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The Three Generations Represented in No Country For Old Men Essay

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Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men follows three very different men in a tense cat and mouse chase through several border towns. It begins with a drug smuggling deal gone very wrong in the middle of the desert that leaves behind a truck bed full of cocaine and a sack with 1.4 million dollars left for someone to discover. When on a hunting endeavor, Llewelyn Moss discovers the scene and the million dollars. When he takes the money, he seals his fate with a brutal killer named Anton Chiguhr, and the old Sheriff, Ed Tom Bell. These men display three different personalities and mannerisms. The three main characters in Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men represent three different generations. Ed Tom Bell is Sheriff for a small town …show more content…

I just hope you’ll think about what I did say. I ain’t makin up a word about the kind of trouble he is in” (McCarthy 133). “The elderly Lawman, product o an informal code of honor that belongs to generations past, comes to doubt weather he is any longer suited to his work. This new era demands an equally brutal response of a kind He is unwilling to muster” (McCarthy.Com) Bell has seen violence and cruelty, he has a firm sense of right and wrong, but his generation is unprepared for the brutality of generations to come. Bell represents a generation of mannerly respect of elders and a sense of helplessness when it comes to violence. Llewelyn Moss is a welder and a hunter that has seen a tour of duty in Vietnam and is cunning along with recklessness at times. “A crack sniper in the war, moss has returned to Texas where he works as a welder and lives in a trailer with his 19-yearold bride Carla Jean, whom he met at Wal-mart. McCarthy presents the couple as quietly heroic figures with deep reservoirs of loyalty and stoicism” (Deirdre). Moss’ generation is reckless and quickly evolving into creatures of the modern age. When Moss take the money he displays how he is reckless and unthinking his generation is because he commits to a deadly chase away from drug dealers and a murderous villain. Moss represents a reckless and

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