Character Analysis
(Avoiding Spoilers)
Grew Up… without much. Llewellyn comes from a poor Texan family. His upbringing combined with his tremendous practical intelligence has made him resourceful. He knows his way around, and believes that any problem is surmountable with the right combination of planning and grit.
Living… in a trailer with his wife, Carla Jean. The two live simply, but happily. As long as there’s food to eat and some beer in the fridge, they’re content.
Profession… a welder and Vietnam vet – but now that he’s found a satchel stuffed with two million dollars in cash, Llewellyn considers himself retired. Of course, two million dollars is a lot of money, and someone is bound to come hunting for his new retirement fund. Unable to enjoy his golden years just yet, Llewellyn’s new job is to stay alive long enough to spend his windfall.
Interests… an avid hunter and outdoorsman, Llewellyn enjoys the solitude found in stalking prey on the quiet plains. He understands how animals behave, but now that he’s the prey, he’s about to find that human behavior is a lot less predictable than that of a pronghorn.
Relationship Status… married to Carla Jean, whom he loves deeply. Carla Jean is utterly confident in her man, but worries about what he’s gotten himself into. She knows that Llewellyn would never ask for help, even if he was in over his head.
Challenge… surviving. Llewellyn is determined to hold onto the two millions dollars even as he is pursued by the lethal and psychotic assassin, Anton Chigurh. With at least three different interested parties involved in tracking him down and taking the money, Llewellyn knows it’ll be hard to stay alive – but his desire to give Carla Jean a better life means that he’s willing to risk everything.
Personality… difficult to read. His stone-faced exterior hides a canny intelligence, and he is competent at just about everything he does. His pleasures are simple, but he possesses a nuanced and unbreakable moral code. Self-aware without patience for nonsense, he has no illusions about his deadly quest, telling Carla Jean, “I’m ‘bout to do somethin’ dumber than hell, but I’mma do it anyway. If I don’t come back tell momma I love her.” When Carla Jean tells him his mother’s long dead, he answers, “Well, I’ll tell her myself then.”
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.
