Every Human Finds Himself Making Choices Which Sometimes Seem Mundane, but Human

Page | 1 Every human finds himself making choices which sometimes seem mundane, but human life has evolved from basic survival decisions, such as, “should I eat today” to deeper philosophical assessments like existence. A person might question: do I work to buy food for myself, or do I rob a convenient store? Do I ignore the person who is making me angry, or do I lash out and hurt him? Asking these questions is what makes us complex beings. We suffer the conflict of constantly trying to be a good person and living the way society deems acceptable, but does this even matter? We are constantly asking ourselves the question, why do bad things happen to good people? Through these choices, people can be labeled as a nihilist or a moralist, which is what McCarthy explores in many of his novels. Many of his nihilistic characters believe that life is meaningless and without purpose, and he always contrasts his nihilistic characters with a moralist, who believes in following the perceived morals of society as well as enforcing them. Just like contemporary society, the nihilists are often dangerous, while the moralist is often the victim or struggling to live with and understand the former. McCarthy expands on the concept of nihilism versus morality, and which of these is more powerful in life. One thing remains true throughout all of his novels: “men share an innate violence” (Marche 1). We come to realize that these nihilists create their own set of rules and principles to live by, and the moralists cannot fully understand that concept. Basic life questions such as, who are the good guys and who are the bad guys, are addressed in his novels, but the reader understands that McCarthy is not just talking about his characters in these terms; he is talking about humanity and he is talking about us, the readers. Page | 2 In McCarthy’s novel, No Country for Old Men, (NCFOM), he provides three distinct characters. Anton Chigurh is the nihilistic, psychopathic killer, whose weapon of choice is a captive bolt pistol, commonly used to stun cows unconscious before slaughter. The counter- character to Chigurh is the moralistic World War II veteran, Sheriff Ed Tom Bell who fruitlessly tries to capture Chigurh. Lastly, McCarthy adds another character to this story that provides a middle ground from the former two characters. Carson Wells is a hit man hired to kill Chigurh and retrieve the stolen money that Chigurh is hunting. Wells cannot survive in the nihilistic world or remain faithful to the moralistic world. These three characters provide insight into McCarthy’s own beliefs about the struggle between nihilism and morality in the world. It is an ongoing struggle between good and evil, and no middle man is going to be able to rationalize the conflict because the middle way is repeatedly destroyed or undermined as the novel unfolds. Anton Chigurh is aptly described as satanic throughout NCFOM, and the reader agrees with this characterization as more of a caricature of evil than a complex individual (Cooper 43), but Chigurh plays a large prophetical role in this novel. He provides a certain philosophical experience for the reader as well as for Sheriff Bell. He sees the world become so nihilistic in nature that he cannot simply explain anything without despising the world and the men in it. Luckily, Sheriff Bell has an interpreter, and he just so happens to be nihilism personified: Chigurh. In one of his monologues Bell says, “I think if you were Satan and you were settin around tryin to think up something that would bring the human race to its knees what you would probably come up with is narcotics. I told that to somebody at breakfast the other mornin and they asked me if I believed in Satan. I said Well that aint the point. And they said I know but do Page | 3 you? I had to think about that. I guess as a boy I did. Come the middle years my belief I reckon had waned somewhat. Now I’m startin to lean back the other way. He explains a lot of things that otherwise don’t have no explanation. Or to me they don’t” (NCFOM 218). Bell’s pessimistic conclusion about the world is triggered by the evil substances that humanity provides: drugs, murder, wrong-doings, etc, but McCarthy implies the only way to understand evil is to fully encompass evil. Chigurh is Bell’s way of trying to comprehend nihilism, but Chigurh makes it even more difficult because he does have a set of principles, albeit these principles do not adhere to the accepted principles of morality in society. The principles to which Chigurh commits himself are more ad hoc and transitory. Chigurh makes “arbitrary promises” such as a victim’s life depending on a coin toss (Cooper 48). “You need to call it, Chigurh said. I can’t call it for you. It wouldn’t be fair. It wouldn’t even be right. Just call it.” “I didn’t put nothing up.” [Convenience store clerk] “Yes you did. You’ve been putting it up your whole life. You just didn’t know it” (NFOM 56). Chigurh has rules and is a “terrifying character primarily because he does not seem to kill out of malice. Rather, as Wells points out, he ‘has principles;” (Cooper 48). “Chigurh forces each victim into a prescribed conversation before destroying him. He asks them if they understand the role he plays, and he corrects their answers by telling them that he is God-like and devil-like” (Cooper 49). The French critic and social theorist, Rene Girard has coined the term “the function of sacrifice” which states that “violence will only come to an end only after it has had the last Page | 4 word and that last word has been accepted as divine” (Parrish 66). For example, there is a subplot in the novel where Llewellyn Moss finds the suitcase of money that Chigurh is eventually hired to retrieve. Chigurh tracks down Moss and tells him that he has the option to return the money and his wife will not die, or not return the money and suffer his wife’s death as well as his own. Girard says that the function of sacrifice requires “not only a surrogate victim, but more importantly, violent unanimity.” This doubled violence leads a nihilist to “prevent murder with murder, in a symbolic slaying or sacrifice” (Parrish 66). Chigurh finds Moss’s wife because he dies without giving Chigurh the money, and questions, “You gave your word to my husband to kill me?” She adds, “He’s dead. My husband is dead. Nothing can change that.” But he replies, “Your husband, you may be distressed to learn, had the opportunity to remove you from harm’s way and he chose not to do so. He was given that option and his answer was no. Otherwise I would not be here now” (NCFOM 255-256). Chigurh was willing to kill Moss and forego his wife’s murder, but instead Moss was killed instead by Mexican drug lords to whom the money belonged to, and the money had not been retrieved by Chigurh. Since Chigurh could not prevent one sacrifice with another, the only logical action in his nihilistic calculus is to stay true to his principle and kill Moss’s wife. Chigurh ends his killing spree in NCFOM by saying, “When I came into your life your life was over. It had a beginning, a middle, and an end. This is the end. You can say that things could have turned out differently. That they could have been some other way. But what does that mean? They are not some other way. They are this way. You’re asking that I second say the world. Do you see? (NCFOM 260). He cannot understand a world that is not nihilistic. He believes that the world is the way it is, and it can be no other way. Page | 5 When there is a nihilistic world, there are always people who want morality to exist. The question they face is a question of power. Is good powerful enough to conquer evil? McCarthy argues this point with Sheriff Ed Tom Bell’s character. “Bell’s voice offers a metaphysical counterpoint to the nihilistically-inclined narrative events of the world” (Cooper 40). Bell is constantly questioning the world around him. “Here last week they found this couple out in California they would rent out rooms to old people and kill em and bury em in the yard and cash their social security checks. They’d torture em first, I don’t know why. Maybe their television was broke. Now here’s what the papers had to say about that. I quote from the papers. Said: Neighbors were alerted when a man run from the premises wearin only a dogcollar. You can’t make up such a thing as that. I dare you even try” (124). His mind cannot fathom certain perverse events that happen in the world, and he dares us as readers to even try to think of something more gruesome than that. Unlike Chigurh, who follows “an archaic code of destruction and annihilation, Bell is haunted by prophetic visions of hope, looks into the future and the past in order to construct a sense, however elusive, of transcendence” (Cooper 49). In a scene in the Coen Brothers Film, No Country for Old Men, Sheriff Bell visits his uncle Ellis, and they have a long talk about forgiveness, the past, and the future.

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