Judge Holden
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Judge Holden is purportedly a historical person, a killer who partnered with John Joel Glanton as a professional scalphunter in the mid-19th century.[1] To date, the only source for Holden's existence is Samuel Chamberlain's My Confession, an autobiographical account which has been criticized as unreliable. Chamberlain described Holden as well-spoken, intelligent and physically quite large. He also described Holden as perhaps the most ruthless of the roving band of killers led by Glanton.
A fictionalized Holden is a central figure in Cormac McCarthy's novel Blood Meridian. In the novel, he and Glanton are the leaders of a pack of nomadic criminals who rob, rape, and kill across the border between Texas and Mexico. He is described as seven foot tall and completely bereft of body hair. One study of the novel reports that Holden is "unscrupulous, violent, and more than a little spooky." [2]. Throughout the novel, he murders scores of people, including children. Finding verification of Holden's existence has been a hobby for some Cormac McCarthy scholars.
In 2002, Book magazine rated Holden, as appearing in Blood Meridian, as the 43rd greatest character in fiction since 1900.[3]
[edit] Judge Holden in Blood Meridian
As depicted in Blood Meridian, Holden is a mysterious but authoritative figure, a cold-blooded killer, and possibly a pedophile. Aside from the children he openly kills, he is seen enticing children with sweets, and a child often goes missing from locations when he is in the vicinity. Holden displays a preternatural breadth of knowledge and skills - paleontology, archaeology, linguistics, law, technical drawing, geology, prestidigitation, and philosophy, to name a few.
The assumption that Holden is an albino may well be mistaken. His paleness is not a feature of albinos only, and there is no indication that he has colorless irises, poor eyesight or the extreme sensitivity to sunlight that this normally entails. A slight hint might be that at the well (watering hole) where, after the ferry slaughter, he is insistent upon obtaining Toadvine's hat. He is entirely hairless, not even having eyebrows or eyelashes, very unusual for any human being, even an albino; the trait is common in people with alopecia universalis. This strange appearance, as well as Holden's awareness and anticipation of situations, enormous strength, quick reactions, apparent immunity to sleep and aging, and other abilities point to his being something other than human. In Blood Meridian, he represents a demon, brujo or some other essence of evil who thoroughly understands the ruthless acts committed.
The Judge Holden character delights in misleading, manipulating and setting men against one another, and in complex argument. It is a mystery how Holden obtains all the arms and dress and horses of the tough and wily Toadvine and David Brown. Holden mysteriously appeared at the crucial time before the Apache siege of the volcano. Also, he was the best prepared for the Yuma attack on the ferry (one assumes that the cannon was not normally in his room). He may well have had a hand in Tobin's final disappearance, as well as the arrest of Toadvine and Brown. He mysteriously knows the details of Tobin's ecclesiastical background. He sketches interesting artifacts and botanizes in his notebooks but habitually destroys at least some of whatever he discovers.
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. Harold Bloom declared that McCarthy's Holden is "the most frightening figure in all of American literature" [4] and compared him favorably with Shakespeare's Iago.
