Lapis Lazuli (Simile)
When Chigurh stops at the filling station and intimidates the proprietor into calling a coin toss, McCarthy describes what the proprietor sees when he looks into Chigurh's eyes: "The man looked at Chigurh’s eyes for the first time. Blue as lapis. At once glistening and totally opaque. Like wet stones" (56). This is one of the only instances of McCarthy describing Chigurh's appearance. At the beginning of the novel, Bell remarks on the blankness of the eyes of the boy he sent to the gas chamber for execution, drawing on the common cliché that the eyes are the windows to one's soul. Describing Chigurh's eyes as "blue as lapis" poses somewhat of a contradiction to his characterization as irredeemably evil. On the one hand, lapis and wet stones are opaque. They couldn't be "windows into the soul" because they are total obstructions. This reinforces Chigurh's aversion to vulnerability and his impenetrable psyche. On the other hand, lapis lazuli is the gem responsible for the ultramarine pigment, known to be among the most beautiful and sought-after hue of blue in all of history. It was often used to paint the garments of saints.
Queer as a Coot (Simile)
When Llewelyn turns down the hitchhiker's offer to sleep with him, she asks if he's "queer." He responds, "Me? Yeah, I’m queer as a coot" (228). This is an idiomatic phrase in the form of a simile meant to imply that someone is eccentric and homosexual. In addition to being a simile, this is an example of verbal irony or sarcasm, because Llewelyn is not homosexual, he's simply unwilling to cheat on his wife with this fifteen-year-old girl.
Throbbing like a Pump (Simile)
After the shootout with Llewelyn, Anton Chigurh's leg is described as "throbbing like a pump" (161). Since Chigurh fails to react to physical pain like most human beings, it is fitting that his injuries be described in figurative language that conjures up machinery and machine parts, as if his body were a nerveless collection of component parts.
Like someone coughing into a barrel (Simile)
McCarthy describes the murder of a man begging for mercy: "Chigurh shot him three times so fast it sounded like one long gunshot and left most of the upper part of him spread across the head-board and the wall behind it. The shotgun made a strange deep chugging sound. Like someone coughing into a barrel" (103). While Chigurh's body is described in terms of machine parts, his guns are described in terms of biology. McCarthy personifies Chigurh's silenced shotgun as sounding like a muffled cough. By describing his weapons in these terms, McCarthy emphasizes how they are an extension of Chigurh's body.
Like a winter moon. Or some other kind of moon. (Simile)
"When he woke it was 1:06 by the digital clock on the bedside table. He lay there looking at the ceiling, the raw glare of the vaporlamp outside bathing the bedroom in a cold and bluish light. Like a winter moon. Or some other kind of moon. Something stellar and alien in its light that he’d come to feel comfortable with. Anything but sleep in the dark" (22).
There is a pinch of humour in this close-third description of the vaporlamp light from Llewelyn's perspective; as if Llewelyn himself is searching for the right words to describe the light, he offers first the comparison of a winter moon and then immediately backtracks to the vaguer idea of "some other kind of moon." He then clarifies that it's not the type of moon that's important, but rather the characteristics of moonlight: that it emanates from somewhere other than earth and that it saves Llewelyn from sleeping in the dark and thus being vulnerable to whatever creeps in the darkness.
