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| “ | You ain’t nothing.[…] Even a dumb animal can dance. | „ |
| ~ The Kid rejecting Judge Holden’s speech. |
The Kid is the main protagonist of Cormac McCarthy's 1985 anti-Western epic novel Blood Meridian. Inspired by a real-life runaway from Tennessee, the book follows his travels with the Glanton Gang and his interactions with the insidious Judge Holden.
History[]
Born in 1833 to a poor family in Tennessee, the kid has an innate “taste for mindless violence,” and by the age of fourteen runs away from home to lead a dissolute and vicious life. Early on he falls in with Captain White’s army during its unauthorized invasion of Mexico, which results in the army’s destruction and the kid’s imprisonment in Chihuahua City. However, he is soon set free to ride with Captain Glanton’s gang of scalp hunters, contracted by the Chihuahuan government to hunt the Apaches. The kid proves himself an effective killer, yet, unlike his fellow scalp hunters, he also retains a shred of his humanity. He endangers his own life on several occasions to help and accommodate his comrades-in-arms, as when he removes the arrow from David Brown’s thigh when none else would, or spares Dick Shelby’s life in defiance of Glanton’s orders. For these small acts of mercy, the Judge accuses the kid of violating the gang’s amoral spirit of war for war’s sake, of poisoning its enterprise. In 1878, at the age of 45, the kid (by then called the man), is implied to be brutally murdered in a Texas outhouse after an encounter with the Judge, although this is not entirely confirmed.
Personality[]
The Kid is a violent thug but is far better than the Judge and most of the Glanton Gang. Likewise, he puts a little more value on the well-being of his comrades than Glanton or the Judge would tolerate, despite still having a lot of violence brewing in his mind. In the end, he's just a tired, bitter man who desperately wants peace after his time with the Glanton Gang has destroyed the lives of the few people he cared for and brought him absolutely nothing.
External Links[]
- The Kid on the Villains Wiki