishness. I don't think the kid really opened up any new powers of the Judge by doing this. The kid didn't lose any integrity in this act of justified self-defense, and didn't make any capitulation to the id. In contrast, he used his experience to protect himself and did what he had to do. The only other thing he could have done there would have been to run. And running would have been the same as death.

You tie a lot of those points together in the end but I think you are reading a little much into it and over emphasizing the final chapters. The kid also slept with the midget girl because that was the first one that came up to him, it wasn't any kind of purposeful tie-in with a child.

You're not being 100% clear when you talk about how the Id is connected to children. You also don't really talk about what you mean when you say Id. It's a fairly vague psychobabble term that deserves explanation. The judge certainly doesn't seem uncalculated the way that the traditional conception of the Id is supposed to work.

See my post for more elaboration on how I see the Judge as a character chiefly symbolic of evil, not any kind of transcendental manifestation.

Would like to see a response to this these are good points.

Not the guy you responded to, but I think it's impossible to deny the pedophilic undertones: the judge with the boy, the judge and the kid never having sex throughout the novel (he doesn't actually sleep with the midget; he lies naked then leaves), the little girl being the sole piece of innocence left alive (for McCarthy to destroy, lol) in the last few pages.

Not saying it must be that way, but I wouldn't call it "reading too much into the last few pages" because it's not just the last few that do it. The last pages are a key of sorts, but the safe they open is built in other areas of the novel.

I appreciate the response. I definitely would agree with you in your saying that the Judge is not a character wholly representative of the concept of the id, nor would I want him to-- He would be a less vibrant character for it. However, there seems to be a real link between three characters, especially in the later chapters, and how they interact: The expriest Tobin, the Kid, and the Judge. In a psychoanalytic sense their roles in the story can be pretty convincingly attributed to these Freudian roles (the Expriest tries to balance the Kid away from the temptations of aggression and selfishness that the Judge embodies) but that is hardly the only roles these characters fit into. God, Adam, Devil is another interpretation I've heard from several, and a peer of mine even connected the characters to specific Jungian archetypal roles. I've also heard of Gnostic interpretations, but I'm considerably less familiar with that. I think there's much more than what I had said in my original post, but that's just the avenue I happened to use. I think it also creates an interesting irony in regards to my interpretation of the ending. I'll talk about this more in a second.

I don't think the Kid killing the boy is a capitulation to the id, but it is essentially the symbolic death of the Kid, since he is now the Man. The ears around his neck have turned black and shriveled with age, and he kills a boy who was trying to survive in the brutal, godless lands as he once had.

I don't believe that McCarthy is lost on the symbolism here, and I think this last chapter is perhaps the most important in the book, but he could have been and I might be totally off. I don't know for certain, and I probably will never have a chance to ask him before he dies (not that he would ever reveal anything, anyway). Again, following the themes of pedophilia and the child that are linked to the Man in the final chapter, I wouldn't think it's just a meaningless detail that the prostitutes are described as childlike, and that the one that chooses him is physically the most childlike. Perhaps it's not the Man's intention, but I have absolute reason to believe it's the author's.

To return to the irony I talked about earlier, it is that the id is most connected with the concept of the child in the Freudian structural model-- According to Freud, the human is only born with the id intact. The great irony is that it is the grown men of the story who capitulate to violence and selfish tendencies, whereas the Kid seems more reserved in these categories throughout most of the novel. If my thoughts on the ending hold true, then the Man is following this path to capitulation (the jakes) after he removes the final vestiges of the Kid (the boy, symbolically).

(I'm going to use information from wikipedia on the Freudian structural model of the psyche, just for ease of definition and for my own sanity. I'll continue this in the next post.)

(Pt. 1)

The id at its most basic, in Freud's model of the psyche, is essentially all subconscious needs, wants, desires and impulses of the human being in question. If the Judge is taken as the great id (or a temptation towards id) he becomes not necessarily a character of evil, but a character of pleasure. The Judge's purpose would not be to tempt the Glanton gang and the Kid towards 'evil', but towards seeking out the selfish pleasures that they themselves desire. One thing I find interesting is that, according to Freud's model of the psyche, the death drive is housed within the id. According to Freud, "...the death instinct... [expresses] itself—though probably only in part—as an instinct of destruction directed against the external world and other organisms". This really ties into the 'War is God' speech, as well as describes the Glanton gang pretty accurately.

