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The absolute worst thing about the Judge is that scene where Glanton asks him his name and he says, It's Judge Holden, and Glanton asks, Holden what?, and the Judge simply replies, Hold'n deez nuts.
You're both wrong. The worst part was the scene when the Judge, in a perversion of the Man's own words, asks the Man his name. Before he can respond, the Judge says: "Ah, I remember you now. You're the Man with No Name."
@@aleksejsruyor what about when The Judge tried to antagonise the kid, now man, and did so by reducing him down to his most basic appearance traits, saying “Blondie”
It's really the most menacing thing that he ever does, considering his likely role as a personification of violence and war. He must understand and use everything for his purposes, and control all that exists. If you think about where that's gone...neutrons seem so harmless, so much smaller than even butterflies that they seem like nothing compared to dust, but in them is the truth of fire and the force of apocalypse. War turns all things to its purposes, from the innocence of children to the divine beauty of the numinous. War is a game of all things against all things, the archangel Samael mixed with the devil lord Beelzebub, truth and fiction so intertwined that truth is nothing and fiction is nothing. In the words of Tim O' Brien, in a true war story, nothing is absolutely true. Even if what you've been told is factually accurate, there is no truth if you feel uplifted *or* if you see war as solely an evil. There is joy, agony, ecstasy, and mourning, or you have been lied to. Even if those things are all present, the simulacrum is never the reality. What is real cannot be really conveyed. This stands true, in a different sense (because all senses are different, and too personal for accurate transmission), for pain or trauma of any kind. Not even I can reexperience the fear of being chased with a knife by another child, of being threatened with a shotgun by an adult, of harboring a fugitive meth cook as a minor, or of seeing my grandmother beg for drugs in the depths of withdrawal while my father screamed at her in a tone I can't even remember, because the past is lost even as it exists eternally in an incomprehensible geometry that makes the Moon circle the Earth in its endless chariot course. All of my pain came indirectly through the gates of a B-29 as it dropped bomb after bomb on the city where my grandfather would see hell and bring it home to his wife, their children, and their grandchildren. Would that I could destroy the destroyer, but it is forever unreachable and I am forever lost. I'm a drunk guy with BPD. Idk what the fuck I'm even saying rn. My spirit animal is the bones of the beautiful feathered tyrant. One of my oldest known ancestors was a slave catcher, and another was a slave. Evil that can run itself a thousand years. Yutyrannus huali swag. I love birds, even if their freedom makes me jealous. It is love that see them in cages, not jealousy alone but jealousy as a part of the composite.
the kid having a bible that he cant read is one of my favourite metaphors in all fiction, to me it's a symbol of him striving for something higher that he cannot achieve due to the circumstances of his life and the choices he ahs made
I love the part of the book where the kid goes "Give me a drink bartender" and the bartender slides him a drink that falls off the counter and shatters
Me in 2021: Oh man, this Wendigoon video is an hour, that’s intense. Me in 2023: I finished reading four hundred pages continuous violence and nihilism over the course of several months. Now I can finally watch his five hour video on it!
400 pages? I thought it would be like 800 or something. Then again it would be a long read cause there just so much you can read about gore without gagging.
@@Jackson-il1sn It's just very, very dense. There are several depictions and descriptions that require minutes of unpacking, so if you're a thorough reader, this is chipping through granite.
When the Judge said "In this moment, I am euphoric. Not because of any phony God's blessing, but because, I am enlightened by my own intelligence" I got straight up chills
It's chilling that when we first meet The Judge he accuses an innocent man of pedophilia. Then just for us to find out all along he himself was a horrific child predator and murderer
Or not realizing that the deeds he accused the priest of doing in the beginning were most likely crimes the Judge himself committed, based on how detailed his telling was and how the crimes matched his own debauchery throughout the story
Honestly, the scene where the kid kicks a guy in the jaw and then the guy and him both pull out knives and get in a knife fight with each other only to then both get knocked out by a third person, wake up in a hotel and then casually trade back their knives and go commit arson sounds like something from a multiplayer video game
My favorite part of this book was at the end where the kid goes into the outhouse and says "he's behind me isn't he" and then proceeded to appear on an Amber alert
wendigoon, if you see this, i want you to know that this video specifically caused a huge spike in book sales for this!! i’m a manager of an independent bookstore and got an email about it from a rep!!! so glad to watch your content
that's awesome, also kinda surprising cause it's free on audible, it actualy showed up on my wifes recommended account after I watched this video, gotta love that algorithm.
"Whatever exists without my knowledge exists without my consent." One of the most menacing lines from any villain in literature or otherwise. The Judge is honestly a legendary character. You know you're reading about an evil bastard when he buys a puppy just so he can chuck it off a bridge, and all you can think is, "Honestly I don't know what else I was expecting."
There’s a pattern of the judge accusing others of the crimes he’s committed. He accused the preacher at the beginning of defiling and killing a little girl, something he did. And then later accused the kid of causing the massacre he orchestrated. It’s interesting
judge seems so fearless and without doubt or worry in the story but that may be a secret nod to a sign of actual human weakness in him, wether guilt or something else
One detail that stuck with me is that the bear keeps dancing after getting shot, which implies a lot about how this bear was taught to dance if pain just makes it dance more.
Went into the local Barnes and Noble, asked for Cormac MaCarthy and she pointed to the shelf and said “Blood Meridian is over there”. She went on to explain at the register how popular it’s been lately. Cultural revival with one CZcams video, congrats man.
I think the reason the judge likes James (the idiot) so much is because James is not autonomous. The first thing that he does when he is first given freedom and liberty is he goes and almost drowns himself. Not because he wants to die but simply because he doesn't know any better. I think that the judge pulls him out because James is not free to anything, not even his mind. He only is alive because the judge has consented him to live therefore James life belongs solely to the judges which is seen throughout the rest of the book.
I mean yeah he even constructs a collar, leash,, and crude umbrella for him, with which he parades about the desert in pursuit of the kid. definitely got "pet" vibes from the whole of his interactions with the idiot. perhaps it piqued some curiosity in him because he (the idiot) is one among a remarkable few who have no choice in their fates, as to whether they dance or not. similar to a pet or chattel or a beast of burden, but human
Yes, good take. I think Holden had also saved the idiot for the potential to evil and misery that he saw in him. When the women freed the idiot, washed him, dressed him, gave him candy, they showed him kindness. I think the Judge used that and derived pleasure from allowing the idiot to violate the little girls as in, he put the idiot in a situation where he betrayed the women who previously helped him by their association with the girls. This of course on top of the suffering and misery he derived from just the defilation that comes from being violated by someone as lowly as the idiot.
i feel like The Judge being a child predator was one of the most obvious (and sinister) aspects of his character. the author had done such a good job painting him as a disgusting vile monster that even a mere mention of a child in his company, abuse immediately comes to mind. since the very very beginning of the story i knew that The Judge was a child predator. they really did nothing to hide it
Yeah but we have to remember that this was written in the 80s, still a time when mental health care and trauma were very societally taboo to talk about. I don't think McCarthy wrote that aspect of the Judge subtly because of that (I mean it's McCarthy the embodiment of not giving a fuck) but rather it was written subtly for its time.
Well I just started the video and now I know it's gonna be a doozy. Sadly I know how it feels to be a victim of such people. I have no mercy or sympathy for them. Thanks for the heads up though so I can mentally prepare. 👍 It's much appreciated.
"The second in command, now left in charge of the camp, was a man of gigantic size who rejoiced in the name of Holden, called Judge Holden of Texas. Who or what he was no one knew, but a cooler-more blooded villain never went unhung. He stood six foot six in his moccasins, had a large, fleshy frame, a dull, tallow-colored face destitute of hair and all expression, always cool and collected. But when a quarrel took place and blood shed, his hog-like eyes would gleam with a sullen ferocity worthy of the countenance of a fiend… Terrible stories were circulated in camp of horrid crimes committed by him when bearing another name in the Cherokee nation in Texas. *And before we left Fronteras, a little girl of ten years was found in the chaparral foully violated and murdered.* The mark of a huge hand on her little throat pointed out him as the ravisher as no other man had such a hand. But though all suspected, no one charged him with the crime. He was by far the best educated man in northern Mexico." -From "My Confession: The Recollections of a Rogue"
Pretty sure it's because except that other guy who gets decapitated by Black Jackson, the judge is the only character to smoke. "Spitting" is often shorthand for chew-tobacco, which you spit your saliva to avoid getting nauseous.
"We can dance if we want to We can leave your friends behind 'Cause your friends don't dance And if they don't dance Well, they're no friends of mine" ~Judge Holden
theres some hilarious stuff in there too..the kid gets enthusiastically recruited into that tough guy sanctimonius patriot military company and they immediately all get killed by natives in the first hint of battle.. lol
@@vassalofthenight9945 i just meant it was funny how big a deal they made about recruiting the kid like it was some great honor, like they were doing him a favor and then they all get killed almost immediately
I just went to Half Price Books and asked about this book and they said that for some reason in the past couple of days Blood Meridian became one of the top three most asked about books.
