IBanalysis

By John Ferrandino

Characters: Judge Holden, The Kid, and John Joel Glanton

Plot: A youth from Tennessee travels to Texas and meets a seven foot, bald albino named Judge Holden, a polyglot and polymath, who reveals that a evangelical preacher is a beast fucker and pedophile. The Kid joins a group of filibusters into raid across the border in Mexico, who disband when the captain’s head is freed from his neck. The Kid meets the Judge again when he joins Glanton’s Gang, Native American scalp-hunters. They receive praise and fear in Mexico and the Southwest United States. The Judge is Glanton’s right hand man, but also the gang’s diplomat and Renaissance man, but grooms and kills a child, encourages cruelty, convinces the gang to attack and kill Mexican and American settlers, and convinces the Kid to rape a little girl.

Inspirations: Biblical texts, My Confession: Recollections of A Rogue by Samuel Chamberlain, The Hangman by Maurice Ogden, Manifest Destiny, Lost Generation writers style; Hemingway, Steinbeck, and Faulkner, American Realism, prose style; The Divine Comedy, The Iliad and Odyssey, and the Bible, Heraclitus, Goethe’s Faust, Moby Dick by Herman Melville, and nihlism

Cormac McCarthy minimizes punctuation in his writings, such as no quotation marks for dialogue, like poetry. McCarthy does this to make reading his novels feel like natural speech, with the pace determined by his reader. His archaic language makes the reader feel like the characters, feels absolute as sacred texts, and is used by other American Realist writers, such as the Lost Generation. He also does not translate the Spanish from Spanish speakers.

The Glanton Gang and the Judge are real people. John Joel Glanton was a Arkansas settler, Texas Ranger, and leader of a group of scalp-hunters from 1849 to 1850, hired by the Mexican government to eliminate the Apache in Northern Mexico. A member of the gang, Samuel Chamberlain, wrote a memoir detailing the gang’s actions and Glanton’s second in command, a highly educated, ruthless, and tall man, Judge Holden.

This judge is a more Faustian interpretation, with an appearance similar to another Faustian, the Hangman from the Maurice Ogden poem. His paleness also brings to mind the whale Moby Dick whose white skin represents the void.

Manifest Destiny is the 19th century ideology behind American imperialism, placed in practice by the filibusters and Glanton Gang. The goal of from sea to shining sea, goes across many meridians on the North American Continent, each involving spilt blood, hence the title.

The Texas Revolution and Mexican-American War had just concluded with the annexation of Texas and other northwest territories of Mexico above the Rio Grande River.

Motifs: Violence, horses, Holden’s appearance, geography, geology, botany, archeology, chemistry, paleontology, history, creation, scalps, archaic language, and lack of quotation marks

The violence that occurs is written in a matter of fact manner, its part of the natural history as much as the change in geography; murder, mutilation, insanity, sadism, rape, pedophilia, animal attacks, disease, exposure, arson, and theft. Holden is a scalper, and his appearance matches his victims, hairless and wasting away till all that is left is bleached bones. He is a polymath and polyglot, recording cave paintings, flora and fauna, and fossils, creating gunpowder from natural elements, playing the violin, lecturing on natural history, etc….

The lack of quotation marks make it feel real, absolute like a New Testament text, and visceral as the desert. Each chapter begins with a list of events to happen like individual fables.

The gang doesn’t just take the scalps for sadistic pleasure, but as a commodity to trade for money. Holden sees it as taking the Natives’ knowledge, the same way he collects and sketches artifacts, flora, and fauna.

It is not illogical to suspect that Holden is a supernatural immortal, a dark lord from high fantasy fitting in the norm of a modern human; The Devil as a frontiersman, Mephisto as a cowboy, Sauron as an explorer, Beelzebub as a renaissance man, Loki as a entrepreneur, or Shiva as a conman. He is the stranger that brings war and temptation.

