No Country for Old Men: Themes

Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

The Inevitability of Change

No Country for Old Men pits an “old man” who values justice, morality, and lawfulness against a world in which younger men act according to their own codes. Bell specifically addresses the idea of change, expressing his distaste for new morals, fashions, and customs of contemporary society. He continually compares the present time unfavorably to previous ones. Bell’s attitude is not wholly unexpected. In his years as a sheriff, he has had a front-row seat on crime, and he believes that the new type of drug criminal represents a shift toward lawlessness and chaos, which will only worsen. As bad as Chigurh is, he is simply a harbinger of the future. However, while Bell holds a nostalgic vision of the past, other details that emerge show he is romanticizing it to some extent. For instance, Ellis tells him the truth about a relative who was killed by the Native Americans, showing that violence was always a part of American society. It just took a different form in earlier days. Another relative died at the age of seventeen in World War I. The world always outlives the beings that populate it, and the older generation usually is the first to feel out of step.

The Impact of Fate, Luck, and Choice

Characters in No Country for Old Men have clear but vastly different ideas about how fate, luck, and choice impact their lives. When Moss finds the money, which kicks off the novel’s action, he faces a decision on whether to take it. He does on a partially conscious level, hoping to improve his life but not fully grasping the ramifications of his actions until later. By contrast, many of the other characters in the novel believe that luck guides their journeys, but their actual life paths show that this belief is unfounded. Bell is one of these characters, and he ends the novel in a state of loss, having left his job and forsaken his belief that justice will prevail in the end. He still emerges better than the hitchhiker, who also calls herself lucky but is killed simply because of her brief association with Moss.

Chigurh holds completely opposing views to almost every other character in the book. According to his philosophy, every choice his victims make throughout their lives brings them to their inevitable end. He most clearly expresses this philosophy through his lengthy conversation with Carla Jean. While she believes he is choosing to kill her—logically pointing out that he already retrieved the money—he counters that her death has been fated by Moss’s decision to refuse to give him the money. In Chigurh’s worldview, then, it is not only one’s own decisions that impact one’s future but also those that other people make. When Chigurh seems to give Carla Jean the chance to save herself through a coin toss, he implies that the choice she makes of heads or tails will simply reflect what must happen—in this case, her death. Essentially, Chigurh believes that fate exists but is influenced by all the choices that are made. Since Chigurh alone remains unbroken at the end of the novel, his philosophy resounds as the prevailing truth: No one can escape their fate.

The Battle of Good and Evil

The age-old theme of the battle between good and evil underlies No Country for Old Men, from its plot points and its dependence on violence to the characters and how they change throughout the novel. Moss is a morally ambiguous man. He steals the money, knowing what he risks, and then gets identified as the thief because he returns to the scene to perform an act of kindness: bringing water to the one survivor. During the novel, readers see Moss waver on which side he falls, representing the battle between good and evil that rages inside of him.

This battle also manifests between law enforcement and the men who work for the drug dealers. Law enforcement tries to catch up with the criminals but consistently remains a few steps behind and shows up only in time to clean up and collect the bodies.

The characters of Bell and Chigurh most definitively embody this battle. Bell represents the side of good, through his role as a sheriff but also through his ideas about what that job entails. The role of sheriff is an elected role—at one point Loretta reminds him they still owe thousands of dollars from his campaign—so Bell’s job is truly one of service to his community. He feels a compelling need to protect the people in his county, not merely to enforce law and order. Chigurh, on the other hand, not only murders people for his livelihood, but he also seems to be a living incarnation of evil. He kills people, such as Carla Jean, for no reason other than his distorted philosophy. Bell recognizes this frightful aspect of Chigurh. When faced with such evil, Bell doesn’t think that good can prevail, and he opts out of his position as sheriff to avoid facing such evil again. In essence, in this battle, evil wins out over good.

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