On McCarthy

A brief overview of some major moral themes from a few of Cormac McCarthy's novels and how they apply to the modern world.

Let it be known that I had drafted large portions of this essay prior to Cormac McCarthy’s death. At one point there was supposed to be a clever little pattern to tie each set of authors in with the next. I wanted to eventually circle back around to someone close to Goethe to make this little side project nice and clean, but the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. If I ever get enough renown to justify publishing all these essays in a book, with a little bit of editing and hindsight, then I’ll stitch them back together into their proper order. For now I’m still in mourning of a great literary figure and I needed to get something out on paper.

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Anything that doesn't take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing.

To preface this, I did something I’ve never done before for this blog that may help first time McCarthy readers or those who stall out on the first few pages with their goals. In the past I have used audiobooks as supplements to novels, either to accompany my reading to bolster my focus or to act as a casual rereading. I have used audiobooks as the primary source of information for this essay for both Child of God and No Country for Old Men (assuming we don’t count the movie of the latter). The only downside to this approach as far as I can tell is that the listener must trust their narrator implicitly to place commas in the correct positions. This isn’t so much of an issue in professional recordings, but when his body of works enters the public domain in 95 years I’m not sure that I would put much faith in the LibriVox versions. Even with this caveat, I believe that audiobooks are the best way for new readers to approach McCarthy’s novels. 

The Coen brothers’ film adaptation of No Country for Old Men serves as an entry point for many to McCarthy’s works as a whole, myself included. The movie does such a great job presenting the subtext of the plot that some who have watched it without reading the book interpret Anton Chigurh as either having supernatural powers or being a supernatural entity altogether. There is ambiguity in whether Carla Jean dies at the end, and Carson Wells omits a few lines of dialogue present in the book that suggest a deeper backstory between him and Chigurh. Because of this, viewers do not see him existing outside the narrow lens of the plot and therefore assume he does not exist outside of the plot; that he is merely a figment of the sheriff’s imagination. This theory neglects to explain the empty holes in people’s heads, but I do think they have picked up on the fact that McCarthy and the Coens are telling two similar but different stories. The movie eliminates Ed Tom Bell’s backstory about his dead child, which plays into the larger role that the movement of time plays in the plot of the novel, but it also emphasizes themes of fate. For example, the famous scene with the gas station attendant omits the word “saw” from the quote “what’s the most you ever saw lost on a coin toss?” making Chigurh’s threat less implied and more direct. The thematic element of fate is strong throughout the Coens’ other movies like The Big Lebowski and Fargo, so it’s no surprise that they would bring this to the forefront of their adaptation, but it is not the main theme of the novel. This disparity is the main area that allows for the questioning of Chigurh’s existence. In the book, Chigurh is undeniably human: he bleeds, he needs time to recover from his injuries, and he operates according to his principles, as sick as they may be. He may lack a moral compass, but he still operates like a human would, as opposed to any other supernatural force. Though the sheriff may be the main character, he is not the narrator in the same way the movie portrays him as. Ed Tom Bell’s problem isn’t that the violent forces he faces are bigger or more brutal than they were in his heyday, his problem is that they are new and he is old. Every consequent generation faces new problems that the prior one does not understand. They’re not necessarily better or worse; crime cannot be measured on that scale. The problems are just different. It is easier for a young man to adapt to his surroundings than it is for an old man, hence the title. The reason that Ed Tom Bell holds such a high opinion of his father is because he never saw him face the problems that old age entails.¹ He thinks that evil is something to be conquered rather than a constant force to be kept at bay. The good news is, goodness is too. Chigurh is in a similar position to the sheriff, although he is aware of his impermanence and also at a much earlier stage in his life. He accepts that his fate is always around the corner unlike Llewellyn or Carson, who try to fight against it. Moreover, the reason he is able to evade the law so easily is that he does not abide by any of society’s mores. Whereas other rampage/serial killers have a workplace or home address, Chigurh moves continuously from one job to the next. His unique brand of psychopathy makes him hard to catch, not to mention the active role he takes in covering his tracks, which extends the time that he is allowed to live his lifestyle. That being said, his operation in darkness will always be snuffed out by a rider who carries the light.