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Frontiersman's Identity in Cormac Mccarthy's No Country for Old Men

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Frontiersman's Identity in Cormac Mccarthy's No Country for Old Men Frontiersman‘s Identity in Cormac McCarthy‘s No Country for Old Men: A Contrapuntal Reading [PP: 49-57] Seyed Mohammad Marandi Department of English Language and Literature Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Tehran University Tehran, Iran Hossein Fathi Pishosta Department of English Language and Literature Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Tehran University Tehran, Iran Zeinab Ghasemi Tari Faculty of World Studies, University of Tehran Tehran, Iran ABSTRACT This study aims to offer a contrapuntal reading of Cormac McCarthy‘s Western novel No Country for Old Men (2005) by drawing on the notion of frontiersman‘s identity. McCarthy has been predominantly viewed as a revisionist in his politics of representing the myth of American West, yet little attention has been given to the way in which this novel calls into question the public view of him as a writer who revises and critiques the myth of the West. From a contrapuntal perspective, we argue that although the text depicts the failure of the frontiersman, in particular Sheriff Bell, in contemporary society, through nostalgia for older times the writer keeps the frontiersman‘s dream and hope alive. Furthermore, we problematize the very older times for which the protagonist Bell expresses his nostalgia for. We argue that these nostalgic older times have been also a period of bloodshed and violence regarding other nationalities and ethnicities whose voice is not heard in this narrative. McCarthy‘s text is indeed silent about the sufferings of those represented as the other, the Vietnamese for instance, in the text. Keywords: Frontiersman, identity, Cormac McCarthy, No country for Old Men, Contrapuntal Reading ARTICLE The paper received on Reviewed on Accepted after revisions on INFO 29/10/2018 28/11/2018 19/12/2018 Suggested citation: Marandi, S.M., Pishosta, H. & Tari, Z. (2018). Frontiersman‘s Identity in Cormac McCarthy‘s No Country for Old Men: A Contrapuntal Reading. International Journal of English Language & Translation Studies. 6(4). 49- 57. 1. Introduction main characters-Ed Tom Bell, the sheriff of The contemporary American novelist a Texas county, Llewelyn Moss, a veteran of Cormac McCarthy has often been identified the Vietnam War, and Anton Chigurh, a as a revisionist in his representation of the psychopathic killer--as they are engaged in a myth of American West. Mayne (2001), for case of drug trafficking. Llewelyn Moss, instance, observes that ―McCarthy‘s western hunting antelope in the Texas desert near the work is routinely heralded as ‗revisionist‘ Mexican border, comes upon a drug deal for its postmodern ‗anti-Western‘ gone wrong. He finds a load of heroin and tendencies‖ (p.4). Set in the borderlands of more than $2 million in drug money. He is Texas and Mexico in 1980, McCarthy‘s No subsequently pursued by an assassin named Country for Old Men (2005) as ―one of the Anton Chigurh who is hired to retrieve the best-known neo-westerns of the twenty-first money; Sheriff Bell, who sees that the life of century,‖ (Parker, 2017, p. 30) is an inquiry Moss and his wife Carla Jean is in danger, in into elements informing the identity of his turn pursues Chigurh. Consequently, the characters, in particular his frontiersmen. narrative becomes a chase story in which a The movie version of the novel, directed by hunter is hunted by a bounty hunter. By the Coen brothers, was released in 2007 and end of the novel, Moss is murdered by a won scores of awards, hence the novel‘s gang of Mexican drug dealers, the money is further critical reception. The narrative retrieved by Chigurh who returns it to its relates the interconnected destiny of three owner, and Moss‘ wife is murdered by International Journal of English Language & Translation Studies (www.eltsjournal.org) ISSN:2308-5460 Volume: 06 Issue: 04 October-December, 2018 Chigurh. Feeling defeated and disillusioned provides postcolonial critics with a proper by his own ideals as a lawman, Sheriff Bell strategy for addressing colonial texts. In retires from his post. A large number of Said‘s view, texts ―are protean things; they critics have focused in particular on the are tied to circumstances and politics large identity of the frontiersman Sheriff Bell in and small, and these require attention and this narrative. criticism‖ (p. 318). Texts, Said highlights, Sheriff Bell has been identified ―are never neutral activities: there are essentially as a figure of failure by many interests, powers, passions, pleasures critics, one who expresses his nostalgia for entailed no matter how entertaining or older times when seemingly everything was aesthetic the work‖ (p. 318). Said uses the perfect. In this respect, Lincoln (2009) refers phrase ―a structure of attitude and reference‖ to McCarthy‘s narrative as a sorry tale (p. (xxiii) in this regard. As Wilson (1994) 141). As he observes, it is ―an old story of a notes, this