Image Study

http://www.aegallery.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/ComancheVictorySongsm.jpg

 

The above picture represents the Comanche Attack on the Captain's group in which many strangely and extravagantly dressed Comanche slaughtered all but a few. In the attack, a legnthy description is given to their outfits. They wear everything from animal skins to a "bloodstained weddingveil." They also paint their horses, as above, with suns and birds and other such patterns. The importance of this image is that the Indians represent the Wrath of G-D. A notable feature of the book is the use of fire, (the suns on the horses) and the sleeping wrath G-D that is "sleeping." A mentor-like character called the Mennonite (a branch of the Anabaptist) warns the three new recruits including the Kid that, "the Wrath of G-D lies sleeping. It was hid a million years before men were and only men have the power to wake it. Hell aint half full. Hear me. Ye carry war of a madman's making onto a foreign land. Ye'll wake more than the dogs." And they did just that. They went marching into Mexico and the Wrath of G-D in the form of the Comanche met and destroyed them.

http://www.all-art.org/early_renaissance/dante7.html

 http://www.all-art.org/early_renaissance/images/literature/dante/54.jpg

 The next picture is from when the Glanton Gang was in Santa Cruz. Right after the door to the stable they were sleeping in shut, the souls began to glow. In the paragraph, the mare that shared the stable with them, "snorted and shied at this luminosity in beings so endarkened..." Basically, these murdering thiefs still had intact souls with which could give off their inner fire, or the fire of Creation that burned inside of them. Somehow their souls come alive and are visible for all inside to see.

 http://jerryandmartha.com/yourdailyart/images/friedrich3.jpg

This represents all of the ruined churches in the book. All of the ruined chuches the Kid finds are in Mexico and, being a symbol for religon, G-D, and order, means that this region devoid of structure and full of anarchy has no G-D. G-D does not reach into Mexico either because He can't or because He doesn't want to. "There were no pews in the church and the stone floor was heaped with the scalped nad naked and partly eaten bodies of some forty souls who'd barricaded themselves in this house of G-D against the heathen."

 

http://public-domain.zorger.com/paris/Paris-Catacombs-unsorted-pile-of-bones.JPG

This last picture is of the last encounter of the Judge, Tobin, the idiot, and the Kid. They are at Carrizo creek where thousands of bones of dead sheep lie and where the Judge wounds Tobin. This is also where supernatural elements come out: the judge, the idiot, and the expriest seem to be able to appear and disappear at will. This leaves the Kid as the only person who can make a solid stand. When he goes to shoot the horses, the idiot is seen watching him and his head makes a 180 and his draw drops open like seem demon from hell. When he turns around form shooting the horses with the intent of killing the idiot, he finds nothing there. Throughout this entire ordeal, the sense of being in the middle of a battle between the forces of good and evil is certainly felt.