Jazmin Cuarenta
Doctor Palumbo
English 103
April 29, 2013

God on Earth: Looking at the World through the Eyes of the Judge What pushes people to do unexplainable things? What possible motives could someone have to do such horrific actions? In the book Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy a character known as the Judge takes the world into his own hands and does with at as he pleases. Along with other main characters, he will go on a journey to kill Native Americans for the simple reason of scalps that will then turn into money. Throughout the book we will see the Judge’s character reveal itself and frighten our souls and minds with his constant ideal of what this world should be and who he should be on it. Although the Judge portrays himself as a human being that should not be taken of importance, his actions and thoughts say otherwise, he is to feared and watched over because his dreams and thoughts will soon become reality. His cunning ways and thoughts will get him a long way in life, and with that knowledge he is searching for he soon will be the God on earth he desires to be. The first description of Judge Holden we attain in the book, is in the tent where Reverend Green is having his sermon. An enormous man dressed in an oilcloth slicker had entered the tent and removed his hat. He was bald as a stone and he had no trace of beard and he had no brows to his eyes nor lashes to them. He was close to seven feet in height and he stood smoking a cigar even in this nomadic house of God and he seemed to have removed his hat only to chase the rain from it for now he put it on again. (McCarthy 6)
Through this description we can already sense a sort of superior feeling that he feels towards God and the surrounding people around him. The fact that he removes his hat not as a sign of respect towards the reverend or God, but only as an action for his own benefit. Shows he is not a man of religion nor is he a man of the people, but instead a man who worries about himself and his desire for the ultimate God like self he wishes to reach. He then continues to demonstrate the power he holds over others along with the strong influence he drives within people by claiming; Ladies and gentlemen I feel it my duty to inform you that the man holding this revival is an impostor. He holds no papers of divinity from any institution recognized or improvised...the gentlemen standing here before you posing as a minister of Lord is not only illiterate but also wanted by the law in [many] states...on a variety of of charges. (McCarthy 7)
This furthermore supports the idea that when Judge Holden feels a sense of threat towards himself, he finds anyway to destroy that piece in this case Reverend Green. “ I had never laid an eyes on the man before today. Never even heard of him” (McCarthy 9). According to The Final Solution by Hannah Arendt people like the Judge and Adolf Hitler, use people who are common and have no outrages violent backgrounds to their advantage to dispose of others that threaten their plan. Adolf Hitler wanted the perfect race and wanted to exterminate anyone that did not portray what he considered to be perfection.In order to achieve this superior race of his he came up with;
The so-called "Euthanasia" program [which] was National Socialist Germany's first program of mass murder, predating the genocide of European Jewry, which we call the Holocaust, by approximately two years. The effort represented one of many radical eugenic measures which aimed to restore the racial "integrity" of the German nation. It endeavored to eliminate what eugenicists and their supporters considered "life unworthy of life": those individuals who--they believed--because of severe psychiatric, neurological, or physical disabilities represented at once a genetic and a financial burden upon German society and the state. (Euthanasia Program 1) Judge Holden wanted to eliminate anyone and anything that had greater knowledge than what