No Country for Old Men
Cormac McCarthy’s novel No Country for Old Men is a tale of fate which revolves around three characters: Llewelyn Moss, Anton Chigurh and Sheriff Ed Tom Bell.
Llewelyn Moss
Llewelyn Moss is the hero figure of the story. A retired welder and a war veteran who cares for his family and fights for the good. Even risking his own life by going out of his way to give water to a stranger in the middle of the night when he could’ve just not risked getting himself into trouble.
Llewelyn stumbles across the aftermath of a drug deal gone wrong; he finds dead bodies, drugs, and most importantly: a bag containing two million dollars in cash. With initial hesitation, he takes the bag. It may be argued that this was the only morally questionable act that he committed in the story, but it may also be argued he did it for his family. As we see later, he is even willing to rectify his mistake and part with the two million dollars when he perceives it as a threat to him and his family.
Throughout the movie, Llewelyn remains the typical hero figure that the people root for. The smart, strong, and charismatic man who only uses his power to fight for the good, unperturbed by all adversity and danger that comes his way. Even when he is warned that a cold-blooded hitman may kill his wife, his only answer is:
Maybe he’s the one who needs to be worried… about me
Anton Chigurh
Anton Chigurh is a force of nature. An unstoppable, cold-blooded hitman, willing to eliminate anything and anyone who may stand in his path without a second thought. From killing an officer while locked up in handcuffs, to breaking into a federal building in broad daylight with a shotgun and killing a government agent, there seems to be no problem that he can’t take care of.
Anton is hired by the cartel to retrieve the bag of money that Llewelyn had picked up, starting a cat-and-mouse chase in which both are nearly killed, but both remain persistent in fighting for their victory.
Anton does not simply kill in vain, he kills because he follows a higher principle, something greater than just money and power.
Anton is the personification of the world itself, and his higher principle is fate. Anton is ruthless, indifferent to all the harm he causes in the course of acting out his goal, it doesn’t matter who stands in his way, whatever he wills, must happen. Adhering to a moral code seems futile to him, it leads to nothing in the long run, all that matters to him is that he reaches whatever he aims for, no matter what the means are.
So, what happens when the hero that the people root for goes against an unstoppable force of nature? After a long sequence of chases and gun fights, Llewelyn is killed off-screen by some cartel members who were insignificant throughout most of the story. This may seem like a strange or cold way to kill off a character we wished to see win as if his death was just another insignificant happening. That is the exact reason Llewelyn’s death takes place off camera, to show the persistence of evil in the world, irrespective of what we may hope for.
A constant theme that runs throughout No Country for Old Men, and most of McCarthy’s novels, is the constant evil in the world. The whole event that caused everything within the story in the first place was a drug deal gone wrong, an event that took multiple lives, all in the name of greed. When Llewelyn takes the bag of money at the beginning of the movie, arguably his only evil action, he faces no immediate repercussions, but when he returns to give water to a man who was dying of thirst, he is almost killed.
Where Llewelyn is someone who tries to fight against this fate of humanity, Anton embraces it. He knows that things won't ever be fixed and the strifeless utopia everybody dreams of is just that: a dream. Anton doesn’t aim to fix anything, he simply moves towards his goal.
Sheriff Ed Tom Bell
Sheriff Ed Tom Bell is arguably the most important character in the story. He is an old aged man, who has been the sheriff of his county since he twenty-five years old. Throughout the movie, as Anton chases Llewelyn, Sheriff Bell tries to chase Anton and protect Llewelyn from the danger he’s in.
Throughout the movie, Sheriff Bell seems to cherish a time of the past, a time he remembers as being a lot better and simpler, a time when people were righteous. He feels beat down as he tries to keep up with all the adversities of his time, unable to fix everything. He’s grown too old, and the times have rotten away.
So what does one do when one feels overwhelmed by the times? remembering better ages but being unable to bring that righteousness back? Sheriff Bell gives up. Having been beaten down too many times, he throws in the towel.
After resigning, he decides to visit an old friend, Ellis. He talks about how he feels outmatched, and how he senses a lack of God in his life. Ellis then tells Sheriff Bell exactly what he needed to hear.
Ellis tells him a story eighty years old, from the times Sheriff Bell seems to look back at so fondly. The story is about a righteous man who was shot dead on his porch, and about how his widow had to dig a grave and bury the lifeless body of her husband, all alone in her yard. And ending with,
What you got, ain’t nothin’ new. This country’s hard on people… Can’t stop what’s comin’, Ain’t no one waitin’ on you… That’s vanity.
The ideal age of righteousness and virtue that Sheriff Bell was so fond of had never existed in the first place. Every age has brought its battles which have challenged humanity, no generation is unique in the fact that humanity has had to struggle. Humans take birth, and they die, nations are built, and they fall, but the human struggle has always been an innate part of the human condition.
The utopian view of the past that Sheriff Bell has is something that can be seen in every period. All ages have people who reminisce about the “good old times” when things were simpler and men were more virtuous, and have lamented their own time, feeling it as corrupt and pathetic. People build ideologies and start revolutions in the name of the “good old times”, not realizing the fact that people of the “good old times” thought the same about their age.
The conversation with Ellis rids that sheriff of the false conception of the past, and makes him realize that there was no time when humanity wasn’t plagued by its evils, that there was no time where people could just relax because everyone knew what the right thing to do is, to make him realize that there is No Country for Old Men, and there never was.
And this is why the Sheriff is the main protagonist of the movie. Llewelyn and Anton remain constant throughout the movie in their thoughts and actions, Llewelyn in his struggle to make things right, and Anton in his pursuit of his goal. But the Sheriff is the only one who has a change in his views.
So, what is the movie trying to teach us? If there was no ideal time which we could just bring back and put an end to our evils like the sheriff thought, and trying to go forward and fight the evil ends up being futile like in the case of Llewelyn, what is the point of life? How do we light up this cold and dark abyss we find ourselves in?
The Fire in the Cold
At the end of the movie, Sheriff Bell recalls two dreams he saw in his sleep. Both the dreams were about his father.
Anyway, first one I don't remember so well but it was about meetin' him(his father) in town somewheres and he give me some money and I think I lost it.
The money symbolizes some knowledge his father may have given him in the past, implying whatever wisdom he is about to gain now, is something he had lost at some point, and the time has come when he remembers it.
Second one, it was like we was both back in older times. And I was a-horseback, going through the mountains of a night. Going through this pass in the mountains. It was cold, and there was snow on the ground. And he rode past me and kept on going, never said nothing going by, just rode on past. He had his blanket wrapped around him and his head down. When he rode past, I seen he was carrying fire in a horn, the way people used to do, and I... I could see the horn from the light inside of it, 'bout the color of the moon. And, in the dream, I knew that he was going on ahead. He was fixin' to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and cold. And I knew that whenever I got there, he'd be there. And then I woke up.
The second dream is the answer to the movie. The torch in the middle of the cold, dark, abyssal night. The meaning of life is not to light up the whole abyss, it is not to save the world. The cold and dark abyss will always persist, but the meaning of life was never to light up the whole abyss, the meaning was to simply carry one’s own torch. Even in the dark and empty abyss, knowing it is impossible to eliminate all the darkness, we as humans can still carry our fire and find warmth and light in it. Even in the dark and endless sky, the stars still shine. Sheriff Bell’s problem was that he thought his job was to save the world, he was wrong. His job was to try.
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