Wealth and Greed
No Country for Old Men meditates on the subtle presence of greed, even in the lives of those who live simply. Greed is not just an active, chronic condition but even an unconscious desire or distant dream to reap the benefits of wealth. When Llewelyn finds the case of cash, he's out hunting antelope. Clearly he takes pleasure in the meticulous process of hunting the antelope—lining up the shot from a mile away, factoring in the slightest breeze. He doesn't even know that he's moments away from finding 2.4 million dollars; but when he does find it, it suddenly changes everything in his life. McCarthy writes, "His whole life was sitting there in front of him. Day after day from dawn till dark until he was dead. All of it cooked down into forty pounds of paper in a satchel" (18). For Llewelyn in this moment, that description may conjure a leisurely retirement and a distant death in his old age. The ironic truth of McCarthy's statement is that the satchel does represent the rest of his life, "from dawn till dark until he was dead"; unfortunately, the rest of his life plays out over the course of a few weeks, and he's running to survive, being hunted from dawn until dusk, until he's finally killed like an antelope in the desert plain.
Sheriff Bell demonstrates his vague desire for wealth in the sense that wealth equals freedom from one's duties. "He hung the phone up and sat looking at it. It’s money, he said. You have enough money you dont have to talk to people about cats in trees" (41). The irony of Bell's weariness over talking to a woman about her cat being stuck up in a tree is that the very next call he answers regards a man who was murdered by Chigurh and stuffed in one of his stolen police cruisers. Ed Tom suggests he doesn't want to bother with minor complaints, but what really drives him away is the wave of real violence that washes over his county. In the end, it's not money that frees Ed Tom from his duties; it's his own fear.
Destiny and Fate
Anton Chigurh fancies himself a master of destiny and fate, which is why every once in a while, instead of indiscriminately killing one his victims, he lets them call a coin toss. If they call it correctly, he lets them live, like the proprietor of the filling station outside of town. If they call it incorrectly, he kills them. Either way, he claims that they were fated to die or fated to live on and that he has no influence on the outcome of the situation. When he insists that the proprietor call the coin toss, the man says he didn't put anything up and Chigurh responds, "You’ve been putting it up your whole life. You just didnt know it" (56). Chigurh suggests that the man's path is predestined, that his whole life led him to this moment at the counter of his store, where he either lives or dies.
The second instance of Chigurh's coin toss occurs before he kills Carla Jean. He makes her call it, and she calls it wrong. Chigurh says:
"I had no say in the matter. Every moment in your life is a turning and every one a choosing. Somewhere you made a choice. All followed to this. The accounting is scrupulous. The shape is drawn. No line can be erased. I had no belief in your ability to move a coin to your bidding. How could you? A person’s path through the world seldom changes and even more seldom will it change abruptly. And the shape of your path was visible from the beginning." (259)
Here Chigurh most clearly delineates his theory of fate; however it contradicts the idea that Carla Jean's path is shaped entirely by her choices. Chigurh emphasizes choice, while seeming to deny free will and people's ability to alter their courses in life. He considers himself exempt from this process and instead acts as an agent of fate. Shortly after Chigurh makes this speech, McCarthy demonstrates that he is not, in fact, exempt. He's hit by a car at a rural intersection and gravely injured.
Free Will and Consequence
Llewelyn's ideas about free will and consequence emerge as a counterpoint to Chigurh's theory of fate and destiny, which not only offers a different perspective on the matter, but also emphasizes their opposition to one another. While eating dinner with the young woman he picked up on the interstate, Llewelyn asks her about her destination and what her plans are once she gets there. He says, "It’s not about knowin where you are. It’s about thinkin you got there without takin anything with you. Your notions about startin over. Or anybody’s. You dont start over. That’s what it’s about. Ever step you take is forever. You cant make it go away. None of it" (227).
The distinction between Llewelyn's philosophy and Chigurh's is subtle, but important. Llewelyn seems to believe that a person continues every day to pave their path forward; Chigurh, on the other hand, seems to believe at one point, a person makes a choice that then sets them down a path set in stone, unchangeable.
Llewelyn is concerned with the simultaneous accumulation and stasis of identity. He says, "You think when you wake up in the mornin yesterday dont count. But yesterday is all that does count. What else is there? Your life is made out of the days it’s made out of. Nothin else. You might think you could run away and change your name and I dont know what all. Start over. And then one mornin you wake up and look at the ceilin and guess who’s layin there?" (227). The point is, it's still you who is "layin there," but this "you" has now accumulated many more yesterdays that inform their present condition.
