No Country for Old Men

Prologue

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN - CORMAC MCCARTHY

"That is no country for old men." The title of the novel comes from the first line of the 1926 poem "Sailing to Byzantium" by William Butler Yeats.

My name is Ed Tom Bell. I was sheriff of this county when I was twenty-five. Hard to believe. Grandfather was a lawman. Father too. I was sheriff at the same time, him in Piano and me here. I think he was pretty proud of that. I know I was.

Some of the old-time sheriffs never even wore a gun. A lot of folks find that hard to believe. Jim Scarborough never carried one. That's the younger Jim. Gaston Boykins wouldn't wear one. Up in Comanche County.

I always liked to hear about the old-timers. Never missed a chance to do so. Nigger Hoskins over in BastropCounty knows everybody's phone number off by heart. You can't help but compare yourself against the old-timers. Can't help but wonder how they would've operated these times. There was this boy I sent to the gas chamber at Huntsville here a while back. My arrest and my testimony. He killed a fourteen-year-old girl. Papers said it was a crime of passion but he told me there wasn't any passion to it.

Told me that he'd 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. The crime you see now, it's hard to even take measures. It's not that I'm afraid of it.

I always knew you had to be willing to die to even do this job -- not to be glorious. But I don't want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I don't understand. You can say it's my job to fight it but I don't know what it is anymore. 

There was a man named Anton Chigurh, He is devoid of conscience, remorse, and compassion.

Chigurh kills without compassion or remorse, but always with deliberation. He is described as having his own set of morals, however, twisted they may be. While he does not kill at random or without purpose, his reasons are at times abstract. He sees himself as a hand of fate; an instrument that exacts what is supposed to happen upon those he sees accountable. He gives many of his victims he faces a chance to survive by making deals, either personally or by flipping coins in making decisions. He is depicted as having a great deal of pain endurance, such as being capable of withstanding pain from multiple shotgun blasts or a fractured arm. Chigurh kills or tries to kill almost every person he meets. He is the physical embodiment of Death. 

More than that, I don't want to know. A man would have to put his soul at hazard. He would have to say, okay, I'll be part of this world.