Janie Torres
Dr. E. Childs
English 1301.221.WE
7 December 2012
The Most Courageous
In “No Country For Old Men”
The movie , “No Country for Old Men”, was an odd
one. The movie received a great deal of
attention and critical praise, winning the Academy Award for Best Picture of
2008 (Beck 216). TheCoen brothers have a special talent formaking the lives of
regular people appear frighteningly boring (McClure 47). The villain in the
movie, Chigurh was on a hunt for a case of money that was taken by Llewellyn,
but along the way he nearly killed every one he came in contact with. Chigurh’s main focus was to catch up to Llewellyn
to get the money back, but he was determined to kill Llewellyn too once he
found him. There was also a Sheriff Bell
who was looking for Llewellyn. There
were a few other men trying to catch Llewellyn.
All these men had something in common, they were all tough guys. Just about everyone was looking for Llewellyn,
including his wife, Carla Jean. Who has the
most courage? Courage comes from within.
Courage is the strength to stand up for what is right no matter how hard
is may be. Carla Jean did that. Out of
all the characters in the movie, “No
County for Old Men”, Carla Jean shows the most courage, because in more ways
than one she chose to express what she felt was the right thing to do.
Let’s begin with
Chigurh. In this movie we meet Chigurh when
a young police officer is taking the film’s
villain, Anton Chigurh, to the police station in handcuffs. The officer reports
on the phone that he sees nothing unusual about Chigurh, other than that he is
carrying something that looks like an oxygen tank, for “emphysema or something,”
with “a hose that runs down his sleeve.” In fact, the officer thinks
he has everything “under control” until his prisoner brutally strangles
him with the handcuffs (Nichols 208). Chigurh was the bad
guy, who was going around killing everyone. He might even be the toughest of
them all. What made him so tough? That
he could kill innocent people? Anton
Chigurh, has been singled out for special notice as a profoundly frightening, depressing,
and inscrutable figure. (Beck 216) Some might say that’s what makes a person
look weak. At one point, a minor character, Wells, describes
Chigurh as “a psychopathic killer,” but he shrugs at the description, adding,
“but so what? There’s plenty of them around” (Cooper 37). It takes a stronger
person to look someone in the eye and tell them how you feel. It takes an even
stronger person to show them how you feel.
So no, the fact that you can go around killing people doesn’t make you
courageous.
Then there’s Llewellyn
Moss, who stole someone else’s money. He
was out hunting one sunny afternoon when he came upon a scene of carnage in the
desert. Several trucks that sprayed with
bullets and several bloody bodys laying on the ground. It was obvious this was a drug deal gone bad. Llewellyn’s life would soon be nothing but a hit
and miss of living on the run. He was on
the run from Chigurh and he put up a good fight to keep a case of money that
didn’t belong to him. LLewelyn found the case lying next to a dead man who was probably
trying to get away after the shoot-out occurred, but he didn’t make it. The case that LLewelyn took contained 2 million
dollars. Llewelyn, to be sure, wants a better life for his wife, Carla Jean,
which he thinks the stolen money can provide, but he can imagine it in only
negative terms (Nichols 208). When he got the chance to speak to Chigurh on the
phone, he stood up to him. He threatened
Chigurh even though Chigurh was someone the average person would’ve been afraid
of. Still, that didn’t mean he had
courage. Llewellyn was eventually found
and killed by the Mexican drug dealers who were looking for either the money or
the drugs from the scene where Llewellyn found the case to begin with.
More shocking than
Llewellyn’s death is Bell’s failure to avenge it and in giving up the chase, he
fails in his duty to protect those who’d entrusted this responsibility to him,
and allows Carla Jean to be killed as well (McClure 49). Sherriff Ed Tom Bell was
dealing with his own inner battles. He is, or at least thinks of himself as, a
man from an older time, and as such he cannot adjust to the way the world has
changed. The crucial change that makes this country unbearable for him is the
loss of anything permanent beyond this world he can hang on to (McClure 49). Sheriff
Bell was looking for Llewellyn. He was
trying to find him because he afraid that Llewellyn had gotten in deep over his
head. He knew that Llewellyn was in
trouble and he wanted to save him before Chigurh got ahold of him. Sheriff Bell was too late. By the time he found Llewellyn he was already
dead, shot by the Mexican drug dealers who also looking for that case of
money. Sheriff Bell was a good man, but
there was still one other person who showed more courage than him.
There was one person
who showed more courage than all of those men.
That person was Carla Jean. It
takes a very strong woman to worry to love a man so much that you worry about
his well-being. It takes a strong woman
to stand by her man even though she knows something is wrong. It takes a strong woman to trust. Llewellyn didn’t tell Carla Jean what was
going on, but she knew something wasn’t right.
No matter what was going, she trusted him.
Not knowing what was
going on wasn’t the hard part for Carla Jean.
The hard part was not knowing if Llewellyn was ok. To pick up and leave town, took
strength. Carla Jean stood for something
right. Even though she knew something
bad was going, she still had a genuine good heart. She asked the sheriff to find Llewellyn and
keep him safe. She wouldn’t have wanted
anyone to get hurt, but she had a feeling something bad was coming.
Carla Jean had
courage. It takes a lot of courage to
handle all this and still stay strong.
Even though she had hoped she would get to Llewellyn before something
happened to him, she didn’t. When she came
face to face with Chigurh, she looked in the eyes and told him “You have reason
to harm me.” Of course his psychopathic demeanor didn’t scare her and his coy response
was that he made a promise to Llewellyn.
She even told him, in her own way, just how ridiculous that was. He thought he could intimidate her with his
coin of fate the way he did with everyone else, but she was not afraid of
him. She stood up to him and told him
she was not going to choose head or tails.
She didn’t seem to care about making him mad.
Even though Carla Jean
knew she was probably going to be killed.
She never gave up her dignity.
One might say, she faced him like a man.
This is what makes her the most courageous person in the movie, “No Country For Old Men.”
Works
Cited
Nichols, M. P. (2008).
Revisiting Heroism and Community in Contemporary Westerns: No Country for Old
Men and 3:10 to Yuma. Perspectives On Political Science, 37(4), 207-216.
Beck, B. (2008). Cold,
Cold Heart: Who's Afraid of No Country for Old Men?. Multicultural
Perspectives, 10(4), 214-217. doi:10.1080/15210960802526219
Cooper, L. R. (2009).
He's a Psychopathic Killer, but So What?": Folklore and Morality in Cormac
McCarthy's "No Country for Old Men. Papers On Language & Literature,
45(1), 37-59.
McClure, C. (2010). No
Country for Old Gods. Perspectives On Political Science, 39(1), 46-51.
