Chapter 14

This chapter was pretty good. It had a bit of everything here so if you like violence it's got it here. Love description? Look no further. How bout some hot steamy cup of pedophilia? Chapter 14 delivers. Before I start, I just want to point out that this chapter has a lot of similes. I counted at least seven in the first two pages, and there are even more throughout. I know there's been quite a few similes and metaphors in the past thirteen chapters, but for some reason I noticed these similes more frequently. It almost seemed as though McCarthy was just seeing how many of these things he can fit in 20 pages. Just thought I'd share, and yes this is pretty much just saying.


The chapter starts with an amazing description of the scenery before anything interesting happens. A good simile showing this is at the beginning on page 186, "the rain had dragged black tendrils down from the thunderclouds like tracings of lampblack fallen in a beaker." This is a pretty cool line about something simple as a thunderstorm. lamp black is a powdered soot from the combustion of carbonaceous materials. A picture of the fine powder can be found here.
A line I don't understand on this part is at the very end of 186, " the riders slumped forward and rightly skeptic of the shimmering cities on the distant shore of that sea whereon they trod miraculous." I understand the skeptic part, that the cities aren't that shimmering or whatever, but what's McCarthy talking about with the trod miraculous part?

When the company went to the bodega and saw the fiddler, it was interesting that when the judge payed him, he looked at it like it wasn't enough. That was one picky guy. It was cool that they both started dancing when he played though.

I thought the line on page 190 was interesting, "ringing the churchbells with pistolballs in a godless charivari." A charivari is a custom of a community to show their disapproval of marriages, wife beaters, unmarried mothers, and the like. This could mean that these people would use force to show their disapproval. The priest in this section seemed really corrupt. I thought so with the line, "when he rose he disdained to take up the coins until some small boys ran out to gather them and then he ordered them brought to him." I get that he tells the boys to get him the coins, pretty selfish.

I dont understand the quote on page 190, "Stood dark and smoking and apocalyptic in the dim lampfall." McCarthy is talking about the Amercians, but how do they look apocalyptic?

The part with Judge and the kids was just to obvious not to see coming. It seems every chapter has some sort of judge and child action, and at least nothing happened to this kid. Does anyone else think the judge is like a younger, more violent type of the old man Herbert off Family Guy? I mean give the judge a good 40 years and he'll be exactly the same. The line on page 191, "He'd fill his pockets with little candy deathsheads and he sat by the door and offered these to children passing on the walk under the eaves." If that's not the most cliched pedophile move ever, the judge busts out the coin behind the ear trick to the kid selling puppies. God, you can't get much plainer than that without simply stating it.

The puppy scene was not very violent. definitely had nothing on the baby smashing scene. All that happened was they went in the water and got shot, and McCarthy didn't even describe the corpses. I suppose McCarthy is a cat person.

Once again, Glanton goes crazy. He seems to be doing that more and more often. The funny thing is that he had to be strapped down. It's weird that the company's leader is going just blatantly insane. I think this is even further foreshadowing of Glanton's ultimate demise.

I have a question on page 193. When Glanton and everyone one are shooting / getting shot, who are they shooting with? I think it is just the Mexican citizens of the town, but I'm not sure. Also why exactly are they shooting them? Did they know of Chihuahua City's bounty on Glanton this fast? I mean there was no telephones back in the day, and I'm not sure if the telegraph was invented yet.