I went to Barnes and Noble for the first time in atleast a decade for this book . I felt very out of place compared to the others in the store, but walked away happy
Something i notice is every time the Judge does his....act, if you know you know. He is usually naked or partially naked and seems in a good mood, singing, dancing, poetry. He revels in the act
So far i feel the theme of this book is "for evil to triumph, good men must simply do nothing." And that is totally exemplified by The Judge. The Judge isnt Death or Old Scratch himself. Hes Evil personified. Evil at its most pungent, most unashamed form. Hes a pedo and doesnt hide it. Hes a murderer and revels in the pain and misery he inflicts on eveything and anything around him. The Kid might be evil, sure. But all he had to do to change that was see The Judge for what he was and END HIM. But he didnt. A man did nothing. And so evil triumphs. Again and again.
The Kid is not evil. He strives for good but is prone to evil. He's the victim of his circumstances, the people and the world did not permit him to develop and grow the kindness in his heart, the kindness that the Judge mentioned. The Kid is entirely human and that is his only sin.
“Whatever exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.” I don’t know about others but that was so creepy to me because it reveals that even when the Judge is partaking it what seems to be harmless hobbies, it’s still colored by sadism. Everything he does, no matter how innocuous, is colored by his sadistic worldview.
I actually had to read this book for a college course. It was brought up as part of the lesson about shock content in media. We had to read the book and then read an edit with heavy censorship, then write a paper explaining if we felt that the censored version was able to convey the same point as the original.
That actually sounds so cool! A bit of a headache, but a cool concept and assignment! What did you ultimately think? Was the edit better? I can’t imagine Blood Meridian without that detached portrayal of violence
So I guess the reason why the Kid never tries to kill the Judge is because he never stopped being wishy-washy with his life and desires. He never fully committed to being an immoral outlaw nor a heroic vigilante, and so died never having lived to his true potential as either.
Yes The kid is never stern in his ways, he simply goes with the situation he finds himself in, being too idle or passive to enact his will on the situation The moment of truth really was at the well, when Tobin begged the kid to kill the judge, and the kid's passive refusal is what caused the game of cat and mouse, the disappearance of Tobin, and ultimately the end to unfold the way they did The kid had the potential to be a true dancer, but he don't much care for dancin
I hadn't seen the canonical images of the Judge before this video so based on the tall, wide, and pale descriptions I've been imagining him as Jack Horner from Puss in Boots. Personally I think that visualization just enhances the story.
1:20:00 Very very true. Consider the Roman excursions into Gaul. History casually mentions 60000 killed here, 100000 killed there. Easy to lose sight of the immense human suffering these people felt.
I feel like the killing of the 15 y/o is really just foreshadowing for the end of the book. “You were never gonna live anyway” is both a telling of The Kid’s fate and an homage to the theme of death always comes for you
Foreshadowing and also reflecting, which is cool. In having to kill a new kid, the man is in essence murdering the boy he once was, and with it all the potential he himself had. To me, this is the final indication that his wayward life, and his inability to live either fully in the world of good or evil, is finally sealed to one path, the road that leads back to Texas and back to the judge.
I took it was a reflection of how fortunate The Kid/The Man had always been, when the Ex-Priest Tobin had said, "Some day God won't love you." as he manages to push the arrow through. The Kid had all the opportunities in the world to die, but was constantly taken away from it. But now, this new Kid, he didn't have that luck. And as a reflection of the man, an indication that the luck was running out and really always had been. "You'll feel it when it's gone."
OR - or - a simple admission that if he was dumb enough to sneak up on The Kid and not kill him in his sleep, instead freezing when he woke up, he wasn't gonna make it very long as an outlaw
I liked when he saw Toadvine and some other guy I dont remember just staring breathlessly at the ocean, which they've never seen. It's like they realize that there is nowhere to run or that their journey has reached its ultimate end.
One thing I noticed is that when a girl goes missing in Tucson, a piece of her clothing is found bloodied at the foot of a wall "that she could only have been thrown over." This is in the same chapter in which the Judge shows off his immense strength throwing that meteor anvil around.
Finally someone says it, the amount of praise this quote and the judge receives in this comment section as if he isn’t just another delusional power hungry man fumbling for meaning in this world like every other person
Just goes to show YT don’t know their own sh!t. 🙄 I mean, I don’t use the categories because my interests are too spread across the board, but videos consistently ending up in the wrong ones is something I‘ve read in multiple comment sections… This is more commentary, you could make an argument for politics/history/education.
-couldn’t finish the whole five hour video all the way through last night -ready to finish the video, wake up to this confusion -atleast there’s subcaptions now for the rest of my video watching also as of rn it’s still at number 8 in “gaming” for some reason lol ❤ :)
There's a part toward the end that made me think. "You're here for the dance," he said (the Judge). "I got to go." "Go?" The Judge looked aggrieved. That part, "the Judge looked aggrieved". To me, it reads like throughout this whole novel, the Judge was seeing the same thing "Fate" was seeing. That the Kid wasn't picking anything, wasn't committing to any path or lifestyle. So, when the Kid arrives, the Judge sees him and feels like the Kid has changed. Almost like he's an actual supervillain and is FINALLY going to fight an actual hero. But, in that moment, he's angry at him because he's still just being a spectator.
Just imagining the universe where The Kid decided to dance instead, the Judge just sitting in that outhouse all night like "...aaaaany minute now" just fucking cracks me up
But the Kid did choose to dance. He went in the outhouse to participate in a ritual and become what the Judge wanted him to be. The victim in the outhouse wasn't the Kid, it was the little girl who disappeared (no way that's just a coincidence) and who was brought by the Judge as a sacrifice for the Kid's final initiation.
The Judge wouldn't wait. He knows what lurks in the hearts of men. He waited for the Man because he understood him, his true nature. He knew the Man didn't have it in him to dance. That's why he waited. If the Man danced, if he did not have the kindness in him, Holden would've known about it as well and acted accordingly.
I think the Judge is exactly who we're told he is at the start of the book, the priest that he interrupts and accuses calls the Judge the devil himself, saying that the devil stands before them, plus the fiddle being a part of his character along with the dancing, both things related to the devil
You did a five hour book summary of a story that came out in 1985 for an audience saturated by viral content that usually demands no more than five minutes of their attention and your video is wildley popular. Your analytical abilities paired with your sincerity and story telling are obviously high quality and well-loved. Congratulations.
@EuphemisticHug Dunno, but I listen primarily for the oddball content he drops, the long vid times (easier to listen to while working), and his sense of humor and candor 🤷♂️
Toadvine getting angry at the Judge for killing the child actually makes total sense. A person doesn't usually become desensitized to killing _any_ humans, they become desensitized to killing particular humans through the act of dehumanization. Caring for the child breaks this illusion. Toadvine is no longer able to otherize the boy as easily.
the book plays this for irony as well, i'm not sure it was Toadvine (I think it was Tobin), but one of the officers mentions finding it "unconsciounable" to kill a wolf, as he goes on to describe the slaughter of north american indians, who are, you know, people. It's the guy who gives the detailed account of the Glanton gang meeting the Judge to the Kid, the sulfur from brimstone and such chapter
@@justoverit ummm but it is a 5 hour long book review. It is surprising that it’s as popular as it is. Because.. it’s a book review. There are plenty of reviews on offensive and dark books out there that don’t get this kind of attention soooo
I just find that bit at the end hilarious, with the fool kid and the Man talking. "He's 15" "I was first shot at 15" "I ain't been shot!" "You ain't 16 _yet_ ."
Barely scratched the surface of this video yet- but I wanted to check it out since I had read Blood Meridian for the first time a few months ago. Already I was floored by a detail in chapter 1 that had completely left my mind by the time I had finished the novel- and of course- of COURSE- the very first act of violence (besides the circumstances of his birth) recorded about the kid happens on the way to.... an outhouse.
I have to continually remind myself that book isn't that old. For some reason I always want to think of it as something written 100 years ago. The author is still alive in fact, he's old but he's still alive and kicking.
I think it just seems old because of the setting it refers to evoking a sense of "back then" - the Old West - of the accounts of a world that existed over a hundred years ago. The time and place inherently invoke a sense of distance and age that a modern audience can't really fathom anymore, except in fiction. This, coupled with the dense, flowery prose and dialogue calls back to an almost Shakespearean dialectic; a style _many_ hundreds of years old, told somehow in a much more modern age, by a much more modern writer. It feels almost anachronistic, like a story pulled forward through time that would have fit just as neatly (if not more so) in a time back then than it does now.
Brother in Christ of course it’s going to feel old. It takes place in a partially true old west. Around 1700-1800s. While the setting of the characters is fictional, what they lived through wasn’t. It’s just taking a setting based off real events and throwing a spin. 1985 was a long time ago, and while it’s barely measured a generation away, what’s happened ever since 1985 can quickly make you realize it was a long time ago. What do I mean by that? The way of thinking has quickly changed ever since. Our technology has drastically changed as well, from pagers to a cellphone without a huge screen but rather a rectangle screen to see what numbers you pressed to a cellphone with a camera to our current smartphones. We have advanced so much the way people behaved 100 years ago might seem primitive to our current standards. So yeah, the book is old even if it was written 30+ years ago because it’s setting takes places in an older civilization
When the wind is slow And the fire’s hot The vulture waits to see what rots Oh how pretty All the scenery This is nature’s sacrifice When the air blows through With a brisk attack The reptile tail ripped from its back When the sun sets We will not forget the Red sun over paradise No but seriously holy shit Sundowner is totally Judge Holden. Surprised I didn't notice it before.
