No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy (Book Analysis): Detailed Summary, Analysis and Reading Guide

By Bright Summaries

Unlock the more straightforward side of No Country for Old Men with this concise and insightful summary and analysis!

This engaging summary presents an analysis of No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy, the story of Llewelyn Moss, a war veteran who stumbles across the aftermath of a drug deal gone wrong and makes off with a briefcase full of money that he finds at the scene of the carnage. However, this leads to a cross-country pursuit with both law enforcement and the psychopathic hitman Anton Chigurh hot on Moss’s heels. As his world spirals into chaos, Moss’s life turns into a desperate struggle to keep himself and his wife Carla Jean alive. Known for his original and effective writing style, Cormac McCarthy is the multi-award-winning author of several acclaimed novels, including The Road and Blood Meridian.

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This in-depth and informative reading guide brings you:

• A complete plot summary
• Character studies
• Key themes and symbols
• Questions for further reflection

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• Language: English
• Publisher: BrightSummaries.com
• Release date: Apr 3, 2019
• ISBN: 9782808015998

Book preview

AMERICAN NOVELIST

Born in Providence, Rhode Island in 1933.

Notable works:

Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West (1985), novel

Border Trilogy (1992-1998), series of novels

The Road (2006), novel

Cormac McCarthy is often cited as one of America’s most important contemporary writers, particularly for his 1985 novel Blood Meridian. While he had been pursuing writing as a career as early as the 1960s (his first novel, The Orchard Keeper, was published in 1965), he did not start to garner widespread acclaim and commercial success until the publication of his later works, including Blood Meridian and especially his Border Trilogy, starting with All the Pretty Horses (1992).

McCarthy’s writing is known for two primary reasons: his depictions of the American South, and his writing style. In particular, McCarthy has attracted praise for his use of dialect in his novels focusing on the South, while his writing style is noted for stripping away as many commas, apostrophes and punctuation marks as he can, even removing quotation marks for dialogue.

A WORLD THAT OLDER MEN ONCE UNDERSTOOD FALLS TO CHAOTIC VIOLENCE

Genre: novel

Reference edition: McCarthy, C. (2010) No Country for Old Men. London: Picador.

1stedition: 2005

Themes: crime, the rise of chaos, family, fate and chance, senseless violence, self-sufficiency, rural America

It is 1980 in rural Texas. Local county sheriff Ed Tom Bell finds himself in an increasingly violent world that he understands less and less every day. Llewelyn Moss, a Vietnam veteran