Religion
Ed Tom Bell often talks about God with the caveat that his life in the law has caused him to lose a lot of his belief in God. His wife Loretta remains faithful. But the Sheriff's lack of firm beliefs doesn't stop him from moralizing from a Christian perspective and using Christian imagery and monotheistic language to express himself. For instance, when he talks about his role as sheriff, he says, "You think about a job where you have pretty much the same authority as God and there is no requirements put upon you and you are charged with preservin nonexistent laws and you tell me if that’s peculiar or not" (64). Clearly Bell is uncomfortable with the amount of power he wields, and he quickly turns the focus on how such a responsibility lends itself to abuses. Chigurh co-opts the God comparison when he explains to Carla Jean how he models his own way of living. He says, "Even a nonbeliever might find it useful to model himself after God. Very useful, in fact" (256). Chigurh tries at all times to remain invulnerable, to always be in control of the situation. The only time he lapses is at the Trail Motel when Llewelyn has him at gunpoint but passes up on the opportunity to kill him.
Bell remains confused about what God is to him and muses on the subject throughout the novel. He asks his Uncle Ellis about God. He talks to Loretta about God. He even tries to define God by the absence of God in his life. He says, "You’d think a man that had waited eighty some odd years on God to come into his life, well, you’d think he’d come. If he didnt you’d still have to figure that he knew what he was doin. I dont know what other description of God you could have" (283). Bell's example describes faith: the sustained belief that something exists without evidence of its existence. Religion factors into all of Bell's moral considerations. He thinks that narcotics are the perfect invention of Satan and that the Vietnam War was so hard for vets because the nation had lost its religion.
Moral Decay and Conservative Values
Sheriff Bell believes that moral decay is a two-way street. A major facet of his argument has to do with the widespread use of narcotics. He has the following exchange with a fellow officer at a crime scene:
The sheriff shook his head. Dope, he said.
Dope.
They sell that shit to schoolkids.
It’s worse than that.
How’s that?
Schoolkids buy it. (194)
To use the Sheriff's own figurative vocabulary, he believes the problem is not the existence of evil, but rather humankind's willing participation in it. At several points in the novel, he recognizes that wrongdoing has always existed. He's concerned rather with the greater degree of participation among young people in activities he regards as vice, and as a result the violent industry that has sprung up to meet the rampant demand. He says, "I think if you were Satan and you were settin around tryin to think up somethin that would just bring the human race to its knees what you would probably come up with is narcotics" (218). Some of the examples he gives are not vice, but rather just a shift in aesthetic and self-expression. He says:
"These old people I talk to, if you could of told em that there would be people on the streets of our Texas towns with green hair and bones in their noses speakin a language they couldnt even understand, well, they just flat out wouldnt of believed you. But what if you’d of told em it was their own grandchildren? Well, all of that is signs and wonders but it dont tell you how it got that way." (295-296)
In moments like this, the Sheriff outs himself as not only concerned with the well-being of citizens, but also preoccupied with maintaining the status quo of representation and self-expression. His concern for Texans doesn't end with their health and wellbeing; it extends to their personal style and preferences. At a certain point, the Sheriff's concerns are exposed as being superficial and dated.
He recalls a benefit dinner he attended with his wife Loretta, where he engaged in a passive aggressive confrontation with a woman who expressed her opinion on abortion rights:
"Finally told me, said: I dont like the way this country is headed. I want my granddaughter to be able to have an abortion. And I said well mam I dont think you got any worries about the way the country is headed. The way I see it goin I dont have much doubt but what she’ll be able to have an abortion. I’m goin to say that not only will she be able to have an abortion, she’ll be able to have you put to sleep. Which pretty much ended the conversation." (196-197)
This example is one of the few moments where Bell lays bare his personal social politics by equating a woman's right to access abortion clinics and euthanasia of the elderly. The Sherrif models his notions of how things should be on the early 20th century. McCarthy demonstrates through the Sheriff's anxiety the extreme disillusionment of the 1960s in the face of political scandal and assassination, the Vietnam War, and the hard-fought struggle for civil rights. He gives the example of a questionnaire distributed to schoolteachers in the '30s. They were asked to list the biggest problems they experienced teaching students, and "the biggest problems they could name was things like talkin in class and runnin in the hallways. Chewin gum. Copyin homework. Things of that nature." When the same questionnaire was distributed forty years later, the answers they gave were "rape, arson, murder. Drugs. Suicide" (195-196). The Sheriff uses this anecdote to "prove" that the world is going to "hell in a handbasket," but he does not ask why these changes are occuring on an institutional level.