@@JillLulamoon Yeah holy shit that revelation shocked me as well! You have both of their ideologies reflecting war as the highest good or thing a man can strive to, both of them are very strong and skilled in combat, and both of them have weird shit going on with children. I would not be surprised at all if one inspired the other
@@kingcyrusrodan6772 not to mention both of them have VERY similar physical descriptions, down to the part about being hairless. the more i think about it the more im convinced that there's some kind of connection between the two
I always thought Judge Holden has a huge resemblance to Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now in terms of looks, character, actions, and what he represents. Maybe it was the main inspiration for McCarthy when making the character of the Judge
i totally agree about the descriptions of the landscape the characters move across. That's the stuff that won't translate to a movie. We've all seen Westerns and we can all guess what that desert landscape looks like, but that's not what my mind 'sees' when reading the book. You say it best when you say it doesn't even feel like planet earth! No film maker alive could bring that to life the way McCarthy's writing does.
one thing I'd like to point out is that despite the brutal depictions of violence, filth, death and blood, sexual abuse is NEVER described, only vaguely implied.
As opposed to Bastard Out Of Carolina which I read at....16. As a survivor. My UW lit teacher was so ignorant to the possibilities of triggers being a bad thing for people.
@@samuel-fg6wh that is Western Wear it's just that Western Wear when it comes to Suits happens to be very similar to how 1980s Miami look and how modern-day yakuza wear their suit because western style suits have the popped collar as well but it's the type of shirt that he's wearing and the way his hair is and the material of the suit itself, when wearing a suit it's a lot more complicated compared to simple casual clothing, a lot more goes into it, feel me?
I like the part where The Idiot stands up and says "what are we in, some kind of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, or An Evening Redness in the West?".
Id say the judge keeps James around because of the suffering he sees in one with disabilities such as his and probably enjoys watching the circumstances he's forced into.
Don’t sell yourself short man. While being one of my favorites, this is an exceedingly confusing book. And you did a great job explaining everything in a digestible way!
My thoughts exactly. I remember multiple times thinking, "I'm pretty sure I did something like this in Mount & Blade/Skyrim" after hearing about the umpteenth massacre and pillaging of a town.
lol You mean the violence or the ability to win so effortlessly at times as if they did it in their first try? Regardless, the Judge is their quick save all throughout.
The judge was disappointed in the kid because the kid never danced, as in, he never took advantage of those opportunities to escape and chose a different life. Therefore the judge… judged him, and ends him because the kid at that point, the kid was metaphorically dead, neutral. the kid failed himself. He failed to dance, and the judge saw that. Hense his disappointment.
My understanding is that dancing, metaphorically speaking, when it comes to the judge is about killing. So its more that he was dissapointed that the Kid DID choose something else. He gave up the life of a roving murderer
Blood Meridian is now the #1 best seller in American literature on Amazon, no joke. It’s an amazing book, this is an amazing video, and you deserve every bit of influence you have.
I'm struggling through it honestly. I've taken a hiatus from 3 years of Stephen King work to try out some of these "best" American Western novels, and honestly the landscape is beautiful and I love the setting, but McCarthy's prose is so hard to follow, I end up missing things and having to reread them over and over. I guess this isn't a good "first McCarthy" book to read.
Yeah I enjoy his prose and there are several instances that will be burned into my mind forever. However, I did often find myself wondering wtf was going on, and had difficulty generating mental imagery at certain points. I like books where I can cleanly visualize what's happening, and if an author can't communicate that, then I believe that it's a fair criticism to make.
I completely missed how the judge was assaulting all of these kids in the novel. Didn’t realize what was happening until I started reading cliff notes lol.
i think one minor detail that wasn't mentioned is that when the Judge is berating the Man/Kid, he mentions how the Kid abandoned Shelby and Tate, which he had absolutely no way of knowing normally. That alone makes me think that the Judge is supernatural, and is some sort of personification of the devil.
Playing devil's advocate, the judge may have taken a guess by the fact that the kid was no longer with them. He didn't know what happened to them but knew enough
"Glanton who's drunkenly stumbling out of bed, decides to just start a problem." After nearly two and a half hours of constant death and tragedy, and after reading the story myself cover to cover, I'm beginning to become as desensitized as the characters in the story, and I started laughing uncontrollably at this line.
I had the same issue with Joe Abercrombie's Wisdom of Crowds. The constant executions and perversion of justice and liberty in his fantasy world's version of the French Revolution made me numb to the violence. I love it when a story can make me feel like the characters - emotionally exhausted in these two cases - rather than just telling me, or even showing me how the characters feel.
@@willieearles3151 What was strange for me was that I also felt the same, desensitized and bored by all the human violence, but when the guy shot the dancing bear and it tried to keep dancing until he killed it I was actually angry, literally angry at a book at something that didn't really happen.
The kid is different because he is the only member of the group who holds some mutinous sense of agency. His choices aren’t important because they’re good or bad, but because they’re his. This is why the Judge and the kid share an animosity that exited before the kid was even born. The Judge will not allow anything exist without his consent, but the kid’s decisions do.
It's something that can be applied to this day, usually about lower stakes, but I've talked a couple people down with similar language. I'm not a badass by any means, but when something is important, threats don't exist, only statements of fact
@@ethanbaker6264 Davy Brown is always low-key kind of been my favorite character of the book. The judge is one thing, but there's something so badass about David Brown
When he said "I would have loved you like a son", my mind first went back to the story the judge had told about the traveler and the saddle maker, both of which had sons. And both the son's outcomes by different means. A son with an evil father becoming evil, and a son with no father and guidance. On a physical level it's a creep attempting to give a young man the squeeze, and on another level it's an allegory for embracing evil.
One of the things I appreciate most about his writing is he often and very skillfully writes what appear on the surface to be simple, straight-forward, Hemingway-esque paragraphs, comprised of seemingly simple sentences that turn out to be significantly deeper upon further examination. And I wouldn't even classify it was wordplay. It's rarely a clever but obvious twist of words or double-entendre. It's usually much more subtle than that. I liken it to how you might say _still water runs deep_ about a a quiet/calm person concealing a more passionate/thoughtful inner world. Like that, but applied to prose.
That quote and the Judge embracing him in the outhouse reminded me of the parable of the prodigal son (a twisted version of it). I don't think the Kid is the victim of what happens in the outhouse. I think he's the perpetrator. The little girl disappearing right before a mysterious and violent scene that's never shown is way too big a of a coincidence. The Kid gave in and became a dancer along with the Judge. Whatever he did to the girl was his initiation. The Judge embraced him because even after the disappointment the Kid had been to him, he finally came back to accept his fate as a complete man of war.
The part of the book that I enjoyed was actually the aspect of the gang riding around. Kind of similar to red dead redemption. I feel like everyone hyper fixates on the evil of the judge so much that they miss just a cool western story.
The riding around goes a bit too long. I enjoyed the camps and dialogue, but there was a lot of grogginess in the traveling across the state, especially the short raids and massacre, not really separated.
@@_wtdwo_ I agree, there’s a lot of descriptions on how they ride around a lot. But it makes sense, that’s what people mainly did at the time, especially people with a job such as theirs. But it did go on for a while. On the other hand, it made the parts of the story that were extremely brutal even more impactful, which is always important. Plus, it was significant because it really told you that what they were doing was long, tedious, and boring, and the judge and other people in the book were willing to go through that just to do some senseless killing, which really showed the true nature of some of the characters. At least, that’s my interpretation of the book.
Ive recently found you, honestly through Papa Meat, but just wanted to say I loved this a lot and wouldnt mind watching more recaps of your favorite books or explanations of other famous books. Very good format and I enjoyed it thoroughly, keep it up Wendigoon
Cormac McCarthy died today. I literally just finished the book last night and started this video this morning. He shaped me 10 years ago with the Road and reshaped me again 10 years later as a new father on a reread. Now again with Blood Meridian i start a new journey into what it means to be human, and to better myself. Rest in peace. You've touched the lives of more people and in more ways than you could imagine.
Finished the book as of today aswell, I am far from a seasoned reader but even as I didn't understand all of what was written (as well as the subtext within) it still filled me with a sense of fearful admiration. Truly a magnificent writer, rest in peace McCarthy
I read it last summer, stumbled upon this video moments before I saw the news. Just gutted. He achieved an unparalleled body of work due imo to his unparalleled perspective, his vocabulary, while grandiose, almost always says what he means perfectly.
I JUST finished Blood Meridian two minutes ago and it’s also my first Cormac book. Now this book is just that much more personal, damn. Rest Easy Cormac.
Ever since I found Wendigoon I've gone hard watching the videos in his roster, and I've loved every minute of it. But when I came across this video I watched it and was so intrigued that I went and listened to the entire audiobook, which is the first time I messed with a book at all in years. Now here I am again re-watching this video because I'm so amazed by the writing and characters in the story that I needed a refresher on what Wendigoon shared. Thank you for everything, including putting a spotlight on this story!
i started freaking out too at the “i would’ve loved you like a son” bit, i don’t think a fictional character has ever scared me as much as the much The Judge does, and i’m not even reading the actual book
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The absolute worst thing about the Judge is that scene where Glanton asks him his name and he says, It's Judge Holden, and Glanton asks, Holden what?, and the Judge simply replies, Hold'n deez nuts.
