No Country for Old Men Chapter II Summary & Analysis

Chapter II

Summary: Chapter II

Bell relates how law enforcement has always been dangerous. One man pulled a gun on him, and another shot at him from a truck. After the second incident, Bell drove to the café in Sanderson and was accused of showing off his bullet-ridden cruiser. Bell reads the paper every morning and knows of the violence in the world.

The narrative returns to the past. Bell goes to his office in the courthouse, but then Deputy Torbert summons him to a crime scene. Bell, accompanied by an officer named Wendell, finds Torbert waiting by an abandoned police car. Torbert opens the trunk, revealing a dead man shot through the head. Bell tells Torbert to drive the body to Austin and then return to Sonora to get picked up. He also tells Torbert to fill out the report as if this were a typical incident. Bell drives to the sheriff’s office in Sonora, where yellow crime tape barricades the parking lot. He goes inside and knocks on Sheriff Lamar’s door. They walk back outside, and Lamar tells Bell that the murder is the work of a lunatic. The dead deputy was only 23 and had a wife. Lamar says he is thinking of quitting. The sheriffs agree they seem to be dealing with something new.

Moss takes the bus back home. Carla Jean asks about his injuries and the truck, but Moss doesn’t answer. Instead, he tells her that she has to go to her mother’s house in Odessa and stay there until his call.

On the highway, Chigurh stops at a filling station. After he pays, he lingers at the counter, scaring the proprietor. The man says he needs to close the shop, but Chigurh doesn’t leave and continues to ask questions. Then Chigurh, talking about coin tosses, takes a quarter from his pocket and flips it. He demands that the proprietor call heads or tails. The man doesn’t want to because he doesn’t know the stakes. Chigurh says if he calls it correctly, he will win. The man calls heads, which is correct. Chigurh insists the man take the quarter as his lucky coin. He says that anything, even a coin, can be an instrument, though he doesn’t say an instrument of what. Chigurh then gets back in his car and meets two men on a country road. Together, they continue onward to Moss’s truck, where Chigurh takes the inspection plate from the car. They walk down to inspect the ambushed trucks. After asking about a box and learning what little the men know about the situation, Chigurh shoots both with a pistol and drives away.

Analysis: Chapter II

In Chapter II, readers get a clearer understanding of McCarthy and his style of storytelling. His words are sparse, not just in his omission of quotation marks and other punctuation, but in details as well. Bell’s return to the courthouse provides a perfect example of this technique. McCarthy implies that Bell saw the body of the dead deputy inside the sheriff’s office, but he never specifically says so. McCarthy’s narration requires readers to fill in the details themselves, which pulls them deeper into the text and the action. Readers often make connections that the characters are unable to make. For instance, Bell and the men have no way of knowing that the man in the trunk of the car is the man that Chigurh killed in Chapter I, but this fact is clear to readers. This technique also allows the reader to play an active role in the “mystery,” as seen from Bell’s point of view, that the novel presents.

While Bell and Moss do play roles in this chapter, Chigurh emerges as the most commanding figure, and McCarthy further develops his unique character. Chigurh’s stop at the service station shows his cruelty. He plays with the frightened proprietor much in the same way that a cat might play with a mouse. Chigurh’s prying questions and aura of menace demonstrate his power. Not only does Chigurh scare the man, but his questions also prolong the game of playing with his prey while allowing Chigurh to share his ideas about choice and luck. When he proposes the fateful coin toss, Chigurh appears to be showing that he believes in chance. Whether the proprietor lives or dies is entirely dependent on how the man calls the coin and how the coin lands. Of course, Chigurh chooses to put the man’s life on the line, though Chigurh doesn’t acknowledge this truth. Chigurh’s philosophy about choice and luck will become fleshed out through future coin tosses and conversations with victims.

The final scene in Chapter II, in which Chigurh and the two men go to the scene of the shootout, raises several new questions about what the men are saying and why. Chigurh refers to a box that is making no sound. This exchange makes no sense to the reader but will become of crucial importance as Moss—and readers—come to understand that a tracking device has been inserted into the money. This tracking device means that despite Moss fleeing his home, he can’t escape his pursuers. Additionally, while Chigurh clearly is in league with these two men in some capacity, he still murders them. Readers don’t know if he is acting on his own decision or if he has been ordered to kill them.

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