Blood Meridian Chapter 7

This chapter was pretty confusing to me, probably because of the multiple speakers. McCarthy probably included all of these characters to show the different ideas and opinions within the group of Indian killers. Although all of the hunters are chasing the same objective, they have very different views of eachother and of the people they encounter. It seems like Glanton is the short-tempered killer of the bunch while the Judge is the intellectual and the black Jackson is the universally hated and watched person.

I thought that black Jackson's expression after being talked to by the Judge (page 85) was pretty funny. McCarthy writes, "The black was sweating. A dark vein in his temple pulsed like a fuse." McCarthy adds this detail to show how strange and uncomfortable it was to have such a complicated and intellectual conversation in the 1800's, especially in the west. One of the things about education in the 1800's was the fact that most teachers were not trained or certified (123helpme.com). Another thing was that most people didn't make it past elementary school because they either didn't have the money to support them or because they had to work in order to live (ex. on a farm or to help support the family). A suprising thing I noticed was that Glanton was the leader instead of the Judge. This is shown on page 95 when the men are sitting around the fire getting their fortune's told. The Judge tells the gypsy to tell the fortune of "el jefe" (the boss, spanish-english dictionary) or Glanton. I thought that the Judge would have been the leader because of his size and intelligence however I have an idea why he chooses not to be. The Judge probably doesn't want to be the leader because he doesn't want to deal with the responsibility of punishment in case the posse gets caught. Also, I think that Glanton shot up the Mexican town in order to place fear into the population of the town, and with fear comes respect.

McCarthy creates the ulitmate duo when he shows that Glanton and the Judge are friends. They have totally different attitudes and egos (remember the Id and the Superego) which allows them to be stable. An example of this is on page 96 when Glanton is getting his fortune told. At this point, Glanton tries to kill the fortune teller yet the Judge stops him my hugging him (awww). This shows that Glanton's Id is balanced out by the Judge's ego or superego and vice-versa.

There is a lot of figurative languange and descriptions used in this chapter. One detail I noticed was that McCarthy focuses on comparing things to the parts of a gun, especially the bore. This is probably used to increase the intensity of he characters in the posse by comparing them to something they all have, a gun (and big ones also). Some good similies were on page 87 and on page 91. On page 87, McCarthy writes, "The necklace of human ears he wore looked like a string of dried black figs." I thought this was funny because Toadvine is wearing this necklace and he doesn't have ears. McCarthy uses this to show how Toadvine and the kid are evolving to the ways of the posse and their barbarian looks. On the other page, McCarthy writes, "...snapping cloth were towed mutely from sight beyond the reach of the firelight and into the howling desert like supplicants at the skirts of some wild and irate goddess." In this simile, McCarthy shows how amazed the men are about the strange actions of the gypsys.

This chapter was pretty cool because we got to learn more about the group of Indian scalpers. A few things that I thought were interesting were when Glanton shot the old woman in the head and the fact that they scalped her afterwards. I'm not really sure why Glanton shot the woman because she didn't really do anything to anger him. Maybe it was his Id talking instead of his actual ego.