No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

No Country for Old Men is a novel of borders. From the standpoint of genre, Cormac McCarthy plants himself at the border of Western and noir and pastoral. The novel also borders explicit violence while being, at times, understatedly reserved—same goes for its sentence structures: the dialogue is terse, brief; the narration provides clause after clause sewn together. All these stylistic choices run parallel to the novel’s setting: the border between Texas and Mexico, where a drug deal has gone horribly wrong.

Our protagonist, Llewellyn Moss, is out in the desert and stumbles across a heroin deal gone bad, one littered with dead bodies and a briefcase left behind full of cold hard cash. Llewellyn claims the case and takes it home to his skeptical wife, whom he keeps in the dark about his situation. To be fair, he’s completely truthful about the bag being full of money, but his dynamic with his wife assures that she will not believe him.

Unfortunately for Llewellyn, he has entered into a network of forces that far exceed his capacities. There are cartel members at war with each other, bounty hunters, and police that are trying to decipher what the heck is happening with all these dead bodies. One of my gripes with the text is that so many of the characters feel interchangeable. The terseness of the characters’ speech, for example, emphasized their wit but not their personalities. Each could be each—that is, except for the novel’s villain.

Bought to life in the film adaptation by Javier Bardem, Anton Chigurh is a truly iconic villain. In the text, his piercing blue eyes reflect a cold universe as he slaughters his way through Texas and beyond. Chigurh tracks down his pray and uses a cattle gun to murder people for as little as needing their car. His calculated and measured approach is sinister, but the text runs the risk of glorifying his ultraviolence by making him the character from whom we get the most insight into the novel’s core themes.

There are a few critical moments with Chigurh that serve the novel’s core themes. There is a moment when Chigurh initiates a gas station attendant into a coin toss game. He flips the coin and asks for the man to call it. The man protests because the stakes have not been made clear to him—he has nothing to gain. McCarthy is masterful in crafting the suspense of the scene, because we know that the man is betting on his life—and I think at some level he understands, too. Chigurh explains the genesis of the coin and the twenty years it took to get to that moment. Essentially, the scene is a reflection on fate. The past latches on and makes the moment inevitable—nearly. The only “choice” is left to chance for the man: a fateful 50/50. One of the reasons Chigurh is so compelling is because he, unlike the other characters in the book, seems to have a clear vision of how the world operates (more on this later). By giving him the chance to articulate his philosophy, he is given special priority in the reader’s mind, despite his horrific violence.

The other stand-out Chigurh murder-spree scene is when he kills Llewellyn’s wife. For a bit of a background, Llewellyn is provided the opportunity to return the money. Chigurh promises to kill him, but to let his wife live. Llewellyn is killed, somewhat randomly, at the hands of the cartel, undermining Chigurh as the agent of fatalism. Nonetheless, Chigurh arrives at Carla Jean’s house and tells her about his promise to kill her. Carla Jean protests, noting that Chigurh himself made the promise and that he could give up his mission. His rigidity assures her: no, the choice was already made.

The title of No Country for Old Men points towards the difference in philosophies at play. Chigurh reflects a precise, specific code for living. The world has rules, standards, and consequences, even if they’re partly determined by chance. What’s strange is that the sheriff, Ed Tom Bell, seems to have an affinity for Chigurh’s philosophy, even if he won’t acknowledge it. There’s a passage where Ed Tom explains how everything is changing and the younger generation no longer subscribes to conventions and so on. It’s as though he longs for the certainty and predictability of Chigurh’s philosophy.

This odd tension helps to explain, perhaps, Ed Tom’s obsession with—and inaction toward—Chigurh. Ed Tom cannot understand the logic of the villain’s chaos. He continually floats towards him but whenever he gets close, he shies away. In a moment of pursuit, Ed Tom seems to pull back, fearing his own death.

No Country for Old Men is unlike most books I read, especially in the realm of literary fiction. There are lengthy action sequences and pages of senseless slaughter. I initially found it a little challenging to get immersed—-there’s a lot of description of the desert and a play-by-play of the action. As the plot advances, I found myself more invested, if still a little confused about the interchangeable cast of characters. I wish there was a little more personality or experimentation with ‘voice’ for the characters, but the random anarchy of McCarthy’s world keeps the story running; there’s a moment when Chigurh is in a car accident and it could be what brings him down—except, he’s too clever. Following Chigurh murdering Carla Jean, I felt the story essentially had done what it needed to, but then Ed Tom provides a lengthy reflection that has the narrative peter out. 

Generally…I liked it! Happy reading!