No Country for Old Men

Filled with a plethora of themes and convictions, Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men excels in its endeavor to maintain the reader’s mind racing from cover to cover. The setting is the Texas-Mexico boarder; the story embodying a modernized western-themed Greek tragedy filled with drug runners and automatic weapons. Llewelyn Moss, a Vietnam veteran, finds himself on the run from forces that seem to be an instrument of karmic consequence. While on the run, Llewelyn is given the opportunity to end the madness that has arisen so immediately in his life. But he doesn’t. Instead he braves on, defying his own advice, and persistent on luck, only leaving him a misfortunate ending. To fully recognize the circumstance the novel surrounds itself in the reader must digress into the thoughts of the town’s Sheriff, an old vet just like Llewelyn, named Ed Tom Bell. From there and with a deep analysis of Llewelyn Moss, McCarthy succors light to why such an assessment was made amongst the lawless violence that has entered this town.
Lying on a ridge focused through his Unertl telescopic sight, Llewelyn Moss is first introduced to the reader while hunting antelope alone in the desert. Unfortunately for Llewelyn, the shot he is about to take will place him on a very dangerous path where he becomes the exemplification of one of the main underlying themes in the novel; death comes for everyone. Throughout the story, Llewelyn will waiver between amoral and moral actions. For example, when Llewelyn oversights his shot only injuring the antelope in the desert, he goes in search for the animal so that he could put it out of its misery. Amongst hunters, this is a very honorable act to do which gives the reader a preliminary impression t...

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...ze it. The interludes between the chapters where the Sheriff recounts his past serve as a foundation for reflection as he tries to fathom the events that took place from the moment Chigurh came into his town. No longer can one endure the old fashion way. To survive, the moralities that have been once so revered by previous generations now need to be holstered. The amoral conviction to do whatever it takes becomes the preeminent chance for humanity. In the end, Llewelyn letting Chigurh go knowing it was the moral thing to do stemmed his murder only a few pages later. It is almost as if the world could be scrutinized to a game of cat and mouse. The hunter, as Llewelyn was in the beginning while in the desert, became the hunted. There was no longer room for benevolence and to survive, one’s morals must be set aside, doing whatever it takes to remain the hunter.