Again, I would admit to you that this is probably the least sound part of my idea on the meaning of the ending, but only because I don't think the Judge or the other characters specifically represent one thing. These three characters (The Judge, the Expriest, the Kid) are played throughout a bunch of different archetypes and characterizations, and are amalgamations because of this (of which only one part I have been really delving into, at least in these posts).

As for the Judge being a purely physical being, a purely transcendental being, or something between the two, I think there can be cases made either way. I don't know how much that means toward the story, however.

I hope I at least made a somewhat suitable explanation, I always feel a bit rambling when I'm making long posts like these.

It makes sense. Much appreciated.

A character doesnt need to be perfectly aligned with a thing to represent it within a symbolic structure. They only need to have prominent qualities in alignment with it, or at the least serve a purpose in the story that is analogous to the purpose or nature of the thing they represent. As I understand it, symbolism doesnt mean, if X is the symbolic content and y the described content, (x=y) = True Meaning, it's more like x+y. Ideally symbolism isnt a means of breaking a books code and seeing it for the way it really is, it's just another part of the narrative structure, no more or less legitemate than the literal parts of the structure, though it is inseperable from them.

>The Man, who had been linked with themes of children and pedophilia (quite heavily through this last chapter) finally commits to the rape and the violence
Glad you could articulate an opinion I hold so well.

Does anyone have any interpretation of the epilogue? I don't have an interpretation of my own and I've never heard someone try to make sense of the epilogue.

Great analysis dude, i always thought the corpse found in the toilet was the little girl.

I feel a Jungian model can describe the Judge a lot better than a Freudian one.

Like it's been pointed out he's not an uncalculative, spontaneous, impulsive person. You could call him predatory, but he's so in the way a psychopath is--he's cold, remorseless, has a plan and isn't bothered by his wants. He's very fixed, very sure of what he aims to do.

The Judge surrenders to nothing: this is crucial. He wants to be the master of everything. He fashions himself as alone in the world to do so, relies on no one. He would never barter with something more powerful than himself. As we see the Kid is the only one to survive him of the gang, and he does so by refusing to fight him, by accepting the Judge is indeed more powerful than him. The Judge can't do anything to those who don't compete with him.

His physical characteristics are important. He's supposed to be like a walking, breathing, talking Greek statue--the apex of the physical man. His hands are descrived as cherubinic and delicate--but let's not forget McCarthy is scholarly, here he is talking about a very specific depiction of angel, and it's not the biblical one, but the one that begins with the Renaissance and combines Greek imagery. Biblical angels, don't forget, are supposed to be monstruous, scary things. Not pleasing children, but representatives of an enormous power one shouldn't fuck with; the renaissance version very much denies this vision, like it denies Christ as an unglorious sufferer (the medieval vision of Him), it refuses to take a world that isn't suited to its needs, a God which isn't always acceptable in its own, human terms. This is the Judge's stance.

From a Jungian point of view the Judge is in arrested development. He refuses to accept anything beyond his own scope, or that he will ever die. He is completely focused on being better than others like an adolescent, and will destroy any vulnerability he comes across. He cannot allow peace, because he projects himself into the whole world, concerned in life only as a game. He must have everything, and it must be in his design, under his control.

Let's not forget also that we're talking about a Bildungsroman--a story about what it means to become adult. It's also a novel about man's stance in the world, as well as his civilization's. Rousseau believed man to be naturally good, and that the naturally good man was child like, and the civilized man a sufferer; the Jungian position is opposed to this in that, in their personality, non-civilized men are adult, and us child-like, because we have no boundaries at all.

Seeing it like this, the interpretation ı've heard here once, that the Judge confesses to the Man in the last chapter, makes much more sense; he's the only person in the story that has refused to compete with him, he's the only real Man of gang. So maybe he just wanted a hug from daddy.

youtu.be/MLp7vWB0TeY?t=23m41s

peter-mclachlin.livejournal.com/115239.html

Wow not a single tortillapost

[bump]

>man vs. nature dichotomy always gets it wrong because every struggle humans experience is a struggle against our own nature, inherent and/or imposed
Man IS nature, you corny moralist. Man is a force of nature as much as a rat, an ant, a lion or a whale or a tree or a hurricane is.

