A Postmodern Quantum Allegory?
‘No Country for Old Men’ is an introduction to the laws of the universe
Cormac McCarthy is a demanding author. He believes in the power of syntax and refuses to use quotation marks for dialogue. My first McCarthy book was Blood Meridian; No Country for Old Men is my second one. Except that both are classified under the Western genre, they have little in common. Compared to Blood, No Country is definitely more minimalistic.
McCarthy’s rhetoric is somewhat plain in No Country, although it is as unforgiving as Blood. No Country also feels more claustrophobic, as most of the story takes place indoors — hotels, offices, houses, shops — places of that sort. It revolves around an illegal drug deal around the US-Mexico border.
The main protagonist is Llewelyn Moss, who stumbles upon the aftermath of a drug deal gone awry and picks up a satchel with three million dollars. The rest is about him fleeing across the two countries, while Chigurh, a psychopathic hitman, goes after him until hell freezes over.
There are a couple of other characters in the novel — including Moss’s wife Carla Jean, Sheriff Bell and a rival hitman Wells — but none stands out as Chigurh, whose menacing demeanour suggests something of an almost supernatural nature.
The novel is marked by its bleakness, which is palpable through its candid depiction of moral depravity. It is not quite a dystopia, but close to it — the novel's opening passage encapsulates its grim and nihilistic atmosphere.
I sent one boy to the gas chamber….He’d killed a fourteen year old girl….He was nineteen. And he told me that he had been planning to kill somebody for about as long as he could remember. Said that if they turned him out he’d do it again. Said he knew he was going to hell.
The story is strangely linear, given that different schemes develop at different places at the same time. Each developing path intersects through roads, highways, and bridges: linear structures. There is no going back, either: characters in this novel don’t turn back, except for Moss, who returns to the U.S. after a heavy injury.
His re-crossing of the border is symbolic and significant, as it renders a war veteran returning to combat while drawing the contrast between heaven and hell. This strong directionality forms the belief that every single soul is led to a singular fate, with that fate being the precipitated death. In No Country, human lives are as cheap as dirt.
All the young die while the old live on, suicidal. Chigurh’s visit is the herald of death, while his dark appearance embodies death itself. His precision is the certainty of what will happen, from which Moss averts his eyes: his feigned bullishness mirrors the way people face their mortality.
Do you know who the man is?
No. Am I supposed to?
Because he’s not somebody you really want to know. The people he meets tend to have very short fortunes. Nonexistent, in fact.
Well good for him.
These interactions signal the pessimism of McCarthy, who is sure there is no redemption. We all die eventually. Death will happen while most things won’t. If there is one thing to be done, that should be to make the most of life. So, McCarthy’s coping is to ensure no-nonsense: when Chigurh meets one shop proprietor, he cannot tolerate the way he wastes his time. For Chigurh, his frivolous approach to life deserves death.
I didn’t put nothing up.
Yes you did. You’ve been putting it up your whole life. You just didn’t know it.
In the same manner, Chigurh confronts Wells by criticising his vacuity (ironically, right before this scene Wells reprimands Moss for “not paying attention”).
The rule that you followed brought you to this, of what use is the rule?
But this is where No Country gets really interesting. When Chigurh comes to execute someone, he is unable to do so. Instead, he stakes his decision on a coin toss. This lets the proprietor alive and kills Carla Jean. The “rule he follows” entails uncertainty — what does this mean?
Isn’t Chigurh the absolute certainty, the inescapable death? McCarthy is fascinated by quantum mechanics, calling it an extremely exciting theory. Its principle is that nothing in this universe is definite, as the probability is all there is to exist. The famous paradox “Schrödinger’s Cat” explains the nature of quantum superposition, to which Einstein objected by saying “God does not throw dice”.
He proved himself wrong, and the theory has since been an inspiration to McCarthy. Beyond all predictions is uncertainty — this coincides with Chigur’s course of action. Is No Country, then, an allegory of quantum theory? “God throws dice” — is that what McCarthy has to say?
Call it.
I wont do it.
Yes you will. Call it.
God would not want me to do that.
Of course he would.
Chigurh’s fate also turns out to be an unpredicted one. The car crash that nearly kills him is a symbolic antithesis of the certainty of death. “Even death is uncertain” — while this itself is neither a positive nor a negative perspective, McCarthy’s intention lies in the establishment of a new binary opposition. His scientific narrative erodes the good and evil inhabiting our convenient minds. In this sense, No Country goes along the lines of postmodernist discourse.
On the whole, No Country is a fairly straightforward novel. But in its lucidity, there is a real profundity that makes it more than just a bloody neo-Western thriller. It does fluctuate from a McCarthy-esque superficiality, but its narrative holds as far as the themes are concerned.
Personally, I like the main character Llewelyn Moss very much. The softness behind his macho persona is something precious and on point. I admire McCarthy's craftmanship of “man’s man”, and this is what makes the death of Moss so impactful and lasting.