Horses are a constant throughout the Kid’s journey, being speed, beauty, and power. They have always been a tool of conquest. Even if there is no direct cultural link, the gang feels like the Mongols under Genghis Khan, conquering the Eurasian Steppes. The Apaches they are scalping might just be the descendants of the Steppe nomads that predated the Mongols who lived in Central Asia, then traveled across the land bridge between Russia and Alaska during the Ice Age.

Holden’s knowledge is like a colonizer, he takes what he wants and burns the original, holding the power of its diffusion. He is thrilled by the condition he leaves his victims in.

Conflicts: Aftermath of Manifest Destiny, pursuit of knowledge and wealth, man vs nature, the nature of war, conquest, man vs the devil, American exceptionalism vs reality, hedonism, and sadism.

During the 19th century, the United States had expanded across the continent, going to war with Mexico to claim their northern territories past the Rio Grande River. The Mexican-American War and Texas Revolution saw Native Americans and Tejanos now negotiating with the US Army for control of their lands. The Texas Revolution was started by a armed squatters called filibusters creating insurgencies and taking away lands from the First Nations and descendants of Spanish settlers, till the US officially declared war on Mexico for protection of US expats. Even after the war resulted in the loss of Mexican lands north of the Rio Grande, filibusters still made incursions into Mexico. the Kid joins one of these groups in Forth Worth under Captain White. Once they depart, they are ambushed by the Apaches and captured by the Mexican who decapitate Captain White. His reasons for invading Mexico are to claim land for settlers to get annexed by the US and kill Mexicans who he views as barbarians and inferior. The Kid runs into the Judge and Glanton and joins his scalp-hunter gang, hired by the Mexicans to quell the Apaches.

The Judge says that he joined for a intellectual curiosity of the Mojave Desert. He finds cave paintings and copies them down, then incinerates them, becoming the suzerain of that knowledge. When the gang is cornered by Apache warriors, Holden uses bat guano, sulphur and urine to create gunpowder, which wipes out the Apaches.

The US was successful in their colonization because they had superior weapons and numbers. Holden’s battle with the Apaches shows that they can be defeated by the resources of their own land. The war didn’t start when the white man came, it waited for them. Consider now beyond the petty prejudices that exist only as long as a man can pump blood to his brain. The Spanish Conquistadors made was with the Apaches and their fellow natives. These natives who have been so decimated that they are collectively known as Redskins or Indians and to differentiate each one is considered trivial, because they are all treated the same, savages or a minority to fight for, they warred with each other. All civilizations were once tribes that battled bears and other hominids. So as Holden says, the war waited for humans.

Holden has command over the Delawares in Glanton’s Gang, given to the same pleasures as the Anglo men. The East Coast tribe assimilated as lackeys for the Americans. The gang’s demographics include Blacks, Whites, Latinos, and Native Americans. They have no reason to be harmonious with each other, just a conglomerate of raiders in the desert, like the Mongols and Turks of the Eurasian Steppes. After battles with the Apaches, the gang is celebrated by the Mexican towns, awake to drink, gamble, eat, and fuck, and sleeping in the mayor’s palace. They enter heroic guest, then leave feared as demons. The Faustian Holden encourages Glanton to expand their assets, by scalping Whites and Mexicans for coin, and commandeer a ferry in Yumas territory. Holden disappears, The Kid and a few others escape, and Glanton is killed by the Yumas. The Kid grows into a man thirty years later and meets Holden again after the death of a dancing bear. The Judge dances and plays the violin naked on top of the inn while the Man fucks a little girl.

“Whatever exists in creation without my knowledge, exists without my consent.”

” War is god”

He never sleeps. the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die.”

Themes: Evil does not need an ideology to be committed, its just done by humans with opportunity

knowledge is a tool and a weapon

history doesn’t repeat, it just rhymes

culture doesn’t have to be related, it just happens when no one is looking

nature is brutal

There is no film adaptation of this, but the closest film that matches the violence, desolation, and setting is The Revenant.