I thought the part right after that was even worse-when the Kid asked, “Aren’t you Shane Holden?” and the Judge said, “My name’s not Shane, Kid.”
You're both wrong. The worst part was the scene when the Judge, in a perversion of the Man's own words, asks the Man his name. Before he can respond, the Judge says: "Ah, I remember you now. You're the Man with No Name."
What the hell are you bell ends on about?!?!
@@georgeofhamiltonNow THAT’S a good reference.
@@aleksejsruyor what about when The Judge tried to antagonise the kid, now man, and did so by reducing him down to his most basic appearance traits, saying “Blondie”
I like the part where the Judge says “I’ll be the judge of that” and judges all over the place
Truly a masterpiece
And then he killed another child
@@jjspittel327Got Judge'd
@@eisenkrahe7125 a little amount of judging
@@xxtL "We like to judge, we do a little judging"
I love when judge Holden says “This blood, its meridian” then proceeds to violate every child ever.
Sounds about right
This comment exists without my consent
Literally tho
@@spenjaminn3846This comment is dancing, dancing, dancing. This comment will never die.
@@CrammyCram *Scary outhouse noises intensifies*
I love how the Judge even manages to make _collecting butterflies for a fucking scrapbook_ seem extremely menacing.
Any butterfly that exists without my knowledge, exists without my consent. The freedom of butterflies is an insult to me.
@@vassalofthenight9945The butterfly is dancing, dancing, dancing. It says that it will never die.
It's really the most menacing thing that he ever does, considering his likely role as a personification of violence and war. He must understand and use everything for his purposes, and control all that exists.
If you think about where that's gone...neutrons seem so harmless, so much smaller than even butterflies that they seem like nothing compared to dust, but in them is the truth of fire and the force of apocalypse. War turns all things to its purposes, from the innocence of children to the divine beauty of the numinous. War is a game of all things against all things, the archangel Samael mixed with the devil lord Beelzebub, truth and fiction so intertwined that truth is nothing and fiction is nothing. In the words of Tim O' Brien, in a true war story, nothing is absolutely true. Even if what you've been told is factually accurate, there is no truth if you feel uplifted *or* if you see war as solely an evil. There is joy, agony, ecstasy, and mourning, or you have been lied to. Even if those things are all present, the simulacrum is never the reality. What is real cannot be really conveyed. This stands true, in a different sense (because all senses are different, and too personal for accurate transmission), for pain or trauma of any kind. Not even I can reexperience the fear of being chased with a knife by another child, of being threatened with a shotgun by an adult, of harboring a fugitive meth cook as a minor, or of seeing my grandmother beg for drugs in the depths of withdrawal while my father screamed at her in a tone I can't even remember, because the past is lost even as it exists eternally in an incomprehensible geometry that makes the Moon circle the Earth in its endless chariot course. All of my pain came indirectly through the gates of a B-29 as it dropped bomb after bomb on the city where my grandfather would see hell and bring it home to his wife, their children, and their grandchildren. Would that I could destroy the destroyer, but it is forever unreachable and I am forever lost.
I'm a drunk guy with BPD. Idk what the fuck I'm even saying rn. My spirit animal is the bones of the beautiful feathered tyrant. One of my oldest known ancestors was a slave catcher, and another was a slave. Evil that can run itself a thousand years.
Yutyrannus huali swag. I love birds, even if their freedom makes me jealous. It is love that see them in cages, not jealousy alone but jealousy as a part of the composite.
Trigger Warning: *All of them*
This comment is too good to have so little likes
@@skelee1401no it must stay at 420
trigger warning: *yes*
Cringe
@@theenderdestruction2362cringy
the kid having a bible that he cant read is one of my favourite metaphors in all fiction, to me it's a symbol of him striving for something higher that he cannot achieve due to the circumstances of his life and the choices he ahs made
I like to think it's also a way for him to keep the memory of the ex-priest with him in some way. Same way he kept the necklace of ears.
Or the uselessness of religion.
@@donwanderley7156 hey bud no need to be mean about it
@@una9906 if u think about it they're spitting facts
@@donwanderley7156 without religion this channel wouldn't exist.
My favorite part is when The Kid says “I’m just Kidding” at the end
my favorite part was when the man said "i'm just manning"
but then the Judge said "I'll be the judge of that" and judged him
I thought the entire quote was " I'm just kidding don't judge me"
Man, now I got to watch the whole video to get the reference
Like Jason?
I love the part of the book where the kid goes "Give me a drink bartender" and the bartender slides him a drink that falls off the counter and shatters
Bacchus
Why did I immediately remember a town with no name.
The guy with the name "Not Shane kid"
underrated comment
“nah i dont feel like watching a movie rn thats too much” proceeds to watch a 5 hour long wendigoon video
Honestly? Yeah
Bro just like me fr.
Yeah same, it’s because these videos “talk at” you instead of you having to follow events
@@samdouglas9759 ohhh true
For real, lol
Me in 2021: Oh man, this Wendigoon video is an hour, that’s intense.
Me in 2023: I finished reading four hundred pages continuous violence and nihilism over the course of several months. Now I can finally watch his five hour video on it!
400 pages? I thought it would be like 800 or something. Then again it would be a long read cause there just so much you can read about gore without gagging.
@@Jackson-il1sn It's just very, very dense. There are several depictions and descriptions that require minutes of unpacking, so if you're a thorough reader, this is chipping through granite.
Several months? I read that book in a week
Bloodnmeridian
@@Jackson-il1snnot even. It's about 350 tops but with how much the book demands a second reading it may as well be 700
When the Judge said "In this moment, I am euphoric. Not because of any phony God's blessing, but because, I am enlightened by my own intelligence" I got straight up chills
It’s just so… exact.
Sounds familiar.
The Judge sounds like a real professional quote maker
I swear I heard that and instantly thought of r/atheism
@@chieftanjojo7737it’s from r/atheism lol
You know, I surmise that these Glanton marauders were real jerks.
By jove, I think you may be correct
This Judge Holden fella…. Not my idea of a clown!
Are you Norm MacDonald’s ghost?
@@johnrogers1038 Do you know who else was a real jerk? O.J. Simpson.
Serious Norm reference here ^^^
It's chilling that when we first meet The Judge he accuses an innocent man of pedophilia. Then just for us to find out all along he himself was a horrific child predator and murderer
You look back to how the kid and the judge looked at each other after that and the judge smiled at the kid, ugh.
Or not realizing that the deeds he accused the priest of doing in the beginning were most likely crimes the Judge himself committed, based on how detailed his telling was and how the crimes matched his own debauchery throughout the story
Almost as if accusing someone of your own crimes is kinda normal. Thank God it doesnt happen nowadays, right??
God damnit I’m only 3 hours in 😢
@@kachucho872 I mean, no one said it doesn't happen nowadays 😅.
Honestly, the scene where the kid kicks a guy in the jaw and then the guy and him both pull out knives and get in a knife fight with each other only to then both get knocked out by a third person, wake up in a hotel and then casually trade back their knives and go commit arson sounds like something from a multiplayer video game
Third party British word for cigarettes-them waking up probably
Is it not basically the time Arthur Morgan broke Micah Bell out of jail? 😁
i thought they woke up in the mud?
That’s just a normal dnd campaign intro tbh.
It didn't happen like that, but I like to think this is the moment the kid dies and wakes up in either purgatory or hell
My favorite part of this book was at the end where the kid goes into the outhouse and says "he's behind me isn't he" and then proceeded to appear on an Amber alert
Almost as good is when they find his body and the first guy turns and says "you're gonna want to see this" aghh just amazing
@@topcatchillinbytrash That was good too but imo the second best part is when the judge says "war is god... uh that sounded better in my head"
@@ratman202”Did… I just say that out loud?”
@@CrammyCram"erm... awkward....."
"we've just the one pistol Holden" said the kid
"we? who's we? the console? the wii?" replied Judge
have you had a wee
uhh xbox
We? You speak french?
wendigoon, if you see this, i want you to know that this video specifically caused a huge spike in book sales for this!! i’m a manager of an independent bookstore and got an email about it from a rep!!! so glad to watch your content
lol, thats great.
nice!!
that's awesome, also kinda surprising cause it's free on audible, it actualy showed up on my wifes recommended account after I watched this video, gotta love that algorithm.
Holy crap that's amazing
@@suicidebylifestyle9267 i would rather have a physical copy than a digital one
"Whatever exists without my knowledge exists without my consent."
One of the most menacing lines from any villain in literature or otherwise. The Judge is honestly a legendary character. You know you're reading about an evil bastard when he buys a puppy just so he can chuck it off a bridge, and all you can think is, "Honestly I don't know what else I was expecting."
My farts are better than Wendigoon's farts.
Might also be the only villain in all of literature to sodomize the protagonist on the final page of the book. Spoilers😛
@@p-__ prove it.
