Character Analysis
(Avoiding Spoilers)
Grew Up… in parts unknown. Chigurh has no interest in revealing his past, responding to such inquiries with an aggressive, “What business is it of yours where I’m from, friendo?” Cloaked in mystery, with no clear future or past, Chigurh has been described more than once as a “force of nature.”
Living… hand-in-hand with death. Chigurh has no life in the traditional sense. He is described as a ghost, he has no friends, no home, and is constantly on the move from one job to the next. Currently, he’s been tasked with retrieving a missing satchel that contains $2 million dollars, although Chigurh is more interested in killing the man who took the money: the intrepid Llewellyn Moss.
Profession… professional killer. Chigurh is incredibly tough, resourceful, and completely devoid of a conscience – meaning that he’s perfectly suited to his life as a hit man. His single-minded pursuit of his quarry has given him a fearsome reputation in the underworld, where he is viewed more as an unstoppable force of destruction than as a man.
Interests… murder and fatalistic philosophy. Chigurh carries a coin with him which he forces his victims to flip to decide whether they live or die. He uses this as a justification for his incredibly violent behaviour, seeing himself as an agent of fate and a slave to chance.
Relationship Status… none that we know of. Chigurh’s closest relationship is probably to the pneumatic oxygen tank he uses to kill many of his victims.
Challenge… tracking down the surprisingly resourceful and tough Llewellyn Moss. Chigurh has been hired for the job, but isn’t driven by money – he just seems to have a philosophical compulsion to kill people. Chigurh is the best at what he does, but as he is always quick to note that much of the world is random. Could Llewellyn and Sheriff Ed Bell wind up lucky enough to escape the seemingly unstoppable Chigurh?
Personality… chilling, mysterious, and menacing. Chigurh is intelligent and well-reasoned, but seems to have embraced monstrous principles. He is extremely calculating and rarely exhibits any emotion. His murderous modus operandi suggests insanity, but Chigurh’s strict but impenetrable moral code suggests that there is a method to his madness.
Get to Know him in...
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Llewelyn Moss stumbles upon dead bodies, $2 million and a hoard of heroin in a Texas desert, but methodical killer Anton Chigurh comes looking for it, with local sheriff Ed Tom Bell hot on his trail. The roles of prey and predator blur as the violent pursuit of money and justice collide.
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In his blistering new novel, Cormac McCarthy returns to the Texas-Mexico border, setting of his famed Border Trilogy. The time is our own, when rustlers have given way to drug-runners and small towns have become free-fire zones.
One day, a good old boy named Llewellyn Moss finds a pickup truck surrounded by a bodyguard of dead men. A load of heroin and two million dollars in cash are still in the back. When Moss takes the money, he sets off a chain reaction of catastrophic violence that not even the law–in the person of aging, disillusioned Sheriff Bell–can contain.
As Moss tries to evade his pursuers–in particular a mysterious mastermind who flips coins for human lives–McCarthy simultaneously strips down the American crime novel and broadens its concerns to encompass themes as ancient as the Bible and as bloodily contemporary as this morning’s headlines.
No Country for Old Men is a triumph.
