Survival and Cultural Adaptation

This paper presents an analysis of two short stories “No Country for Old Men” by Cormac McCarthy and “Caramelo”, written by Sandra Cisneros.

No Country for Old Men

No Country for Old Men is by far the most cinematically constructed of McCarthy's novels. No Country for Old Men is at once controversial, a change in direction, and yet redolent of themes, threads, and preoccupations from his earlier work.

The story's blistering pace is interrupted only by italicized excerpts of Sheriff Bell's interior monologues on such topics as his wartime service, his beloved wife, his profession, and what he considers a dispiritingly changed America (McCarthy, 32). This pairing works better in some sections of the book than others. Though Bell is highly believable and an appealing human being, many of his observations seem too mundane to serve as an appropriately weighted dramatic counterpoint to the careening nihilism of Chigurh's world. Of the initial popular reviewers who expressed mixed feelings about the novel's success, nearly all mentioned the voice of Sheriff Bell as a likely weak link.

With a talent as distinctive and multifaceted as Cormac McCarthy's, even novels that may at times seem technically flawed are nonetheless gifts to American literature and reading experiences that are not to be missed. Llewelyn Moss, a former sniper in the Vietnam War, is stalking antelope in the Texas wilderness near his home when the view in his binoculars suddenly reveals vehicles and corpses riddled by machine-guns, the apparent aftermath of a drug deal gone wrong. Moss inspects the carnage firsthand and finds one of the shooting victims barely clinging to life (McCarthy, 33). The man asks him for water, but Moss has none. Nearby, he finds a leather satchel containing almost two-and-a-half million dollars in unmarked bills and takes it home.

There are still passages of luminous nature writing here, albeit more constrained than in All the Pretty Horses and other descriptions of unspoiled landscape in the 1950's West. Though much of the chase takes place in the open air, it is clear that the landscape and the society have changed dramatically from decades past, and not for the better (McCarthy, 34). The job of embodying the contrast between those different eras falls to the novel's third main character and its most problematic one: an aging Texas sheriff named Ed Tom Bell, who is in desperate pursuit of both Llewelyn Moss and Anton Chigurh as the ...