Ambiguous endings are tough. They always leave people speculating, theorizing, and arguing with each other over what they think the author means to say, when ultimately we can never truly, 100 percent know everything that happens in the end. Such is the case with Blood Meridian when the Kid encounters the Judge waiting for him in the Jakes.
All we can take from the ending is what McCarthy gives us. We know that the Judge is naked and smiling, and that he “gathered [the Kid] in his arms against his immense and terrible flesh”. We know that when a stranger opens the door a few minutes later, his reaction is to say “Good God almighty”. Lastly, we know that the Judge emerges from the jakes but the Kid does not, and that the Judge then enters the saloon dancing and says that he will never die.
I don’t think as readers we can responsibly say what exactly the Judge does to the Kid for those few minutes alone in the jakes. I don’t think that’s the point–the point is how it ends, with the stranger’s shocked, wordless reaction and the Judge’s dancing. Why is it that after three hundred pages of explicitly detailed carnage that only now do we get a shocked reaction, and no words at that? Secondly, the fact that the Judge emerges and the Kid does not signifies to me that the Judge has finally prevailed over the Kid. The Judge has won. As soon as he is finished with the kid he returns to the saloon and dances for the crowd, all of whom are completely entertained by him. Though the least graphic, this is the creepiest scene in the entire book, simply because of the reaction the Judge gets from the crowd. They adore him, and he claims that he will never die.
I really think I have figured this ending out, it seems fairly obvious to me.
The “judge” and the “kid” are one in the same throughout the book. The characters are merely different representations of the two somewhat conflicting mindsets of the main character, the Judge is simply just the evil and violence inside of the kid. Next time you read the book, imagine the judge as such and everything makes perfect sense.
The judge NEVER existed in a physical state of being.
Throughout the book it is very strongly implied at numerous points that the judge is a child molester. The obvious reason why he takes the idiot along and is found standing naked above an also naked idiot (and indian child).
At the very end of the book, the kid gets a midget prostitute, but the book seems to imply he could not get aroused, so left for the outhouse. When he goes to the outhouse, he finds the bears lost little girl inside. He certainly doesn’t find the judge, at least in physical form.
The judge is nothing more than the towering ideal of violence and evil inside every individual.