What does it All Mean?

Considering how integral a role greed plays in the progression of the book’s events this topic clearly serves as a significant part of the book’s overarching meaning. After all, just as I stated in my most recent blog post many of the book’s characters, unfortunately, find their fates to be dictated by Moss’ decision to take the suitcase full of money. Thus, by choosing to so harshly condemn Moss’ actions through the killing of everyone he loves and cares about McCarthy indicates to readers that greed is an unacceptable wrong that should never be committed.

However, McCarthy’s discussion of morality throughout the book extends well beyond the focus on the topic of greed. In fact, McCarthy incorporates Sheriff Bell’s character into Moss’ story in order to create a means of discussing crime and the immorality that leads to its occurrence. This can be seen in Sheriff Bell’s involvement in the police investigation surrounding Chigurh’s hunt for Moss when he states that “this county has not had an unsolved homicide in forty-one years. Now we got nine of them in one week” (page 216), thus clarifying the harsh reality of the fallout that has occurred since Moss took the suitcase. Yet what perhaps makes this comment most noteworthy is the commentary that it provides on the ways McCarthy believes American society has changed over time, with the dramatic increase in unsolved murders in the county highlighting some of the growing issues like crime that McCarthy believes are facing the United States. This same point is further reflected in McCarthy’s argument that American social norms have changed as seen when Sheriff Bell explains that “these old people I talk to, if you could of told them that there would be people on the streets of our Texas towns with green hair and bones in their noses speaking a language they couldn’t even understand, well, they just flat out wouldn’t of believed you” (295). Therefore, through his examination of how the function of American society has transformed with the passing of time, McCarthy intends to give readers an understanding of United States’ failings as a nation.

While McCarthy looks to paint a bleak and troubled image of American society whenever possible he still makes sure to provide solutions to the problems he discusses as well. After all, within the story of Moss’ quest for financial success, it’s clear that Chigurh’s character is intended to personify evil in its purest form as evidenced by the series of cold-blooded murders he commits in his search for Moss. Yet in spite of possessing a generally cold and intimidating persona Chigurh’s character comes to appear weak and feeble at times as a result of the series of injuries—the worst of which being the broken arm and forehead gash he sustains after being in a car crash—that he experiences throughout the book. Thus, by showing that Chigurh is still mortal like the book’s other characters McCarthy indicates that the flawed sense of morality his character represents is vanquishable as well. In fact, McCarthy even goes so far as to provide specific suggestions as to how to restore the morality he feels is missing in American society when Sheriff Bell–the man who I am in fact about to quote for the third time in this post–explains that:

It starts when you begin to overlook bad manners. Anytime you quit hearin Sir and Mam the end is pretty much in sight. I told her, I said: It reaches into ever strata. You’ve heard about that ain’t you? Ever strata? You finally get into the sort of breakdown in mercantile ethics that leaves people settin around out in the desert dead in their vehicles and by then it’s just too late (303).

Consequently, rather than simply limit his writing to a reflection on the state of American society in the 1980s McCarthy instead seeks to use No Country for Old Men as a call to arms regarding how to avoid the spread of immorality and even prevent the failure of human civilization as we know it.