One of those unforgettable quotes.
The Judge is one of the greatest antagonists of all time committed to the page.
@@jabrokneetoeknee6448 maybe put spoilers first next time
There’s a pattern of the judge accusing others of the crimes he’s committed. He accused the preacher at the beginning of defiling and killing a little girl, something he did. And then later accused the kid of causing the massacre he orchestrated. It’s interesting
sounds like a typical judge lol
Nah that's just who he is he'll do whatever it takes to keep dancing
Satan is known as The accuser of the brethren
judge seems so fearless and without doubt or worry in the story but that may be a secret nod to a sign of actual human weakness in him, wether guilt or something else
One detail that stuck with me is that the bear keeps dancing after getting shot, which implies a lot about how this bear was taught to dance if pain just makes it dance more.
Jesus Christ, this book really has everything doesn't it lmao
Didn’t even notice that; I thought the bear just fell, funny how one misses these things.
I love dancing bear
that scene, that whole chapter for that matter, is haunting. I read it before bed and had nightmares. The last few sentences of the book are so... ugh
lol thats kinda funny
Went into the local Barnes and Noble, asked for Cormac MaCarthy and she pointed to the shelf and said “Blood Meridian is over there”. She went on to explain at the register how popular it’s been lately. Cultural revival with one CZcams video, congrats man.
it's because a blood meridian movie was announced. not because of Wendi.
although that would be cool 😁
They didn't have it at mine unfortunately
@@mishmashmedley I mean this video has 3 million views as of this comment, so I wouldn’t be surprised if Wendi was also a big influence
@@Aristochronic who's wendi?
@@mishmashmedley I’m pretty sure it was him because this video came out before the movie was announced
I think the reason the judge likes James (the idiot) so much is because James is not autonomous. The first thing that he does when he is first given freedom and liberty is he goes and almost drowns himself. Not because he wants to die but simply because he doesn't know any better. I think that the judge pulls him out because James is not free to anything, not even his mind. He only is alive because the judge has consented him to live therefore James life belongs solely to the judges which is seen throughout the rest of the book.
I mean yeah he even constructs a collar, leash,, and crude umbrella for him, with which he parades about the desert in pursuit of the kid. definitely got "pet" vibes from the whole of his interactions with the idiot. perhaps it piqued some curiosity in him because he (the idiot) is one among a remarkable few who have no choice in their fates, as to whether they dance or not. similar to a pet or chattel or a beast of burden, but human
Yes, good take. I think Holden had also saved the idiot for the potential to evil and misery that he saw in him. When the women freed the idiot, washed him, dressed him, gave him candy, they showed him kindness. I think the Judge used that and derived pleasure from allowing the idiot to violate the little girls as in, he put the idiot in a situation where he betrayed the women who previously helped him by their association with the girls. This of course on top of the suffering and misery he derived from just the defilation that comes from being violated by someone as lowly as the idiot.
Now that you mention It, It kinda remids me of the Indian child he takes with
Judge "you ever danced with the devil under the pale moonlight" holden
i feel like The Judge being a child predator was one of the most obvious (and sinister) aspects of his character. the author had done such a good job painting him as a disgusting vile monster that even a mere mention of a child in his company, abuse immediately comes to mind. since the very very beginning of the story i knew that The Judge was a child predator. they really did nothing to hide it
Yeah but we have to remember that this was written in the 80s, still a time when mental health care and trauma were very societally taboo to talk about. I don't think McCarthy wrote that aspect of the Judge subtly because of that (I mean it's McCarthy the embodiment of not giving a fuck) but rather it was written subtly for its time.
@@chuckn4851 yeah it was more expressed to show awareness of predators and their mental state
Walking around naked kinda sus fr
Well I just started the video and now I know it's gonna be a doozy. Sadly I know how it feels to be a victim of such people. I have no mercy or sympathy for them. Thanks for the heads up though so I can mentally prepare. 👍 It's much appreciated.
"The second in command, now left in charge of the camp, was a man of gigantic size who rejoiced in the name of Holden, called Judge Holden of Texas. Who or what he was no one knew, but a cooler-more blooded villain never went unhung. He stood six foot six in his moccasins, had a large, fleshy frame, a dull, tallow-colored face destitute of hair and all expression, always cool and collected. But when a quarrel took place and blood shed, his hog-like eyes would gleam with a sullen ferocity worthy of the countenance of a fiend… Terrible stories were circulated in camp of horrid crimes committed by him when bearing another name in the Cherokee nation in Texas. *And before we left Fronteras, a little girl of ten years was found in the chaparral foully violated and murdered.* The mark of a huge hand on her little throat pointed out him as the ravisher as no other man had such a hand. But though all suspected, no one charged him with the crime. He was by far the best educated man in northern Mexico."
-From "My Confession: The Recollections of a Rogue"
Toadvine spat
Glanton spat
The kid spat
The priest hissed
The judge smiled
noticed throughout the whole story the judge never spits
the judge dont got them bars to spit
easy explanation, he’s only human on the outside, no salivary glands in that creature
Yes! I did notice this. Also that line gives off biblical vibes. “ Jesus wept “
He's more of a swallower.
Pretty sure it's because except that other guy who gets decapitated by Black Jackson, the judge is the only character to smoke. "Spitting" is often shorthand for chew-tobacco, which you spit your saliva to avoid getting nauseous.
"We can dance if we want to
We can leave your friends behind
'Cause your friends don't dance
And if they don't dance
Well, they're no friends of mine" ~Judge Holden
Dance the night away.
the Danger Dance
Dancing in the Moonlight 🕺
@@gundamwalrus8522EVERYBODY!
theres some hilarious stuff in there too..the kid gets enthusiastically recruited into that tough guy sanctimonius patriot military company and they immediately all get killed by natives in the first hint of battle.. lol
Big boy spat.
Tough guy company? They scored casualties before they even departed their first town, they lost several men just getting to mexico without any combat.
@@vassalofthenight9945 i just meant it was funny how big a deal they made about recruiting the kid like it was some great honor, like they were doing him a favor and then they all get killed almost immediately
@@clocksfinle7 oh yea, there was definitely a huge dissonance between their presentation and the reality of their combat readiness and stuff hahah
I just went to Half Price Books and asked about this book and they said that for some reason in the past couple of days Blood Meridian became one of the top three most asked about books.
VIle Eye also did an analysis on the Judge not too long ago as well
Lol that's pretty cool. I'm glad this video has blown up and gotten more attention to this book.
I went to Barnes and Noble for the first time in atleast a decade for this book . I felt very out of place compared to the others in the store, but walked away happy
@@Rabbonez so BNN most likely has this in stock? 👀👀
The audiobook is on CZcams for free
I showed Wendigoon to a coworker, and all he had to say was "I can never trust a man such luscious lips". Just felt like sharing that.
That just never happened
CZcams comments try not to lie challenge (impossible)
Lying? On the internet? Who would do such a thing!?
This is definitely a confession
OP is projecting lmao
Something i notice is every time the Judge does his....act, if you know you know.
He is usually naked or partially naked and seems in a good mood, singing, dancing, poetry. He revels in the act
So far i feel the theme of this book is "for evil to triumph, good men must simply do nothing." And that is totally exemplified by The Judge.
The Judge isnt Death or Old Scratch himself. Hes Evil personified. Evil at its most pungent, most unashamed form. Hes a pedo and doesnt hide it. Hes a murderer and revels in the pain and misery he inflicts on eveything and anything around him.
The Kid might be evil, sure. But all he had to do to change that was see The Judge for what he was and END HIM. But he didnt. A man did nothing.
And so evil triumphs. Again and again.
That's a good take.
The Kid is not evil. He strives for good but is prone to evil. He's the victim of his circumstances, the people and the world did not permit him to develop and grow the kindness in his heart, the kindness that the Judge mentioned. The Kid is entirely human and that is his only sin.
Wendigoon's really pushing that 45 minute mark
just a lil bit
Teeny tiny bit overboard
Just a smidge
A wee slight amount
Perhaps a speck more
“Whatever exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.”
I don’t know about others but that was so creepy to me because it reveals that even when the Judge is partaking it what seems to be harmless hobbies, it’s still colored by sadism. Everything he does, no matter how innocuous, is colored by his sadistic worldview.
Is I read this wendigoon started reading it too 😭😭
I wish someone would time stamp this. I’m halfway though and it hasn’t happened yet. I’m on edge.
@@coldworld5 2:26:40
That’s what is scary. The echo
reading the book, this section made me pause and reread several times
I actually had to read this book for a college course. It was brought up as part of the lesson about shock content in media. We had to read the book and then read an edit with heavy censorship, then write a paper explaining if we felt that the censored version was able to convey the same point as the original.
That actually sounds so cool! A bit of a headache, but a cool concept and assignment! What did you ultimately think? Was the edit better? I can’t imagine Blood Meridian without that detached portrayal of violence
How is blood meridian "shock" content? Whoever said that is a coward
@@AstralBeltor an idiot.
Did anyone just turn in "No" with enough Os to hit the length requirement?
@@AstralBeltHow is it not shock content? Its literally as graphic and violent as a book can really be, and it was intentionally made to be shocking.
