No Country for Old Men
People’s free will is limited. No matter how we say that we have the liberty to decide over our lives, social situations occur and constrain our choices in life. The book No Country for Old Men was written by Cormac McCarthy in 2005. McCarthy claimed that he only writes about the places he has been to.
The title of the book was taken from the first line of the poem “Sailing to Byzantium”. No Country for Old Men is set in Western Texas along the U.S. and Mexican border in the 1980’s.
It narrates to us the fictional story of Llewelyn Moss, Ed Tom Bell, and Anton Chigurh. The book, though set in Western Texas, does not have the regular cowboy plot. The good guy does not win in a duel with the bad guy. Llewelyn Moss was a Vietnam War veteran who happened to be in the wrong place, at the wrong time. He witnessed a drug cartel operation gone wrong and took $2.4 million of drug money. Because of this, Anton Chigurh, who was hired by a drug lord, came after Moss and the money. He was told to rid of Moss and get the money back. Ed Tom Bell was a sheriff and it was in his jurisdiction where the operation of the drug cartel happened. Numerous other characters were also present in the story but served supporting roles to the main characters mentioned above.
The story begins with the villain, Anton Chigurh, strangling a Sheriff from another place. Early on the story, the role of Anton Chigurh was already depicted to be the ruthless, relentless, cold-bloodied criminal, who intriguingly uses a lucky coin toss before he kills his victims. He lets his victims choose between heads or tails before putting a bullet in the victim’s head. The coin that Chigurh tosses before killing his victims represents fate and free will.
For Chigurh, when you toss a coin there is an equal chance that you get heads or tails. However, whatever the outcome, it would no longer matter since the decision has been made by his victim a long time ago. Chigurh believes that his victims’ actions led them presently to where they are. His victims already made a choice of being killed by Chigurh. The same with goes for the coin that Chigurh uses with his lucky coin toss before he kills his victims, the coin has been from one hand to another, travelling from people to people until it reached Chigurh’s hands. One of his victims mentioned that Chigurh has the free will and can choose not to kill his victim. But Chigurh said that he shares the same situation with the coin, he is in the present situation because his victim made a choice a long time ago.
In the story, Chigurh acts as someone who gives the death sentence to a person. He believes that his victim has used his chances and free will long before, and the consequence of that is for Chigurh to kill them. Chigurh behaves like a judge handing down sentences to someone who committed a crime. However, for most cases, Chigurh kills somebody because he was hired to do so. He is unremorseful for the killings he makes because of his belief that his victims have previously made choices that brought about death as a consequence.
Going by Chigurh’s idea about the coin, it is true that the actions we take will have consequences, which may come later or immediately. In living our lives, there are always choices to make. The choices you opt for now will have an effect on your future. It does not matter if we may like to think that a minute choice will have no consequences. There will be consequences.
Also, we tend to make the same choices because we use the same thought processes when we make decisions. For example, you choose a set of friends because you share the same liking for the same type of clothes without knowing that more than the same preference for clothing, you will have to deal with other things about them, the majority which happen to be not aligned with your other preferences. Therefore, your little step in befriending them ends up with you finding ou that you do not really like them at all.
Along with the subject of free will in the story, fate, chance, and luck come into play. Fate is the expected outcome of a proposed plan. Chance is the possibility of things happening. And luck is a force that brings good fortune. Those who believe in luck will hold on to chance in the hopes of influencing good luck to come their way. In the story, the characters do not know if fate, chance, or luck is in control over their destiny. Chigurh’s victims would look at their life as an example of luck not working their way because the deciding factor of their life’s end is a coin.
If we look at the story of Moss, we can say that the three ideas may have may conspired because he was brought into a situation by chance, he was lucky to find a briefcase full of money, and it was his fate to come face to face with the villain.
As for the other main character, Sheriff Bell, it was fate that brought him to where he was. He became a sherrif because he planned to become one, and while there were events in the past that he would haunt him, he made those part of his plan to retire in order to have peace of mind.
Also a major character in the story is Llewelyn Moss, who took the money from the scene of a botched drug deal. In the crime scene, he encountered a wounded man who asked for water but he was unable to provide any since he did not have any water with him at that time. Moss tried to go back to the wounded man after he had gone home and realized the amount of money the briefcase contained.
If there is a good guy in the story, it was Moss. Moss was a good man, however, fortuitous events made him commit bad decisions which resulted into a lot of trouble for him and his wife. His life resembled the boar tusk that he was wearing around his neck. The tusk represents the relationship of the hunter and the hunted. Moss was a hunter but as the story progressed, he was the one being hunted.
Another theme in the story is justice. Moss and his wife were among the victims of Chigurh. A single action by Moss led to his and other people’s deaths. Justice, the principle of reaping what you sow, should be given to the people killed by Chigurh. However, in Chigurh’s point of view, he saw himself as someone delivering this justice. He believes that he handed out the fate to his victims who were reaping what they sowed.
Here, the story somehow depicts an unjust world. Crimes happened and yet, no one is held liable. Even Sheriff Bell, who was tasked by the government to carry out justice in his jurisdiction saw that justice was missing. That is why, in taking his job seriously, he ends up thinking about retiring from his sheriff job because he is unable to deliver justice and solve crimes under his jurisdiction.
