The Inevitability of Change

The rocks there were etched with pictographs perhaps a thousand years old. The men who drew them hunters like himself. Of them there was no other trace.

This quote, which appears in Chapter I as Moss hikes along the ridge following the antelope, subtly introduces the novel’s theme of the inevitability of change. The simple images that Moss sees, made by ancient people, have endured long beyond those who etched them into the face of the rock. These images were created by hunters just like Moss, showing that despite the long passage of time, a similarity exists between the people who once occupied the land and its current inhabitants. However, that similarity is one basic to most human societies. All the other details McCarthy provides in this chapter about Moss’s hunting expedition—his weapons, his binoculars, the drug dealers’ cars—show how little in common Moss, or any modern human, has with the ancient people who created the pictographs so very long ago. These differences are also normal, as people and communities change to survive and possibly thrive in whatever world they live in. As time moves on, people, cultures, and technologies always change, often supplanting earlier groups entirely. The ability to change and adapt is key to survival.

I aint sure we’ve seen these people before. Their kind. I don’t know what to do about em even. If you killed em all they’d have to build a annex on to hell.

Here, in Chapter III, as Bell and Torbert discuss the sheer number of bodies that have turned up, Bell starts to realize that they are dealing with a new kind of criminal, a type he hasn’t encountered before. He always believed that drug dealers were the more contemporary version of the cattle rustlers that his grandfather, also a sheriff, had to deal with, but what Bell has seen so far has made him change his mind. The criminals Bell now faces are a different type. They are not simply trying to make a buck, they’re also willing to inflict a horrifying level of violence and destruction to achieve their goals. Bell says he has never seen anything like these people before, and that is a strong statement coming from a man who fought the Nazis in Europe. These criminals represent the modern face of the drug trade, and as the novel expresses, this brutal industry permeates all levels of society.

[T]his man had . . . carved out a stone water trough to last ten thousand years. Why was that? What was it that he had faith in? It wasn’t that nothing would change. . . . He had to know bettern that. . . . [T]he only thing I can think is that there was some sort of promise in his heart.

In the final chapter, Chapter XIII, Bell reflects on an element of the farmhouse in Europe during World War II, the stone trough. He notes that the trough was carved out in the distant past and was made to last far into the future. Bell wonders how a man can put such work into creating something that will last for millennia when the man, his people, and even his culture are likely to be long gone. When Bell mentions that the man must have had “some sort of promise in his heart,” he means the man had a clear enough understanding that, even with the inevitable changes time would bring, his water trough might still serve a purpose sometime in the future. This man, Bell knows, would have lived life to the fullest, with knowledge of his place in time and the world, and Bell wants to be the kind of man who lives like that, too.

The Impact of Fate, Luck, and Choice

Two point four million. All used bills. He sat looking at it. You have to take this seriously, he said. You can’t treat it like luck.

This quote reflects Moss’s thoughts as he contemplates the briefcase in Chapter I. Moss recognizes that in choosing to steal the money, he has taken a deliberate action that will gravely impact his life from that point on. To treat the money as “luck” would be to refuse to understand the possible ramifications of his actions. Moss first took the money with little thought about the decision. However, now that he has incurred the risk that comes with it, he knows he must be more careful and conscious of the choices he makes in the future. The money could change Moss’s life for the better, but it also could bring about much pain and suffering, particularly if the drug dealers discover his identity. It may have been luck or chance that brought him to the place of the drug shootout, but Moss understands that he must now be responsible for every action taken after first spotting the shot-up cars and dead bodies.

Me I was always lucky. My whole life. I wouldn’t be here otherwise. Scrapes I been in. But the day I seen her come out of Kerr Mercantile and cross the street and she passed me and I tipped my hat to her and got just almost a smile back, that was the luckiest.

