Member of the Leviathans prison reading group at HMP Wormwood Scrubs reviews McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men
No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
Cormac McCarthys No Country for Old Men is a novel that speaks directly to anyone who has seen how quickly violence can spiral, and how a single moment’s choices can define the rest of our lives.
If you are staring at these yellow cinderblock walls and wondering if the worlds gone to hell since you were locked up, this novel is a gut-punch of a story about greed, violence and not bad but terrible luck.
Set along the Texas-Mexico boarder in 1980, the story follows Llewelyn Mass (LM) who finds a briefcase with $2.4 million after a drug deal goes wrong. The Vietnam vet grabs the money leading to a relentless chase involving Anton Chigurh (AC), a stone-cold killer with a cattle gun who kills with a cold precision, deciding fate based on a coin flip.
Hot on their heels is Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (ETB), an aging, old school lawman, who watches helplessly and wonders if the good guys ever win. ETB is a man who believes in right and wrong but feels the world has moved past simple moral certainties.
McCarthy’s style is sparse; he writes without quotation marks. The tension is raw and the violence feels brutal and real. There are no heroes, just flawed individuals scraping by.
Moral Ambiguity: There are no clear good guys. Everyone has blood on their hands or past ghosts. This is something a lot of us can identify with. This is about justice vs survival. LM tried to do the right thing but ends up being hunted. ETB tred to uphold the law but feels obsolete. AGs philosophy is cold and calculating yet in some ways logical. Coin tosses feel like fate, something we may all feel in here.
This is not an easy read but a powerful one It is about the choices we make and the moral code we live by. It reminds us that the world outside isn’t simple and the past doesn’t always stay buried. When challenged, who do you want to be? Are our lives predetermined by forces like AC or can one choice like LM’s change everything?
The book is a study of morality, consequence and individual actions.
With no easy answers, the book is dark yet honest, showing that violence has real costs and actions have consequences.