A Sorry Tale: No Country for Old Men

Abstract

“No country for old men,” W. B. Yeats defied death and opted for timeless classics in hammered metal and chiseled stone. The Irish bard left “those dying generations” of crass modernity for a place beyond time. How old is a thirty-six year-old veteran like Llewelyn Moss in No Country for Old Men? Aged as he gets to be when he dies, and so with Carla Jean his wife of nineteen. “But he wasn’t nothing compared to what was comin down the pike,” the sheriff says opening the narrative at a child murderer’s state execution. It’s an old story told by older men to anyone who might make it this far: a little man up against lethal odds and forces much bigger than himself, huge fortunes and ruthless powers, bets his life, stash, and love against overwhelming odds. He is fated to fail. How he fails is the hyperreal story, the drama of everyman against destiny and ill winds and corruption. McCarthy crafts an ancient tragedy without epic overbite, no heroes or romances that can be saved, men “ignorant as a box of rocks,” the old uncle says.

An aged man is but a paltry thing A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress

—W.B. Yeats, “Sailing to Byzantium”