No Country For Old Men
Written by Cormac McCarthy
www.ink2quill.com

“No Country For Old Men” is an American drug, crime novel written by Cormac McCarthy. It is more than just a crime novel though. The title of the novel is taken from the line of a W. B. Yeats poem called “Sailing To Byzantium”. A very successful film adaptation was produced by the Coen siblings of the same name (The Film). This is one of those novels that will have a reader thinking after they read it. I enjoyed this novel very much.

No Country For Old Men Goodreads webpage

Cormac McCarthy website

“No Country For Old Men” takes place in the year 1980 around the US- Mexican border. The Main character Llewelyn Moss stumbles across the scene of a drug deal gone wrong and like an exploding grenade everything in his life is disrupted as some of the most dangerous people in the drug world enter his life, the iciest of which is a killer named Anton Chigurh. Llewelyn stumbled across a scene of dead bodies, heroin and bullet holes in vehicles and a dead man with a lot of loot. That’s 2.4 million 1980 dollars. The smart thing to do would have been to leave the scene without touching anything and make an anonymous call to authorities from a safe distance away, like 2 or 3 states away. Llewelyn however decides to take the money and slip away. Taking the money brings a storm of trouble into his life that threatens everyone in his life even his wife Carla Jean. As things progress Sheriff Ed Tom Bell investigates the crime of the drug scene while doing his best to protect Llewelyn and his wife. So it’s more than jut the cat and mouse chase of the law with the criminal. You have people like Chigurh and Carson Wells chasing the money, Chigurh also chasing Llewelyn to kill him and the Sheriff chasing Chigurh.

This novel has many great elements. Firstly, the killer, Chigurh, is a deeply disturbing individual. There are times when we hope for some kind of compassion from him like when he does the coin toss with his 1958 quarter but the fact is we never really see. During the coin toss I hoped he would stop what he intended to do and just walk away. Walk away from the life he was living and start anew. He is so cold and dead inside it’s terrifying. And the fact that he kills people with a contraption used for killing cattle makes him even stranger. In the story he’s like a tidal wave that’s headed directly for Llewelyn and leaving a trail of dead bodies in his wake.

The Sheriff Tom Bell is a very likable person who is at the end of his career. His story really sums up the story well and I think it explains the title of the book. He is a war veteran with a particularly bad case of survivor’s guilt where he was put in a situation during the Vietnam War he was really not capable of handling and ended up being the sole survivor of an attack. His past with being a war veteran and how he was treated upon his return weigh heavy on him. He is tired and just cannot do his job anymore so he resigns. The story takes place in the final days of his career where he does the best he can to protect the Moss’ in hopes of redressing events from his past.

I see elements of the story as a kind of criticism of America and how it handled the Vietnam War and treated its veterans. The veterans in this story, notably, Llewelyn and the Sheriff do not understand the America after the war and do not want to participate in its cultural change. This is a sad loss with detrimental consequences to all, which we see the results of at the end of the story.

For those that don’t understand the ending or how the story evolves let me sum it up. The story is a slice of the seedy side of America. Elements like drugs, violence, illegal money all figure into the story. If your looking for a cookie cutter, algorithmic, fairy tale of a story development then this is not the story for you. I highly recommend these types of books, especially ones written by such a good writer as Cormac McCarthy, because they are closer to anything realistic then what most forms of entertainment nowadays will give you. Everyone is scared to venture down this road because it is so much easier to follow the troop and get paid. We need more of these kinds of stories in our books and movies.

I really enjoyed this novel because it was so unpredictable and it did not try to just shock us with gratuitous violence and then placate us with a happy ending. There is violence but I found myself rooting for stupid Llewelyn and later the Sheriff and curious how the other characters would fare. Cormac McCarthy is such a good writer too. His writing is so crisp and without clutter it is a real pleasure to read.

John Ink2Quill

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