I really liked the part when the kid says "im just a kid and life is a nightmare." And simple plan rides in on a tumbleweed
this one is crazy 😭😭🙏
"Anything that exists without my knowledge operates without my consent" is one of the most low-key badass lines that have ever been penned to paper.
I came looking for this comment.
i gotta steal that wtfff that’s so cool
Seems like something a gears of war/halo character would say ngl
And in context it's horrifying lmao
If consent really meant anything, he'd *almost* have a point.
So I guess the reason why the Kid never tries to kill the Judge is because he never stopped being wishy-washy with his life and desires.
He never fully committed to being an immoral outlaw nor a heroic vigilante, and so died never having lived to his true potential as either.
This is definitely part of what the book means to me. Well put.
“There is a flawed place in the fabric of your heart, did you think I could not know?”
Yes
The kid is never stern in his ways, he simply goes with the situation he finds himself in, being too idle or passive to enact his will on the situation
The moment of truth really was at the well, when Tobin begged the kid to kill the judge, and the kid's passive refusal is what caused the game of cat and mouse, the disappearance of Tobin, and ultimately the end to unfold the way they did
The kid had the potential to be a true dancer, but he don't much care for dancin
I hadn't seen the canonical images of the Judge before this video so based on the tall, wide, and pale descriptions I've been imagining him as Jack Horner from Puss in Boots. Personally I think that visualization just enhances the story.
Cackling over this comment
This was EXACTLY how I pictured him I was looking for this comment
1:20:00 Very very true. Consider the Roman excursions into Gaul. History casually mentions 60000 killed here, 100000 killed there. Easy to lose sight of the immense human suffering these people felt.
Bellona
The Goddess Of War
I feel like the killing of the 15 y/o is really just foreshadowing for the end of the book. “You were never gonna live anyway” is both a telling of The Kid’s fate and an homage to the theme of death always comes for you
Foreshadowing and also reflecting, which is cool. In having to kill a new kid, the man is in essence murdering the boy he once was, and with it all the potential he himself had. To me, this is the final indication that his wayward life, and his inability to live either fully in the world of good or evil, is finally sealed to one path, the road that leads back to Texas and back to the judge.
I took it was a reflection of how fortunate The Kid/The Man had always been, when the Ex-Priest Tobin had said, "Some day God won't love you." as he manages to push the arrow through. The Kid had all the opportunities in the world to die, but was constantly taken away from it. But now, this new Kid, he didn't have that luck. And as a reflection of the man, an indication that the luck was running out and really always had been. "You'll feel it when it's gone."
OR - or - a simple admission that if he was dumb enough to sneak up on The Kid and not kill him in his sleep, instead freezing when he woke up, he wasn't gonna make it very long as an outlaw
maybe death always comes for other people, but thanks to denial i'm immortal
vdd linda
I love how David Brown goes on his own sidequest while shit goes down for the main characters
I'd love to hear the whole story from his perspective.
David Brown: "What the hll happened here.."
Davey out here grinding for XP while his party gets raided. We’ve all been there.
David Brown is a DLC character lmao
I liked when he saw Toadvine and some other guy I dont remember just staring breathlessly at the ocean, which they've never seen. It's like they realize that there is nowhere to run or that their journey has reached its ultimate end.
*Juge in the corner of the party:* "they don't know I will be the last one dancing"
My favorite part was when The Kid spat and said “no more kidding around” and then he kidded all over the place
One thing I noticed is that when a girl goes missing in Tucson, a piece of her clothing is found bloodied at the foot of a wall "that she could only have been thrown over." This is in the same chapter in which the Judge shows off his immense strength throwing that meteor anvil around.
Probably used her and threw her away like garbage poor girl
@OMGkawa11Angel that terminology makes my skin crawl. Dear lord
Fuck, the judge is a disturbing character
@@MonolithicCyanTsunamihe was just holden around
@@MonolithicCyanTsunami he looked at her and said “I’m gonna judge your blood meridian”
Never been jump scared by a world of tanks sponsor before.
OMG
GOD DUDE I NEARLY JUMPED OUT OF MY SKIN 😭
Even though I read this comment beforehand it still got me 😭
There's a first for everything
I was trying to squeeze out my last ten minutes of sleep when that happened
“Whatever exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.” Is probably the most delusional and dangerous quote in all of fiction.
Finally someone says it, the amount of praise this quote and the judge receives in this comment section as if he isn’t just another delusional power hungry man fumbling for meaning in this world like every other person
The Judge was at each moment terrifying and enthralling in everything he said and did. Such a force of intelligence, cunning, and selfish evil.
the way that a 5 hr video of this man discussing a book is trending at #16 in GAMING speaks to how much CZcams loves us some Wendi!
#11 now haha
Just goes to show YT don’t know their own sh!t. 🙄 I mean, I don’t use the categories because my interests are too spread across the board, but videos consistently ending up in the wrong ones is something I‘ve read in multiple comment sections…
This is more commentary, you could make an argument for politics/history/education.
There’s something to be said in the fact that I’d rather watch a 5 hour Wendigoon video without any preview than a full movie I’m interested in.
#8 as of 5:30am est
-couldn’t finish the whole five hour video all the way through last night
-ready to finish the video, wake up to this confusion
-atleast there’s subcaptions now for the rest of my video watching
also as of rn it’s still at number 8 in “gaming” for some reason lol
❤ :)
Watching Wendigoon slowly transform into a GTA Vice City quest giver is one of the greatest pleasures of my life.
Quest started out as simple tax evasion, and ends up on the moon
“Hmmm nice bike!”
"Hey, I need you to go pick up Misty from Pole Position and take her to the party on Diego's yacht."
He’ll pay you to hunt the cereal elves with him.
@Nermac this is the best comment ever!
My favorite part is when The Judge says "We are the Blood Meridian!" and the book concludes.
“Yes judge Holden!” They all say in unison
and then he judges all over the place
There's a part toward the end that made me think.
"You're here for the dance," he said (the Judge).
"I got to go."
"Go?"
The Judge looked aggrieved.
That part, "the Judge looked aggrieved". To me, it reads like throughout this whole novel, the Judge was seeing the same thing "Fate" was seeing. That the Kid wasn't picking anything, wasn't committing to any path or lifestyle. So, when the Kid arrives, the Judge sees him and feels like the Kid has changed. Almost like he's an actual supervillain and is FINALLY going to fight an actual hero. But, in that moment, he's angry at him because he's still just being a spectator.
Just imagining the universe where The Kid decided to dance instead, the Judge just sitting in that outhouse all night like "...aaaaany minute now" just fucking cracks me up
And by investing all that time waiting for The Man, the little judge wouldn’t have “joined the dance” :(
I think if they had danced it would’ve been a duel then and there but the kid backed out
But the Kid did choose to dance. He went in the outhouse to participate in a ritual and become what the Judge wanted him to be. The victim in the outhouse wasn't the Kid, it was the little girl who disappeared (no way that's just a coincidence) and who was brought by the Judge as a sacrifice for the Kid's final initiation.
@@user-bt1cl4ex6dtrue
there’s multiple ways to interpret this ending anyways
The Judge wouldn't wait. He knows what lurks in the hearts of men. He waited for the Man because he understood him, his true nature. He knew the Man didn't have it in him to dance. That's why he waited. If the Man danced, if he did not have the kindness in him, Holden would've known about it as well and acted accordingly.
When Judge Holden started singing a cover of Bonnie Tyler's "Holden Out for a Hero," I legitimately cried. Truly the blood of all meridians. 🥹
1:15:31
I think the Judge is exactly who we're told he is at the start of the book, the priest that he interrupts and accuses calls the Judge the devil himself, saying that the devil stands before them, plus the fiddle being a part of his character along with the dancing, both things related to the devil
I'm shocked the performing family actually got to the place without dying or getting violated. Though only halfwayish through.
Right? Legit stunned.
You did a five hour book summary of a story that came out in 1985 for an audience saturated by viral content that usually demands no more than five minutes of their attention and your video is wildley popular. Your analytical abilities paired with your sincerity and story telling are obviously high quality and well-loved. Congratulations.
Most of his videos are in the hour range. What's his audience?
@@Reptonious calmm down mans is talking about the internet and you cant argue against him
Yes
@EuphemisticHug Dunno, but I listen primarily for the oddball content he drops, the long vid times (easier to listen to while working), and his sense of humor and candor 🤷♂️
TLDR
Toadvine getting angry at the Judge for killing the child actually makes total sense. A person doesn't usually become desensitized to killing _any_ humans, they become desensitized to killing particular humans through the act of dehumanization. Caring for the child breaks this illusion. Toadvine is no longer able to otherize the boy as easily.
Beautifully said.
Word
the book plays this for irony as well, i'm not sure it was Toadvine (I think it was Tobin), but one of the officers mentions finding it "unconsciounable" to kill a wolf, as he goes on to describe the slaughter of north american indians, who are, you know, people. It's the guy who gives the detailed account of the Glanton gang meeting the Judge to the Kid, the sulfur from brimstone and such chapter
Exactly what my two brain cells rubbing together were trying to put the words together to say
@@VolokArtyom tbf they kinda had to kill those Indians at that point
I like the part where the Judge does something bad and the kid says "erm, that just happened."