>Contrast the Judge with Holden
Are you OK, mate?

My personal take is that the Judge is a personification of evil, within a Gnostic perspective.

Gnostics believe that the material universe is evil, hence anything that glorifies this world is considered evil, and the Judge is a person who exemplifies that in some way.

>I think he very much is a manifestation of these themes in the same way that Ahab is in Moby Dick, but opposite in the dichotomy of physical/transcendental
Ahab is the hero of the book, whether Melville intended it that way or not. Ahab is corrupted, yes, deeply corrupted, but nevertheless the most well-developed, complex character in the book and a tragically misguided, Quixotic (without the funny part) hero.

Still, good posts. I still think Freud's a shit, but, well.There's that.

Go look up Manifest Destiny. The speeches The Judge makes will become 100% crystal clear when you read about it. It's integral to the time period that BM is set in (and American as a whole), it justified Americas expansion West, the US presidential candidate ran and won on it, and The Judge is an embodiment of the concept. All the associations that derive from that, such as the allusions to the devil, are judgement on the concept of Manifest Destiny (i.e. that it's evil).

Kind of disillusioned that nobody has mentioned it yet, I thought that was an easy one.

>Hey, guys, go look up Christianity, it helps explain Paradise Lost.

I don't wanna be mean, but I'm pretty sure every American learned about Manifest Destiny in 5th grade. It's so fucking obvious it didn't need mentioning. Sorry :/

Might as well talk about imperialism, M.D. is just a fancy term to justify that, the book is more about the nature of imperialism as a whole than the unique incident of American imperialism justified by M.D., that's just the natural backdrop for McCarthy, same way, say, that Joyce uses Dublin in a day to encapsulate pretty much everything. :/

Can you please justify that? Just saying its obvious doesnt convince me, and I really doubt it. Nothing about the judges speeches reminded me particularly of Manifest Destiny.

The Judge is clearly just pure evil, and I think it's more likely that the Glanton Gang in general represents the MD, but the Judge represents the aspect of it that is pure ruthlessness and immorality.

Not everyone is American or believes such bullshit.

The judge's friends are communists and the judge is the in charge one

It is an easy one, naively so. The book is much more than a narrow political or historical commentary. Manifest Destiny is just one manifestation of a universal tendency, and the books subjects are these universal things.

Not everyone is American. Your analogies are terrible, they would correspond to "The West" (Dublin) and "Mexican/American history" (Christianity) in equivalent terms. Manifest Destiny is something specific, not general. A philosophical principal that used for various purposes. McCarthy examines the principle as a GENERAL principle, not as it only related to imperialism, and applied it to EVERYTHING through The Judges philosophies, that's not a backdrop, it's a focused point.

The simplest example I can think of is the Judges speech concerning the pointlessness of men arguing, and how they should let God decide through action. In all his speeches he constantly frames it through destiny and determinism.

Manifest Destiny may be a universal tendency, but in the way that one specific shit belongs to a universal tendency of shit taking. McCarthy is addressing a very specific shit, an American shit, a specific American shit that was at it's peak discussion during the general setting of the novel. Also, I never said it was one commentary, I said that one character in a book of many characters embodied a specific philosophical concept. I think your "universal things" theory is just you casting a wide vague net in the dark and is generally full of universal shit.

