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Similes
Chapter 17
Explanation and Analysis—Mystery and Irony:
The Judge makes a paradoxical claim about mystery and people's desire to be told mysteries as he orates around a fire, which the ex-priest Tobin rightfully notices is ironic:
There is no mystery to it, he said.... Your heart’s desire is to be told some mystery. The mystery is that there is no mystery. He rose and moved away into the darkness beyond the fire. Aye, said the expriest watching, his pipe cold in his teeth. And no mystery. As if he were no mystery himself, the bloody old hoodwinker.
"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.
Related Themes:
Chapter 22
Explanation and Analysis—Speak with the Dead?:
Chapter 22 ends with the kid attempting to help an old woman, but ironically she was dead the whole time:
He spoke to her in a low voice. He told her that he was an American and that he was a long way from the country of his birth and that he had no family and that he had traveled much and seen many things and had been at war and endured hardships. He told her that he would convey her to a safe place, some party of her countrypeople who would welcome her and that she should join them for he could not leave her in this place or she would surely die.... She was just a dried shell and she had been dead in that place for years.
The most the kid has ever talked about himself or his journey to another character occurs in the moment above, where he briefly recounts the story that is Blood Meridian to this dead Mexican woman. The fact that the kid mostly keeps to himself, and when he decides to share the most he ever has about his life to another person it was in fact to nobody but himself, creates a moment of situational irony.
In fact, the moment is doubly ironic because he is trying to save her life, which he almost never does for Mexican characters in the story –– recall that the kid has been explicitly and implicitly responsible for dozens, if not hundreds, of Mexicans' deaths. However, the old woman he tries to save was already dead. Once more, death permeates everything in the story.
This story is significant as it suggests the kid is beyond saving—he can no longer become a life-giver, only a merchant of death. However, it does show the kid's growth over the course of the novel, which is a coming-of-age story about the kid. The kid choosing to speak in Spanish similarly reveals this growth. Unfortunately, it is too late, both for this woman and the others he has murdered.
Related Themes:
