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. In the final pages of the novel, McCarthy makes more direct reference to the Judge as a supernatural entity, or even as a concept personified. In 2002, Book magazine rated Holden as the 43rd greatest character in fiction since 1900. He is regarded as one of the greatest characters of modern literature, likened to a "Captain Ahab of the desert." Harold Bloom described him as "short of Moby Dick, the most monstrous apparition in all of American literature." Holden has been characterized as " the most haunting character in American literature." Scholarly debate In his essay "Gravers False and True: Blood Meridian as Gnostic Tragedy", literature professor Leo Daugherty argued that McCarthy's Holden is—or at least embodies—a gnostic archon (a kind of demon). Harold Bloom, who declared Judge Holden to be "the most frightening figure in all of American literature", even came to regard him as immortal. However, unlike Daugherty, Bloom argues that Holden defies identification as being under any "system" such as Gnosticism, citing the passage in the book stating that there was no "system by which to divide [him] back into his origins". Rather, Bloom "resort[s]" to literary comparison with Shakespeare's Iago, a methodical dispenser of strife. Todd has written of Holden representing a radically figurative notion of evil who stakes a claim against the natural order of the universe. References Characters in American novels of the 20th century Cormac McCarthy characters Fictional characters with albinism Fictional characters with gigantism Fictional demons and devils Fictional gang members Fictional gangsters Fictional mercenaries Fictional murderers of children Fictional pedophiles Fictional rapists Fictional serial killers Literary characters introduced in 1985 Male literary villains People whose existence is disputed Western (genre) outlaws