structure functions as ―the base desiccated wasteland, a deafening horizon, from which a contrapuntal reading chiefly an unbearable burden, a tarnished memory, a proceeds‖ (p. 266). Through a contrapuntal broken heart and cracked mind, a conscience reading, Wilson states, ―interpreters move that can‘t stand to make choices anymore‖ back and forth between an internal and (p. 149). Similarly, Estes (2013) notes that external standpoint on the work‘s McCarthy in ―No Country for Old Men imaginative project, with special attention to presents us with a world that is broken and the structure of reference and attitudes it much of the text is devoted to different contains‖ (p. 266). characters‘ thoughts on why this is the case In analyzing a colonial text, Said (p. 179). In the same vein, Hawkins (2017) proposes, ―we begin to reread it not sees McCarthy‘s frontiersman as a figure of univocally but contrapuntally, with a failure. ―One of the most damning aspects of simultaneous awareness both of the No Country for Old Men is how it renders metropolitan history that is narrated and of both Bell and Moss small,‖ states Hawkins other histories against which (and together (p. 17). This study addresses frontiersman‘s with which) the dominating discourse acts‖ identity in McCarthy‘s narrative from a (p. 51). In this process, ―hidden structures of contrapuntal perspective. colonialism and empire reveal themselves By presenting a contrapuntal analysis through the play of several oppositional or, to use the words of Burney (2012), a themes‖ (Burney, 2012, p. 127). In Austen‘s ―reading against the grain‖ (p. 128) we will narrative, for instance, the heroine‘s examine the extent McCarthy‘s text is benefactor Sir Thomas Bertram is the owner informed by revisionist criticism in relation of a plantation in Antigua. As Said argues, to the notion of frontiersman‘s identity. We no matter how insulated and isolated will begin by a discussion of the concept of Mansfield park, it ―requires overseas contrapuntal reading and will proceed to the sustenance. Sir Thomas‘s property in the analysis of the novel from this perspective. Caribbean would have had to be a sugar We will focus in particular on the work‘s plantation maintained by slave labor‖ (p. title and the motif of nostalgia in it. Finally, 89). Thus, Said draws on an aspect of we will argue that McCarthy‘s text refuses Austen‘s text that there is just a passing to delve deep into the true nature of older remark on it in the narrative. He gives voice times for which his aging cowboy Sheriff to the fact that Sir Bertram‘s family profits Bell expresses his nostalgia. It also silent from colonial slave trade. In this context, about the sufferings of those nationalities Said points out that contrapuntal reading and ethnicities represented as the other, the means reading ―with an understanding of Vietnamese in particular, in the text. We what is involved when an author shows, for will further illustrate although the novel instance, that a colonial sugar plantation is mainly depicts the failure of its protagonist seen as important to the process of Sheriff Bell, the writer reinscribes the values maintaining a particular style of life in it apparently critiques with regard to the England‖ (p. 66). The term contrapuntal, as history of American frontiersman. highlighted by Said, is derived from music. 2. Contrapuntal Reading ―In the counterpoint of Western classical In his classic book Culture and music, various themes play off one another Imperialism, Edward Said (1993) engages in with only a provisional privilege being given a contrapuntal reading of Jane Austen‘s to any particular one;‖ Said notes, ― yet in novel Mansfield Park. As dubbed by Said, the resulting polyphony there is concert and ―contrapuntal reading‖ (p. 66) or analysis order, an organized interplay that derives Cite this article as: Marandi, S.M., Pishosta, H. & Tari, Z. (2018). Frontiersman‘s Identity in Cormac McCarthy‘s No Country for Old Men: A Contrapuntal Reading. International Journal of English Language & Translation Studies. 6(4). 49-57. Page | 50 Frontiersman‘s Identity in Cormac… Seyed Mohammad Marandi, Hossein Fathi Pishosta & Zeinab Ghasemi Tari from the themes, not from a rigorous by which the speaker means works of art. melodic or formal principle outside the The speaker in old age prefers the holy city work‖ (p. 51). of Byzantium in which, unlike the natural ―Contrapuntal analysis is a form of re- world, nothing is subject to death, decay and reading texts from the margins to the center, change. Thus the stanza establishes a from the point of view and perspective of contrast between the temporal world of the Other,‖ observes Burney (p. 126). ―It has sensual music and the permanent world of been a technique of oppositional close art. The speaker‘s meditation on the old age reading,‖ Burney states, ―that has been continues in the next stanza: ―An aged man applied extensively as a postcolonial is but a paltry thing, / A tattered coat upon a strategy for critique of literature, arts, and stick, unless / Soul clap its hands and sing, texts‖ (p.
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