Marriage
The novel provides two examples of marriage: Sheriff Bell and Loretta's, and Carla Jean and Llewelyn's. In many ways, these marriages are similar. At one point, the Sheriff stands at the edge of the interstate and a passing driver calls out, "Dont jump, Sheriff. She aint worth it." McCarthy continues, "Then he was gone in a long suck of wind, the diesel engine winding up and the driver double clutching and shifting gears. Bell smiled. Truth of the matter is, he said, she is" (170). The Sheriff offers little quips throughout the novel about how his wife Loretta is his whole world and how she is a form of salvation for him. He says of her, "She’s a better person than me, which I will admit to anybody that cares to listen. Not that that’s sayin a whole lot. She’s a better person than anybody I know. Period" (90-91).
Bell thinks that younger generations don't put as much stock in the institution of marriage, but he's surprised to see how devoted Carla Jean is to Llewelyn when they meet in Odessa. When he learns that she's only nineteen, he offers up some personal information of his own. He says, "My wife was eighteen when we married. Just had turned. Marryin her makes up for ever dumb thing I ever done. I even think I still got a few left in the account. I think I’m way in the black on that" (133). When Bell says, "People complain about the bad things that happen to em that they dont deserve but they seldom mention the good. About what they done to deserve them things. I dont recall that I ever give the good Lord all that much cause to smile on me. But he did" (91), he refers to the blessing of meeting Loretta. The "original sins" of the novel—Llewelyn leaving Carla Jean at home and finding a case full of cash, Bell leaving his unit behind and then witholding his guilt from Loretta for thirty-six years—all have to do with a breach in the marital contract, a man making a huge, life-altering decision without the blessing or knowledge of his partner.
War
No Country for Old Men lives with the ghosts of two wars and the present of another war, a new kind of war being fought on the border of Texas and Mexico. Memories of WWII haunt the older generation in the novel. Sheriff Bell, Uncle Ellis, and Llewelyn's father all remember coming of age in the '30s and '40s and fighting to eradicate evil. The sides were so clearly drawn in WWII; the Allies were fighting against the Axis powers who were perpetrating a holocaust, a mass genocide, in an attempt to build a "master race." When the Allied powers moved in and dismantled concentration camps, it was clear who were the "good guys" and who were the "bad guys." WWII vets and their cohort are still called "the greatest generation." When they returned home, there was a baby boom and an economic boon.
A few decades later, the Vietnam War presented an entirely different set of circumstances. Because of a number of cultural shifts and the introduction of television news cameras to the battlefield that broadcast and reported the events of the Vietnam War to the American public as they happened, there was a sweeping movement to protest the war at home. Protesters believed that the U.S. had no compelling cause to be waging war in Vietnam. There were also reports of atrocities and war crimes being committed by some U.S. soldiers in Vietnam, which stirred a generally negative attitude toward returning veterans. Llewelyn's father remembers Llewelyn's return from Vietnam:
"He smacked the tar out of one or two of them hippies. Spittin on him. Callin him a babykiller. A lot of them boys that come back, they’re still havin problems. I thought it was because they didnt have the country behind em. But I think it might be worse than that even. The country they did have was in pieces. It still is. It wasnt the hippies’ fault. It wasnt the fault of them boys that got sent over there neither. Eighteen, nineteen year old." (294)
But it wasn't just the war that led to a sense of disillusionment. The country faced political scandal, economic depression, and restlessness on civil rights fronts; people were yearning to be free and equal long after such promises were made. Bell and Llewelyn's father blame a crisis of faith. Llewelyn's father says, "We didnt have nothin to give to em to take over there. If we’d sent em without rifles I dont know as they’d of been all that much worse off. You cant go to war like that. You cant go to war without God. I dont know what is goin to happen when the next one comes. I surely dont" (295).
The third war in No Country for Old Men is the War on Drugs campaign, which started in the early '70s and continues to this day. It's a different kind of war, one that men like Sheriff Bell have never seen before, and according to its long history, it cannot be won. It leads only to mass incarceration and more violence and division, and it doesn't stop the flow or use of drugs in the U.S.
