‘Some (not so) new kind’ : No Country for Old Men and Cormac McCarthy’s fiction in post-9/11 American culture

Abstract

Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men has generated significant discussion that moves beyond earlier works in his oeuvre. As McCarthy’s first novel after September 11, 2001, its concerns relating to American exceptionalism drew attention from critics such as Vincent Allan King and Francisco Collado-Rodriguez. These discussions, however, look beyond how McCarthy’s portrayed Sheriff Ed Tom Bell through the context of his roots as an ancestral Georgian and a culturally evangelical Protestant, with roots dating back to the early 1800s. Those roots, I argue, form the basis of Bell’s pursuit and later abandonment of Anton Chiguhr. Rather than, in King’s view, relinquishing his moral authority as Sheriff and as a representative of post-war American stability, McCarthy portrays Sheriff Bell as understanding that even if he were to capture Chiguhr, he would become what he sought and, by doing so, put his “soul” in a position of irredeemable moral hazard. Rather than losing moral authority, however, Bell embodies the evangelical Christian notion that to lose is, in fact, to win. Through that paradox, Bell represents the notion that morality, particularly in the post 9-11 era, remains attainable even as it is elusive.