In Chapter IV, Bell chalks his meeting Loretta up to luck. In a situation such as he describes, luck seems like a reasonable cause. After all, if circumstances had been slightly altered, the two might never have met—if Bell had been walking on a different street . . . if Loretta had left the mercantile five minutes earlier. . . . Because Loretta is so important to Bell, the person who grounds him and supports him, Bell can’t imagine life without her. In that sense, it was luck that they were on the street at the same time. However, Bell also devalues all that he has to offer by implying that it was only luck that made her smile back at him. At no point does he share any of the good qualities that might make him attractive to Loretta, and those good qualities in part stem from the choices he has made throughout life to be the person he wants to be.

You think when you wake up in the mornin yesterday don’t count. But yesterday is all that does count. What else is there? Your life is made out of the days it’s made out of.

Moss says these words to the hitchhiker in Chapter VIII, and his words bear an odd resemblance to Chigurh’s philosophy that every action a person takes and every decision a person makes leads to where that person is now. A person who believes that life is made up of every day that comes before the current day would approach actions and decisions differently than someone who believes in being able to start over with a clean slate, as the hitchhiker does. Here, Moss speaks from his own experience—because he stole some money that belonged to drug dealers, he is now having this conversation with this stranger. Moss’s “today” is not a matter of fate, luck, or chance but a matter of deliberate choice, even if he didn’t realize it at the time. Ironically, on the evening of this conversation, Moss will be murdered by hitmen sent by the drug dealers, fatally making his point. 

The Battle of Good and Evil

It takes very little to govern good people. Very little. And bad people can’t be governed at all.

In this section in Chapter III where Bell reflects on his situation, Bell is thinking about his past as a sheriff. He recalls that he campaigned to be sheriff of Terrell County in the first place because he felt a need to protect people and he wanted to make up for leaving his squad behind during World War II. In all of his years in law enforcement, Bell has faced people driven to kill, but very little pure evil like the kind that he sees in Chigurh. He has been able to be a good sheriff because the people around him are good. Chigurh’s badness challenges Bell in ways he has never before experienced. All his methods of handling people, which rely on common morality, fail him. Bell doesn’t know how to make Chigurh succumb to the power of the law, perhaps, as he ponders here, because there is no way to do so. When Bell can’t save Carla Jean, he gives up the fight.

Add to that that there’s peace officers along this border getting rich off narcotics. That’s a painful thing to know. Or it is for me. I dont believe that was true even ten years ago. A crooked peace officer is just a damned abomination.

In Chapter VIII, Bell talks about how the world is changing for the worse. He doesn’t just blame criminals, like drug dealers, who just by evidence of their chosen “career” have little regard for the law. In this quote, Bell makes clear that he also understands that certain law enforcement officers are also complicit in narcotics crime. To Bell, these people are hateful. The idea of law enforcement working with criminals for profit goes against the essence and very nature of what a peace officer, as Bell calls the position, should be. From a more pragmatic point of view, Bell wonders how good is supposed to combat and subdue evil if those who claim to work for good work together with evil on the same side. Bell’s direct condemnation of crooked law enforcement officers speaks to the changing ways of the modern era and helps explain why Bell feels as if there is no longer a place in the sheriff’s department for him.

[T]hey asked me if I believed in Satan. … I had to think about that. I guess as a boy I did. Come the middle years my belief I reckon had waned somewhat. Now I'm startin to lean back the other way. He explains a lot of things that otherwise dont have no explanation. Or not to me they dont.

Bell shares this recollection in Chapter VIII, and his words reflect the experiences he has had during his many years in law enforcement. In particular, these words arise from the violence and disregard for human life he has seen from Chigurh. To Bell, there is no reasonable, earthly explanation for the horrific things he has seen and the things Chigurh has done. The only way to make sense of the wanton violence is to ascribe it to an otherworldly source of evil: the devil, or Satan. Bell wants to continue to believe in some sense of order in the world. He wants justice and morality to prevail. He wishes that most people, even criminals, would understand right from wrong, and want to make good in the end. However, with a man like Chigurh, what Bell wants no longer seems possible to him. Placing responsibility for evil actions in the world on Satan may make them somewhat easier to bear for Bell, or at least it may make them more comprehensible.

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