Literary_analysis

Summary Llewelyn Moss, a small town welder, stumbles on a briefcase full of cash in the middle of the desert. Taking the briefcase triggers a series of events that forever links the fates of him, an aging sheriff, and a hitman. Thoughts This is the third Cormac McCarthy book I’ve read this year and it may be my favorite. He wrote it a year before The Road, you can see the two stories as connected in an interesting way, but more on that later. This book is one of McCarthy’s least “fancy” book, you aren’t going to get much of his unique pacing or Hemingway-esque prose that was prominent in his border trilogy. For some, this is a loss; for others, it’s a welcome relief. Llewelyn Moss, quickly revealed to be out of his depth, knows this yet persistently tries to convince himself and others of his capability. Sheriff Bell is of course, one of the men that are too old for this country, whenever the book switches to his perspective we are usually met with a memory or utter consternation at the direction the world seems to be heading. Bell is a sheriff that everyone would consider to be an “old timer”, but he secretly knows he is not. He’s got all the common sense of the older generation but can’t manage to have the same beliefs, and this bothers him to no end. Bell’s wife acts like Dante’s Beatrice, a guide and anchor to life that he would be completely lost without. The antagonist, Anton Chigurh, a representation of fate, the unyielding code, and the inevitable end, seamlessly weaves in and out of the narrative. He embodies the universe, one that defies reasoning through its own inexorable logic. ...

Read this while on vacation. Luckily this particular edition came with definitions for most arcane words and phrases used. If I had not have had this the book would have been fairly unintelligible. Overall, even with definitions this book was just “pretty good”. This might be because it is not written as a book but as a play. So much of the weight of what is happening is only as heavy as your imagination can make it. Living in the TV era I can hardly imagine anything, it left me mostly in the dark. With that being said I was still able to piece together that action and character development of the story. The language and metaphors in the book are truly Shakespearian (pause for chuckles). But really the word play is masterful and renders emotions in high dynamic range. The thing that struck me most about this story was that it had many parallels to the movie Scarface. I was not expecting that connection. Some great quotes in this book to be sure.