Judge Holden

Judge Holden is purportedly a historical person, a murderer who partnered with John Joel Glanton as a professional scalp-hunter in Mexico and the American South-West during the mid-19th century.[1] To date, the only source for Holden's existence is Samuel Chamberlain's My Confession: Recollections of a Rogue, an autobiographical account of Chamberlain's life as a soldier during the Mexican–American War. Chamberlain described Holden as well-spoken, intelligent, and physically quite large, as well as perhaps the most ruthless of the roving band of mercenaries led by Glanton, with whom Chamberlain briefly traveled after the war. Holden, Chamberlain describes, "had a fleshy frame, [and] a dull tallow colored face destitute of hair and all expression." [2]

Judge Holden
First appearanceBlood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West
Created byCormac McCarthy
In-universe information
Full nameJudge Holden
NicknameThe Judge
GenderMale
OccupationScalphunter
AffiliationGlanton Gang
NationalityUnknown

Chamberlain makes it very clear that he strongly disliked Holden: "I hated him at first sight, and he knew it," Chamberlain wrote. "Yet nothing could be more gentle and kind than his deportment towards me; he would often seek conversation with me." [3]He was popularized as the main antagonist of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian (1985).

In the novel, "The judge is a massive, hairless, albino man who excels in shooting, languages, horsemanship, dancing, music, drawing, diplomacy, science and anything else he seems to put his mind to. He is also the chief proponent and philosopher of the Glanton gang’s lawless warfare." [4]

Historical basis

In Samuel Chamberlain's autobiographical My Confession, he describes Holden:

"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."[5]

Blood Meridian
Holden is heavily featured in Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian (1985).

A fictionalized Holden is a central character in Cormac McCarthy's 1985 Western novel Blood Meridian. In the novel, he and Glanton are the leaders of a pack of nomadic criminals who rob, rape, torture, and kill across the borderlands between the United States and Mexico. Throughout the novel, Holden brutally murders dozens of people, including children. Searching for additional evidence for Holden's existence has been a hobby for some Cormac McCarthy scholars.

As depicted in Blood Meridian, Holden is a mysterious figure, a cold-blooded killer, and, it is implied, a child-rapist; aside from the children he openly kills, he is seen enticing children with sweets, and a child often goes missing when he is in the vicinity. At one point in the novel, he is seen naked with a naked twelve-year-old girl in his room. Holden displays a preternatural breadth of knowledge, including paleontology, archaeology, linguistics, law, technical drawing, geology, chemistry, prestidigitation, and philosophy.

He is described as seven feet tall and completely bereft of body hair, including eyebrows and eyelashes. He is massive in frame, enormously strong, an excellent musician and dancer, a fine draftsman, exceptionally articulate and persuasive in several languages, and an unerring marksman. His skin is so pale as to have almost no pigment. This strange appearance, as well as his keen, extremely fast reflexes, strength, agility, apparent immunity to sleep and aging, and multifarious other abilities point to his being something other than a normal human. In the final pages of the novel, McCarthy makes more direct reference to the Judge as a supernatural entity, or even as a concept personified.

In 2002, Book magazine rated Holden as the 43rd greatest character in fiction since 1900.[6] He is regarded as one of the greatest character of modern literature, likened to a "Captain Ahab of the desert."[7] Harold Bloom described him as "short of Moby Dick, the most monstrous apparition in all of American literature."[8]

Scholarly debate

In his essay "Gravers False and True: Blood Meridian as Gnostic Tragedy", literature professor Leo Daugherty argued that McCarthy's Holden is—or at least embodies—a gnostic archon, a kind of demon.[9] Harold Bloom, who declared McCarthy's Holden to be "the most frightening figure in all of American literature",[10] has even come to regard The Judge as immortal.[11] However, unlike Daugherty, Bloom argues that The Judge defies identification as any being under any "system" such as Gnosticism, citing the passage in the book stating that there was no "system by which to divide [The Judge] back into his origins".[12] Rather, Bloom "resort[s]" to literary comparison with Shakespeare's Iago, a methodical dispenser of strife.[13]

In the video game Red Dead Redemption 2, there is a minor reference to Holden: his name is signed on a document.[14]

References
  1. "John Glanton". xroads.virginia.edu. Archived from the original on 2003-04-04. Retrieved 2004-07-28.
  2. http://xroads.virginia.edu/~Hyper/HNS/Scalpin/heads.html
  3. Sepich, John Emil. “The Dance of History in Cormac McCarthy's ‘Blood Meridian.’” The Southern Literary Journal, vol. 24, no. 1, 1991, pp. 16–31. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20078027. Accessed 2 Aug. 2020.
  4. https://theconversation.com/the-unfilmable-blood-meridian-91719
  5. https://texashillcountry.com/monster-who-was-real-judge-holden/
  6. Paik, Christine. "NPR: 100 Best Fictional Characters Since 1900". www.npr.org.
  7. https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/desperately-seeking-cormac/
  8. https://www.avclub.com/harold-bloom-on-blood-meridian-1798216782
  9. Daugherty, Leo (1999). "Gravers False and True: Blood Meridian as Gnostic Tragedy". In Arnold, Edwin; Luce, Dianne (eds.). Perspectives on Cormac McCarthy. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Project MUSE. ISBN 9781604736502.
  10. Hartman, Andrew (January 14, 2014). "Blood Meridian and Its Implications". U.S. Intellectual History Blog. Allendale, Michigan: Society for U.S. Intellectual History. Retrieved September 22, 2018.
  11. Hage, Eric (2010). Cormac McCarthy: A Literary Companion. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company. ISBN 978-0786455591.
  12. Bloom, Harold (2009). Novelists and Novels. New York City: Infobase Publishing. p. 535. ISBN 978-0791093733.
  13. Turner, Edwin (September 30, 2010). ""The Authentic American Apocalyptic Novel" — Harold Bloom on Blood Meridian". Biblioklept. Missing or empty |url= (help)
  14. https://www.kotaku.co.uk/2019/10/26/red-dead-redemption-2-is-a-pale-imitation-of-its-inspirations
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