Óðinn’s Avatar: McCarthy’s Judge Holden in Blood Meridian

abstract:In contrast to studies that establish superficial resemblances between Judge Holden of Blood Meridian and such monolithic forces of evil and destruction as the archons of Gnostic religious tradition, this article equates this larger-than-life figure with Odin, the Norse god of war. Affinities are established with this paramount god in such spheres as the patronage of battle rage and poetic inspiration; law and judgment; the absence of a moral dimension; the search for knowledge as a means to power; interrogation of the dead; shamanism and spirit travel; the hosting of a select company of fallen warriors in Valhalla; dandyism, joviality, and storytelling, but also in such darker areas as illusion, deceit, betrayal, whimsy and the gratuitous act. Preeminent is the vision of war as central to all life. Despite Holden’s claim that he cannot be fully known, the most plausible source for McCarthy’s adaptation of Odin is H. R. Ellis Davison’s Gods and Myths of Northern Europe, first published in 1964 and reissued as Gods and Myths of the Viking Age in 1981.