Maybe the true Blood Meridian was the friends we made along the way
Nah, I think that's Saki Sanobashi. I wouldn't want to be no friend of the Judge.
The fact this is a book review that was trending proves that it's wendigoon's charisma and video quality that keeps this amazing audience
**trending in gaming** lol
And the nightmare fuel topics, those help too. Reminds us to be thankful for every peaceful, beautiful day we are given.
Its definitely the fact that its gory and terrifying and not the fact that its about a book
@@justoverit every party needs a pooper that's why they invited you.
@@justoverit ummm but it is a 5 hour long book review. It is surprising that it’s as popular as it is. Because.. it’s a book review. There are plenty of reviews on offensive and dark books out there that don’t get this kind of attention soooo
I just find that bit at the end hilarious, with the fool kid and the Man talking.
"He's 15"
"I was first shot at 15"
"I ain't been shot!"
"You ain't 16 _yet_ ."
And then he proceeds to shoot him
I’m starting to suspect this judge isn’t really a judge at all 🤨
Barely scratched the surface of this video yet- but I wanted to check it out since I had read Blood Meridian for the first time a few months ago. Already I was floored by a detail in chapter 1 that had completely left my mind by the time I had finished the novel- and of course- of COURSE- the very first act of violence (besides the circumstances of his birth) recorded about the kid happens on the way to.... an outhouse.
Jesus, man... this book
I have to continually remind myself that book isn't that old. For some reason I always want to think of it as something written 100 years ago. The author is still alive in fact, he's old but he's still alive and kicking.
I think it just seems old because of the setting it refers to evoking a sense of "back then" - the Old West - of the accounts of a world that existed over a hundred years ago. The time and place inherently invoke a sense of distance and age that a modern audience can't really fathom anymore, except in fiction. This, coupled with the dense, flowery prose and dialogue calls back to an almost Shakespearean dialectic; a style _many_ hundreds of years old, told somehow in a much more modern age, by a much more modern writer. It feels almost anachronistic, like a story pulled forward through time that would have fit just as neatly (if not more so) in a time back then than it does now.
As Windigoon was talking about it I assumed this book was made in the 1800s and then he said it came out in 1985 and I was shocked.
@@Armintanzarian1212 my bad
Brother in Christ of course it’s going to feel old. It takes place in a partially true old west. Around 1700-1800s. While the setting of the characters is fictional, what they lived through wasn’t. It’s just taking a setting based off real events and throwing a spin. 1985 was a long time ago, and while it’s barely measured a generation away, what’s happened ever since 1985 can quickly make you realize it was a long time ago. What do I mean by that? The way of thinking has quickly changed ever since. Our technology has drastically changed as well, from pagers to a cellphone without a huge screen but rather a rectangle screen to see what numbers you pressed to a cellphone with a camera to our current smartphones. We have advanced so much the way people behaved 100 years ago might seem primitive to our current standards. So yeah, the book is old even if it was written 30+ years ago because it’s setting takes places in an older civilization
He literally released to books last year too
Favorite bit is when Judge says "Kids are cruel, Jack, and I love minors"
When the wind is slow
And the fire’s hot
The vulture waits to see what rots
Oh how pretty
All the scenery
This is nature’s sacrifice
When the air blows through
With a brisk attack
The reptile tail ripped from its back
When the sun sets
We will not forget the
Red sun over paradise
No but seriously holy shit Sundowner is totally Judge Holden. Surprised I didn't notice it before.
Dammit bro you made the whole vile and spoopy experience funny.
Holy fuck, did not expect to see a Max0r reference but goddamn do I love it! Thank you.
@@JillLulamoon Yeah holy shit that revelation shocked me as well! You have both of their ideologies reflecting war as the highest good or thing a man can strive to, both of them are very strong and skilled in combat, and both of them have weird shit going on with children. I would not be surprised at all if one inspired the other
@@kingcyrusrodan6772 not to mention both of them have VERY similar physical descriptions, down to the part about being hairless. the more i think about it the more im convinced that there's some kind of connection between the two
I always thought Judge Holden has a huge resemblance to Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now in terms of looks, character, actions, and what he represents. Maybe it was the main inspiration for McCarthy when making the character of the Judge
I think the main inspiration was based of the real life accounts of “Samuel chamberlains:my confession”
Even then, at least Kurtz had some amount of sympathy for civilians he interacted with directly. The Judge is just a paragon of pure evil.
@@JohnnyRocker023 wasn't It stated by Willard that bodies surrounding the Kingdom of Kurtz are also civillains, and not just enemy soldiers?
ITS THE MAN HIMSELF
wendy said cormac said the main inspiration was the devil from paradise lost
i totally agree about the descriptions of the landscape the characters move across. That's the stuff that won't translate to a movie. We've all seen Westerns and we can all guess what that desert landscape looks like, but that's not what my mind 'sees' when reading the book. You say it best when you say it doesn't even feel like planet earth! No film maker alive could bring that to life the way McCarthy's writing does.
one thing I'd like to point out is that despite the brutal depictions of violence, filth, death and blood, sexual abuse is NEVER described, only vaguely implied.
Honestly as someone with a huge trigger for SA in particular but loves disturbing content ... kudos to the author.
Thanks for this! It helped me decide to go ahead and read it.
But all of us can agree that it happens even if not said directly.
As opposed to Bastard Out Of Carolina which I read at....16. As a survivor. My UW lit teacher was so ignorant to the possibilities of triggers being a bad thing for people.
@@FlyForAWhiteTy triggered
The fact that he’s wearing a suit instead of his usual attire puts a tear on my face, he’s gotten so far
But still a funky shirt 😭❤️
He actually does dress to match the videos often, but I enjoyed the western wear as well today. I like the character acting (or dressing lol)
@@anarchyneverdies3567 when did he wear western wear
@@anarchyneverdies3567 Western? I don't see no cowboy hat, wedigoon is simply dressing in his uniform as a made man of the video essay Mafia lol
@@samuel-fg6wh that is Western Wear it's just that Western Wear when it comes to Suits happens to be very similar to how 1980s Miami look and how modern-day yakuza wear their suit because western style suits have the popped collar as well but it's the type of shirt that he's wearing and the way his hair is and the material of the suit itself, when wearing a suit it's a lot more complicated compared to simple casual clothing, a lot more goes into it, feel me?
I like the part where The Idiot stands up and says "what are we in, some kind of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, or An Evening Redness in the West?".
😂😂
Id say the judge keeps James around because of the suffering he sees in one with disabilities such as his and probably enjoys watching the circumstances he's forced into.
Don’t sell yourself short man. While being one of my favorites, this is an exceedingly confusing book. And you did a great job explaining everything in a digestible way!
weirdo. freak even go outside drink water alien
are the books he mentioned in the beginning also wrote in the same way, without punctuation?
@@nichellekmalvous6688 i think they are
@@fau3058 thanks
@@nichellekmalvous6688 No they aren't
The Glanton gang's violence literally sounds like something you would do after quicksaving. It is so easy and excessive and unbelievable
Well said 👌🏼😂
My thoughts exactly. I remember multiple times thinking, "I'm pretty sure I did something like this in Mount & Blade/Skyrim" after hearing about the umpteenth massacre and pillaging of a town.
The descriptions are often directly lifted from reports of US army massacres in Vietnam.
This is what you’d do in Minecraft when you get bored
lol You mean the violence or the ability to win so effortlessly at times as if they did it in their first try?
Regardless, the Judge is their quick save all throughout.
“if you dance with the devil, you may never dance again”
The judge was disappointed in the kid because the kid never danced, as in, he never took advantage of those opportunities to escape and chose a different life. Therefore the judge… judged him, and ends him because the kid at that point, the kid was metaphorically dead, neutral. the kid failed himself. He failed to dance, and the judge saw that. Hense his disappointment.
My understanding is that dancing, metaphorically speaking, when it comes to the judge is about killing. So its more that he was dissapointed that the Kid DID choose something else. He gave up the life of a roving murderer
Blood Meridian is now the #1 best seller in American literature on Amazon, no joke. It’s an amazing book, this is an amazing video, and you deserve every bit of influence you have.
I wish someone had the balls to make it a movie or a series
I'm struggling through it honestly. I've taken a hiatus from 3 years of Stephen King work to try out some of these "best" American Western novels, and honestly the landscape is beautiful and I love the setting, but McCarthy's prose is so hard to follow, I end up missing things and having to reread them over and over. I guess this isn't a good "first McCarthy" book to read.
@@PsilocybeJedi one thing that really helps with his run on sentences, is to treat the “and” as periods. They pretty much mark the end of sentences.
@adamtothefuture the run on sentences don't get me it's mostly the dialogue and lack of quotation marks
@@vipr1142 hey someone had the balls to make the road into a movie, so anything is possible
The fact that I read this entire book and missed or forgot half the things you talked about really shows how difficult of a read it is.
If its that difficult this man really needs to overgo heart of darkness by Joseph Conrad.
another really good and important read
Yeah I enjoy his prose and there are several instances that will be burned into my mind forever.
However, I did often find myself wondering wtf was going on, and had difficulty generating mental imagery at certain points. I like books where I can cleanly visualize what's happening, and if an author can't communicate that, then I believe that it's a fair criticism to make.