This brings us to the final main character in the story, the last good man standing, Sheriff Ed Tom Bell. A World War II veteran who is very dedicated to his job as a protector of the people of Terrell County. He has a lovely wife, and a daughter who died but keeps having imaginary conversations with. Sheriff Bell received a medal for fighting in the war, but he has a dark secret behind it. He reveals this secret to his Uncle Ellis and finally to his wife, Loretta. This secret and being unable to solve the spate of crimes in his county made Sheriff Bell depressed and consider retiring. Before the story ends, Bell is shown working his last day as sheriff of Terrell County.
In the story Sheriff Bell fights against corruption and evil. Corruption is the retreating from what is pure and original. Bell has seen how money has corrupted the minds of the people. Their county is a haven for the operations of drug cartels and he sees the role which money plays in corrupting people.
Another manifestation of corruption in the story was Chigurh. Chigurh’s mind was so corrupted that he believes that the people he kills deserve to be killed because of the choices they made brought them face to face with him. It does not occur to Chigurh’s mind that he is the reason why the men are killed.
According to Sheriff Bell, the most evil thing he has witnessed is the the killing spree committed by Chigurh. Although Sherriff Bell and Chigurh did not really come face to face with each other, Sheriff Bell saw the the evil of Chigurh in the crimes he committed. Chigurh is brutally evil, is emotionless, and unremorseful over his crimes. His weapon of choice is a bolt pistol. This is used in slaughterhouses to kill animals. He thus sees his victims as animals in the slaughterhouse.
The similarity of what he does to his victim and that of the slaughterhouse killer is that both of them do not seem to have control over why the animal or the person is in front of them is to be killed. For Chigurh, they just need to slaughter the being in front of them because fate brought them to that situation.
The manner of execution of Chigurh’s victims was also pure evil. Chigurh takes his hand with the bolt pistol and brings it to his victim’s forehead. This gesture is similar to that of the religious gesture of giving someone the final blessing before death. But evil comes full circle in the story. While Chigurh was fulfilling the orders given to him by someone in the drug world, that same person also ordered Chigurgh’s death at the hands of another.
An interesting minor character in the story is Llewelyn Moss’ wife, Carla Jean. The climax of the story was when Chigurh killed Carla Jean. True to his pre-murder routine, Chigurh asks Carla Jean to choose between heads and tails. Carla Jean apparently loses but she pleads for her life. Chigurh does not heed her pleas. However, Carla Jean made a significant observation before her execution. She exclaimed to Chigurh that he had free will, that he had the choice to kill her or not, and that the coin really had nothing to do with any of it.
Another notable character in the story is Sheriff Bell’s Uncle Ellis. He is one of the people Sheriff Bell looks up to and the one he sought when he needed some advice. It was Uncle Ellis to whom Sheriff Bell confide with and revealed for the first time the dark secret behind what really happened to him during World War II. It was an important experience for Sheriff Bell because he was able to express his regret that he has been carrying all this time. Uncle Ellis’ words for Sheriff Bell was to take it easy on his self.
The final theme in the story is that of aging. The story explores changes the world experiences over the course of time. It touches on the idea that the world lasts longer than the people living it. People will all die, but the world will remain. There may well be changes that will happen to the world physically and figuratively to the point that people will unable to recognize how the world has changed.
In the story, Sheriff Bell is only 57 years old and can hardly be considered old. But he has seen changes in his county and in the world as a veteran that he was able to recognize that the process of aging had caught up with him. As a long time sheriff able to witness how his county has changed over the years, he was perplexed with regards to the new crimes that were happening in the place he was supposed to protect. The puzzling and heinous events that took over the place led the sheriff to think of slowing down to a stop.
The first statement in this paper, people’s free will is limited, has been laboriously discussed in the different themes of the story. Looking at the different characters and the situations they were in, their actions were only in accordance with the different social circumstances they found themselves in.
The villain, Chigurh, was a paid hitman so his choice is limited in doing what he was hired to do. Although, there was no discussion with regard to his past, it would have been relevant so readers can understand what made him act so ruthlessly. Sheriff Bell, though having the heart to serve and protect the people, was tied down to the past which took a long time for him to reconcile with. Llewelyn Moss took a chance in having a better life but was just really impulsive in his decisions.
The story presented by Cormac McCarthy in No Country for Old Men deals with the idea that has long been a point of discussion for many philosophers and thinkers. However, McCarthy was able to show his thoughts on free will and self-determination in an intriguing way. He was able to use symbolisms and characters that would enthrall the audience of the story.
McCarthy used the coin as representation of our free will. Interestingly enough, it can be taken in that perspective. Sometimes, if we reach a point in our lives where we no longer have the capacity to think straight and do not want to choose from among choices, we sometimes rely on something else to decide for us.
Many times, we look for signs that will drive us to make a decision. McCarthy’s story depicts the atypical for a cowboy, Texas-themed story. The cowboy good guy did not get to kill the villain. What was really shown in the story was the reality that crimes cannot always be solved, villains can triumph over the good guys, and getting old and passing away is a reality all of us will face.
Works Cited
McCarthy, Cormac. No Country for Old Men. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005.