McCarthy specifically chose a period that served well to illustrate his broader points. Just as he chooses any other specific material for broader metaphorical purposes. The Judge's philosophy is entirely amoral. If anything he consciously defies the hypocrisy of Manifest Destiny. That is not an "embodiment of the concept" -- if you want that, look to Captain White, who forms a stark contrast with the Judge. By all means find me an adherent of Manifest Destiny from the period who expresses these kinds of ideas from the Judge's discussions:
>"The father dead has euchered the son out of his patrimony. For it is the death of the father to which the son is entitled and to which he is heir, more so than his goods. ...The world which he inherits bears him false witness. He is broken before a frozen god and he will never find his way."
>"If God meant to interfere in the degeneracy of mankind would he not have done so by now? Wolves cull themselves, man. What other creature could? And is the race of man not more predacious yet? The way of the world is to bloom and to flower and die but in the affairs of men there is no waning and the noon of his expression signals the onset of night. His spirit is exhausted at the peak of its achievement. ...This you see here, these ruins wondered at by tribes of savages, do you not think that this will be again? Aye. And again. With other people, with other sons."
>"...the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man’s mind can compass, that mind itself being but a fact among others."
>"This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game, and the authority, and the justification. Seen so, war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one's will and the will of another within that larger will, which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game, because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is God."
>"Moral law is an invention of mankind for the disenfranchisement of the powerful in favor of the weak."
>"Only that man who has offered up himself entire to the blood of war, who has been to the floor of the pit and seen horror in the round and learned at last that it speaks to his inmost heart, only that man can dance."

>I've never heard someone try to make sense of the epilogue.
From what I remember another user saying the people putting the fencing up are slowly making The Wild West civilized and that the Judge will have to move on to survive/be relevant.

I wasn't claiming that he set the novel, or based the novel on Manifest Destiny (although I can see that miscommunication was my fault, my bad). I meant that with the character of the judge, he addressed an American shit. Like I said before, I see it as only one facet.

The Judge takes the philosophical concept of Manifest Destiny uses it as a way of looking at the world entirely, especially war. That's how he embodies it. It's not meant to be realistic; it's isolated, developed, it's true conclusions enunciated by the Judge in his thinking to show how twisted it is. It's not supposed to reflect an adherent.

>The father dead etc.
I feel like there's more context needed there but, it seems like The Judge is confirming
>If God meant to interfere
That in no way contradicts, and even strengthens the idea that everyone is following a set destiny. He's saying that things are the way they are intended to be, following a set path.
>the order in creation..
Another speech about determinism and fate determined beyond the human sphere.
>This is the nature of war...
Notice how he says divination? The larger will is clearly the will of 'God', a.k.a destiny. War enforces destiny is his general point here.
>Moral Law
That's just a statement about the affairs of humans, set against the larger idea, which you have already quoted, that the real law is Will (destiny, determinism).
>Only that man who...
That's just rhetoric creating some nice imagery in Holden's larger concept of war as a tool of destiny.

All of these things show exactly what I'm talking about. The Judge always points to destiny, and the implications of man interacting in a world with destiny. Given the period, plot, setting, and the way the judge relates his ideas of destiny to decisions I really feel McCarthy was intending the specific shit that is Manifest Destiny.

Having said that I also understand that destiny and fate are cornerstones in McCarthy's bad guys (e.g. "this coin traveled etc." etc. in No Country For Old Men), but I feel like the Judge is focused on a specific angle of destiny and fate.. the manifesting kind, action.

The Judge is the Demiurge. The book is about Gnosticism.

This more or less

The similarity the Judge has to Manifest Destiny is, to my mind, superficial. Manifest Destiny is the idea of a divinely guided mission to expand a divinely inspired culture and civilization, as that culture and civilization provide the greatest degree of prosperity and happiness. It's a Christian conception and justification of conquest, and that conception and justification is lacking completely from the Judge. The divinity which inspires the Judge is nature, with its inherent cruelty, and it inspires him to a greater cruelty to conquer nature. Manifest Destiny, in that it involves conquest, overlaps with the Judge, but he in no way embodies it, as he embodies something far more primal.

If he's an archon then why does he care for recording birds? Wouldn't he preffer them materially rather than in written record? And why would he present himself as *wanting* all of creation, instead of already having it? Would he already be in control of all living beings, especially animals (who afaik aren't capable of gnosis)?

Is the judge supposed to be an alien? he is described like one

Define alien.

>punctuation
Amateur corncobbing.

ye

Everone

BLEAK
L
E
A
K

Strange meme that has been circulating here
maybe you should read this peter-mclachlin.livejournal.com/115239.html

this entry also discusses some things about the coins for those interested

Jesus Christ