The lack of commas is kind of distracting but also kinda brilliant because sentences have different meanings depending where you place them
I completely missed how the judge was assaulting all of these kids in the novel. Didn’t realize what was happening until I started reading cliff notes lol.
i didn’t find it disturbing at all. i literally just find it impossible to read and understand
18:45 Judge literally accused a priest or whoever that guy with a Bible was of something he himself most likely did
My favorite part is what he says, “You sir, are a fish”.
i think one minor detail that wasn't mentioned is that when the Judge is berating the Man/Kid, he mentions how the Kid abandoned Shelby and Tate, which he had absolutely no way of knowing normally. That alone makes me think that the Judge is supernatural, and is some sort of personification of the devil.
I think he's a personification of war not the devil.
Playing devil's advocate, the judge may have taken a guess by the fact that the kid was no longer with them. He didn't know what happened to them but knew enough
they're the same person my dudes.
@@ACA400 The Judge and the Kid?
The Judge was literally based off of Satin from Paradise Lost.
This book had me staring at the roof in my bedroom in middle school like “hell of a thing, killing a man”
Dude I'm just imagining a 13 year old wearing a cowboy hat, assless chaps, a bandolier and a thousand yard stare😂
bro really said im 14 and this is deep
Unforgiven reference?
Take a drink kid
"I ain't like that no more."
My favorite part of the story is when the guys meet Sundowner and they all pee in a volcano to make bombs
This truly is the blood meridian
11:50 Chapter 1
27:48 Chapter 2
33:08 Chapter 3
42:12 Chapter 4
49:55 Chapter 5
58:31 Chapter 6
1:01:37 Chapter 7
"Glanton who's drunkenly stumbling out of bed, decides to just start a problem." After nearly two and a half hours of constant death and tragedy, and after reading the story myself cover to cover, I'm beginning to become as desensitized as the characters in the story, and I started laughing uncontrollably at this line.
I had kinda the same problem. The graphic violence actually bored me after a while. But the book was too good to not finish.
Yeah. At some point, it's just another Tuesday. @@willieearles3151
he just like me fr
I had the same issue with Joe Abercrombie's Wisdom of Crowds. The constant executions and perversion of justice and liberty in his fantasy world's version of the French Revolution made me numb to the violence. I love it when a story can make me feel like the characters - emotionally exhausted in these two cases - rather than just telling me, or even showing me how the characters feel.
@@willieearles3151 What was strange for me was that I also felt the same, desensitized and bored by all the human violence, but when the guy shot the dancing bear and it tried to keep dancing until he killed it I was actually angry, literally angry at a book at something that didn't really happen.
The kid is different because he is the only member of the group who holds some mutinous sense of agency. His choices aren’t important because they’re good or bad, but because they’re his. This is why the Judge and the kid share an animosity that exited before the kid was even born. The Judge will not allow anything exist without his consent, but the kid’s decisions do.
dam, that's a good one
“Together we are blood meridian” the judge said “judge is right we have to work together!” They all said in union before judging all over them
I got 20 minutes into the audiobook version and realized I didn’t have the attention span for it
5 hour book review is #4 trending for gaming
I am so proud of Mr. Wendigoon
Trending on gaming? Wtf
epic gamer moment
It’s the world of tanks sponsor
Can confirm, just checked the gaming tag.
Wild
"Did you threaten to injure this man?"
"No, I didn't threaten anything. It was a promise. I promised to kill him."
Terrifying and oddly badass
I don’t make threats, I make promises.
Badass Davey Brown
It's something that can be applied to this day, usually about lower stakes, but I've talked a couple people down with similar language. I'm not a badass by any means, but when something is important, threats don't exist, only statements of fact
The original quote is better "I didn't threaten him I told him I'd whip his ass and that's as good as notarized"
@@ethanbaker6264 Davy Brown is always low-key kind of been my favorite character of the book. The judge is one thing, but there's something so badass about David Brown
The meridian was the blood we spilled along the way
20 minutes in and the Judge is like: I love spreading missinformation >:)
When he said "I would have loved you like a son", my mind first went back to the story the judge had told about the traveler and the saddle maker, both of which had sons. And both the son's outcomes by different means. A son with an evil father becoming evil, and a son with no father and guidance. On a physical level it's a creep attempting to give a young man the squeeze, and on another level it's an allegory for embracing evil.
One of the things I appreciate most about his writing is he often and very skillfully writes what appear on the surface to be simple, straight-forward, Hemingway-esque paragraphs, comprised of seemingly simple sentences that turn out to be significantly deeper upon further examination. And I wouldn't even classify it was wordplay. It's rarely a clever but obvious twist of words or double-entendre. It's usually much more subtle than that. I liken it to how you might say _still water runs deep_ about a a quiet/calm person concealing a more passionate/thoughtful inner world. Like that, but applied to prose.
@@RobExNihilo This is very well worded and well said
Such high praise from @@GiraffeFlavoredCondoms is the highlight of my day. In fact, it made my hole weak!
That quote and the Judge embracing him in the outhouse reminded me of the parable of the prodigal son (a twisted version of it). I don't think the Kid is the victim of what happens in the outhouse. I think he's the perpetrator. The little girl disappearing right before a mysterious and violent scene that's never shown is way too big a of a coincidence. The Kid gave in and became a dancer along with the Judge. Whatever he did to the girl was his initiation. The Judge embraced him because even after the disappointment the Kid had been to him, he finally came back to accept his fate as a complete man of war.
I liked the part when The judge turns to the camera and said maybe the real blood Meridian was the friends we made along the way
I judge that we're on the Blood Meridian.
I prefer the part where he goes "It's blood Meridian morbin' time"
His heart's bigger than his feet
Made??? nah 🍇 ed😂 I'm sorry
And then he killed another kid while he stomped on a kitten
The part of the book that I enjoyed was actually the aspect of the gang riding around. Kind of similar to red dead redemption. I feel like everyone hyper fixates on the evil of the judge so much that they miss just a cool western story.
I love red dead as well
You never read the book.
The riding around goes a bit too long. I enjoyed the camps and dialogue, but there was a lot of grogginess in the traveling across the state, especially the short raids and massacre, not really separated.
@@_wtdwo_ I agree, there’s a lot of descriptions on how they ride around a lot. But it makes sense, that’s what people mainly did at the time, especially people with a job such as theirs. But it did go on for a while. On the other hand, it made the parts of the story that were extremely brutal even more impactful, which is always important. Plus, it was significant because it really told you that what they were doing was long, tedious, and boring, and the judge and other people in the book were willing to go through that just to do some senseless killing, which really showed the true nature of some of the characters. At least, that’s my interpretation of the book.
well theyre riding around to murder so.
Ive recently found you, honestly through Papa Meat, but just wanted to say I loved this a lot and wouldnt mind watching more recaps of your favorite books or explanations of other famous books. Very good format and I enjoyed it thoroughly, keep it up Wendigoon
The Judge was offerings candy to children? what a outstanding citizen! I hope nothing bad happens with him :)
This made me laugh a little too hard. Yep, I’m going to hell.
He offers them free (internal) massages and backrubs too! A real stand up fellah!
@@KingFluffs alright man lmfao
All those kids said they were 18. The judge was tricked.
The Judge even gave that Apache boy a free ride on his horse, he was the first recorded instance of ride-sharing.
Cormac McCarthy died today. I literally just finished the book last night and started this video this morning. He shaped me 10 years ago with the Road and reshaped me again 10 years later as a new father on a reread. Now again with Blood Meridian i start a new journey into what it means to be human, and to better myself. Rest in peace. You've touched the lives of more people and in more ways than you could imagine.
Finnished it yesterday too, first Cormac McCarthy book. rest in peace
Finished the book as of today aswell, I am far from a seasoned reader but even as I didn't understand all of what was written (as well as the subtext within) it still filled me with a sense of fearful admiration.
Truly a magnificent writer, rest in peace McCarthy
I read it last summer, stumbled upon this video moments before I saw the news. Just gutted. He achieved an unparalleled body of work due imo to his unparalleled perspective, his vocabulary, while grandiose, almost always says what he means perfectly.
I JUST finished Blood Meridian two minutes ago and it’s also my first Cormac book.
Now this book is just that much more personal, damn. Rest Easy Cormac.
Wow, I just finished it about 30 minutes ago.
Ever since I found Wendigoon I've gone hard watching the videos in his roster, and I've loved every minute of it. But when I came across this video I watched it and was so intrigued that I went and listened to the entire audiobook, which is the first time I messed with a book at all in years. Now here I am again re-watching this video because I'm so amazed by the writing and characters in the story that I needed a refresher on what Wendigoon shared. Thank you for everything, including putting a spotlight on this story!
my sister heard the part where he described the judge and she called him kingpin from that spider-man movie what do I do
If it helps I keep imagining him as Jack Horner from Puss In Boots
I imagined him as Sundowner from Metal Gear Rising.
@@jonathanchan7896I feel like Holden and Sundowner would get along fantastically.
i started freaking out too at the “i would’ve loved you like a son” bit, i don’t think a fictional character has ever scared me as much as the much The Judge does, and i’m not even reading the actual book