Finally read Blood Meridian, and Holden is not what TikTok made me think he was

I finally got around to reading Blood Meridian. I first heard about the book through Vile Eyes' analysis of Judge Holden, which I watched like 3 years ago. I also knew the story of The Road mostly from YouTube summaries and then, about two months ago, I finally bought Blood Meridian.

I already knew a lot of the spoilers, but between all the Judge Holden glazing I've been seeing on TikTok and going back to the analysis of the book, I finally decided to read it.

And honestly, Holden is not even close to what I expected.

I've seen people describe him as this guy who can convince you that you need to die, or as something worse than the Devil himself. And yeah, he's obviously not a good guy, but Brown, Glanton, and even some of the other characters are just as bad or arguably worse.

What I found much more interesting about Holden is his charisma, intimidation, and intelligence.

The guy is constantly navigating uncertainty and taking advantage of how little the people around him know. He uses his size and appearance to intimidate people, but at the same time he's incredibly intelligent and articulate. And what's interesting to me is that, instead of just being cruel for the sake of being cruel, he seems to actually understand how conflicts work and how to manipulate people.

Obviously he's still incredibly violent and cruel, and I'm not trying to make him sound harmless. But I found him much more fascinating than outright evil.

Even near the end, when the book plays with the question of whether he killed Brown and Toadvine, I was expecting something much more extreme. Then you find out he didn't, and the ending is obviously bleak as hell, but it actually made me think that Holden isn't quite as bloodthirsty as the internet makes him out to be.

Maybe I'm missing something, but after actually reading the book, I find Holden much more interesting as a character than as some kind of ultimate evil villain.

Judde holden hype on the internet