These antagonists represented ideas which could not seem to be countered by any means I could think up:
- For every reason I produced which could explain some sort of weakness in the system of the Party, a direct address to counter it was included at some point during the book; if not, it at least always felt like the proponents of their philosophy could come up with some excuse in their defense.
- The concept of a "Lovecraftian horror" --something which I may add seems exaggerated after actually reading some of his works-- was also 'unbeatable' since you're not supposed to know all of the details which encompass them.
- Beatrice, too, seemed untouchable, since she always presented the possibility that any weakness or flaw she seemed to have was just due to her acting.
And the Judge of this story happens to have all of these traits to some degree. He may at some points appear as just a very competent human, while at other times he seems to be a completely invincible supernatural force, defended both physically and logically by his beliefs. As he continued to appear more and more supernatural as the plot progressed, the possibility that all of the occasional human faults he displayed were just manipulation on his part increased, as well.
All of these opponents felt 'invincible' to me, in that I couldn't find some sort of rhetoric which would be able to win against the ideas which they represented. Usually, however, an author which presents these things eventually reveals an opening which could be used to create a line of reasoning which could overturn the ideas which these opponents represented. In 1984, the appendix after the main story reveals that Big Brother eventually collapsed. Beatrice does eventually show just how frail she is. Lovecraftian horrors aren't as incomprehensible once you realize that their authors are all themselves human, thus any dimensions which may apply to them are, too, of the human mind.
The Judge, however, never gets an explicit death. If anything, the book ends with his victory celebration. Of course, the epilogue can serve as some way of combatting him, since you can read its descriptions as being metaphors of a typewriter, which returns to the idea of the book itself serving as a witness to his crimes, and that the reader has some weapon against the idea of the extinction of the truth. Furthermore, there is one other point in the main story itself where the Judge is implied to be "killable" in some way, and that's when he and the Kid encounter each other in the desert after Glanton dies. There is quite a bit I would like to discuss about the implications of this, though I will wait until some more people finish the book. In any case, that particular part is what I've been thinking most about after finishing it, and I would like to hear others thoughts on what McCarthy meant by that.