“Blood Meridian” by Cormac McCarthy (post 2): Author gives Judge Holden so many abilities, attributes, and contradictions as to suggest multiple personality.

Judge Holden is depicted as a person with too many abilities for one person; as being both adult and childlike (due to child-aged alternate personalities?); as being ageless and frozen in time (as some alternate personalities are); as being able to write with both hands at the same time (guided by a different personality for each hand?); as sometimes appearing psychotic, but other times not:

“As depicted in Blood Meridian, Holden is a mysterious figure, a cold-blooded killer…Holden displays a preternatural breadth of knowledge and skills—paleontology, archaeology, linguistics, law, technical drawing, geology, chemistry, prestidigitation, and philosophy, to name a few.

“He is described as seven feet tall and completely bereft of body hair, including no eyebrows or eyelashes. He is massive in frame, enormously strong, an excellent musician and dancer, a fine draftsman, exceptionally articulate and persuasive in several languages, and an unerring marksman. His skin is so pale as to have almost no pigment. This strange appearance, as well as his keen, extremely fast reflexes, strength, agility, apparent immunity to sleep and aging, and multifarious other abilities point to his being something other than a normal human being” (1).

He is described as nearly seven feet, but having childlike face and lips, and small hands; able to write with both hands at the same time (2, p. 140); and “He appeared to be a lunatic and then not” (2, p. 133).

In short, the character’s amazing multitude of diverse attributes and behaviors raise the possibility that he has multiple personality.

1. Wikipedia. “Judge Holden.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judge_Holden

2. Cormac McCarthy. Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West [1985]. New York, Modern Library, 2001.