Blood Meridian: Paradox 3 key examples

Both singing church hymns and cursing God alternately seems paradoxical, for how can one commit themselves to being both religious and blasphemous? The dichotomy of sin and salvation, religious devotion and blasphemy, is in many ways embodied by the ex-priest Tobin as a character, and this paradox is but one example of that dichotomy.

However, in a world of cruelty, violence, and sin, it should come as no surprise that even the religious curse God. The injured man, in pain and knowing his moment of reckoning is near, without much food or drink, curses his plight while simultaneously seeking salvation. Recall that the man alternates his cursing and singing: perhaps he curses God but then sings hymns to ask for his forgiveness.

Furthermore, if, as the Judge proclaims later, "war is god," then the paradox is no paradox at all, and the battle to be religious is religious in and of itself. The novel often intertwines scenes of religious devotion, or alleged religious devotion, with sin, and this apparent paradox is but one example of that overlap.

There are a few paradoxes evident in the above quotation. First and foremost, there is a paradox in God speaking through that which is silent, be it rocks, trees, or stones. The Judge is conveying a broader notion that God speaks through his creation, not through scripture. Nevertheless, if God speaks through his creation, does he himself really speak at all?

At the same time, there is a meta-paradox inherent in the claim "books lie" coming from a book, even if the subject of the claim "books lie" is scripture, not Blood Meridian. On one hand, it can be argued there is no real paradox here at all: Blood Meridian is a work of fiction, and thus in a sense it is a lie. On the other hand, to claim "books lie" in a book, and yet believe that claim to be true, is to say that books do not lie, an irresolvable contradiction. Indeed, questions of truth and ambiguity dominate the novel, which McCarthy intentionally situates in the historical record, further complicating questions of the novel's truth.

Ultimately, the whole encounter is paradoxical, considering that it ends with the Judge laughing at people for believing his preaching and calling them fools. If they are fools for believing him, then it appears that he is lying when he says God speaks through the rocks and the trees. And yet, the Judge makes many seemingly serious claims about God and privileges physical objects at other points in the novel, insisting on carefully sketching certain objects in his ledger. The Judge's silver tongue produces many such paradoxes, where his claims both unravel as alleged lies but at the same time appear to perhaps be fundamental truths. This paradox, and the others mentioned above, all suggest that the Judge is not to be trusted, and that to take his word as truth is to be misled. The Judge being a liar, despite at the same time having outsized knowledge of the world, is a recurring throughline in the novel.

"The mystery is that there is no mystery" is about as paradoxical a statement as they come, but one can make meaning of the claim nonetheless. While people crave tall tales, ambiguous stories, and riddles they can puzzle through, for the Judge the truth of the matter is that there is no secret to life, no mystery to be sorted out. However, the fact that the Judge, a man full of mystery—a man with a mysterious origin, abilities that none can explain, and who is somehow someone everyone has met before—claims there is no mystery to life is ironic. Moreover, the fact that the Judge explains this idea through a paradox is doubly ironic, because a paradox is the exact sort of riddle the Judge is claiming one craves but yet does not exist.

Furthermore, the judge is so frequently dishonest that he cannot be taken at face value, coloring all that he says, including this seemingly paradoxical statement. The novel oscillates from mystery to stark reality: from portraying the brutal truth of American imperialism to vague gesticulations at what it means to live in a world of sin. The claim "the mystery is that there is no mystery" is just one more moment of oscillation, a claim that is at once ambiguous and certain. 

Moreover, the fact that a devilish figure in the Judge claims there is no mystery, while the religious figure in the ex-priest claims there is mystery, is an amusing reversal of standard portrayals of faith, where religion involves certain belief in God while the irreligious lack this certain belief in God's existence.