Blood Meridian Chapter 21 | Chapter by Chapter Read Along
transcript
show notes
Chapter 21 is short, but it gives us one of the clearest looks yet at who the kid has become.
Wounded and still being hunted by Judge Holden, the kid has multiple opportunities to abandon Tobin and save himself. Tobin even tells him to go.
The kid refuses.
He also gets an opportunity to fire at the Judge and doesn't take it, raising another question we've been carrying since Chapter 15: is the kid actually afraid of Judge Holden?
Then comes one of the great reversals of the novel. The kid and Tobin are starving and near death when they're rescued by Indigenous people, the same people Glanton's gang spent much of the novel hunting, killing, and dehumanizing.
In this episode, I look at the kid's loyalty to Tobin, his hesitation to shoot the Judge, the continuing supernatural aura surrounding Holden, the return of our bird imagery, and the possibility that the landscape itself now seems to have turned against the survivors.
Only two chapters remain.
Next up: Chapter 22.
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