Antagonist

Character Role Analysis

The Judge

Like the kid, we might not be sure what to think of the judge right away. Yes, he shows up in the book by telling lies and getting a priest beaten up, but that's fairly normal behavior for the men in Blood Meridian. The more we learn about him, the more we might suspect that the judge is some creature from another world—a nether world, if you will. By the end of the book, he tries to murder the kid and we know from that point on that anyone who tries to kill our protagonist is probably our main antagonist. In the book's final scene, it seems as if the judge actually succeeds in killing the kid. The judge ends the book by dancing, and it looks like we have to say the bad guy wins in Blood Meridian. Or do we….?