No Country For Old Men Essay

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In the novel No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy characterizes Llewelyn Moss and Sheriff Bell both as men who are clinging onto a life they don’t want to escape as a way to introduce the idea that the world is always changing, and thus the people are changing with it. One cannot stay stagnant in an ever-changing world and hope to survive because there is “no country for old men.” McCarthy first uses Llewelyn Moss to tackle the issue of age and the question of how old is too old to keep surviving in a wildly dangerous part of Texas. Moss is introduced to the reader as a man in his mid-thirties, though he is married to a nineteen year old and has been for three years. Being a war veteran and a hunter, Moss has proven to be quite an outdoorsman. He took so many risks in his life, such as when he went back to the murder scene and gave the ailing man in the pickup truck a jug of water. He even told himself how crazy he was, as he cynically said to himself, “I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you just get in your truck and go on out there and take the son of a bitch a drink of water?” (29). McCarthy chose to have this fierce, risk-taking adventurer married off to a young nineteen year old, to suggest that Moss is just barely surviving in this world. He’s coming across so many close calls, and being married to a part of the future is a way to claim some of it for him. But this isn’t the only young teenage girl Moss runs into during his audacious life. While on the run from some wicked outlaws, Moss picks up a hitchhiker who he pegged for 15 or 16 and asks her “How old are you? Eighteen. Bullshit” (211) was his response back. Moss has had to leave his young wife for a short period of time while he ran from Chigurh, and now another young girl walks into his life. The author is again using Moss’ friendliness to someone a whole lot younger than him as a way for Moss to put his

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