The Judge.

 

The Judge. Toward the end of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian The Kid dreams of The Judge and this is my extension of that otherworldly counterpart to his mortal presence. I didn’t like the character when I first read it because it just seemed like a hollow definition through contrasting bullet points that didn’t actually add up to a character, just attempted to appeared to. He is large - but dainty, he is exceptionally intelligent - but very brutal, he is nude a lot - but hairless, and he might be a Dæmon. It just felt like someone making a D&D character to be the ultimate genius badass then not role playing it well because the character was just a series of interesting sounding stats and not a character. But on my second and third reading of the book I felt less strongly about this, I don’t think my opinion on it changed, but it stood out less than my first read. It is my favorite Cormac McCarthy novel, so I was thinking about it a fair amount.