DEMOCRACY, JUSTICE, AND TRAGEDY IN CORMAC MCCARTHY'S

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN – Benjamin Mangrum

Thesis  : The problem of justice preoccupies Cormac McCarthy's Western novels. Mc Carthy’s
notion of justice= recognizes the instability of the good in a world where arbitrary violence,
inequity and meaninglessness are pervasive.

Outline of the article :

 Idea that McCarthy shares many of Nietzsche’s objections to this form of

« justice »
 McCarthy rejects the German philosopher’s alternative to social democracy
through the retention in his novels of the religio philosophiocal conceept of a
transcendent logos

1) Nietzsche’s critique of liberal democracy

- The weak create these moral categories of “good” and “evil” to inhibit the strong
- McCarthy’s novels instruct the reader to have courage in the face of a dying and
meaningless world
- Nietzsche argues that early Greek tragedians expose the Apollonian and the Dionysian
impulses of human existence, holding in tension life and death, order and chaos.
- Yet Plato and Aristotle introduced transcendental ideals that N. rejects
- N. recognizes that the modern European values of Justice, equality and compassion derive
from a Judeo-Christian heritage, which established these values based on the doctrine of a
creator God.
- N. characterizes the “free society” of liberal democracies as the final “degeneration and
diminution of man into the perfect herd animal”, Beyond Good and Evil.
- Human beings are essentially animals oriented toward the will-to-power. Yet liberal
democracies suppress this fundamental nature. Democracy masks the self-preservation
and desire for power of the weak under the guise of being just.

2 ) The Prophet of destruction and the Prophet of Despair

Anton Chigurh = one of the most vivid challenges to conventional morality and modern
social structures. Ed Tom Bell’s reflections and Chigurh’s lawlessness show that the control
of power and the structures of society cannot be isolated from one another, they broach the
political.

Bell represents the democratic state and its sense of civic justice. Yet he becomes
disillusioned with this order. Subversion of democratic ideals begins for Bell when he
encounters Anton Chigurh « the true and living prohet of destruction »
Ch= epitomizes the “new kind” of people appearing in Bell’s country, signalling a change in
its social and cultural composition. The world appears to be changing before the sheriff and
these changes unsettle Bell. Bell’s sense of worthlessness eventually leads him to resign from
his position as sheriff= signals not only his personal defeat but also the collapse of the civic
dimension of the values that he represents.

Bell often describes his role as a shepherd-like authority. He says the citizens of his country
are “People I’m supposed to be looking after” Bell is motivated by a need for authority= the
role of sheriff offers him an opportunity to “be in charge”. Character of Bell contrasts with
Chigurh who operates outside the law in his expressions of power.

N. = the democratic community is based on a common concern for self-preservation, the herd
instinct to avoid the threat of stronger wills. Bell recognizes that the “boat” the collective
body provides security that reveals the sheriff’s will-to-survive as much as his will-to power

Bell represents the democratic state itself. By rejecting the efficacy of his position he also
repudiates its version of justice.

Bell reflects on the old “timers” who never had to wear a gun. Yet this ideal is shrouded in
scepticism for he recalls there are latent problems in the sanctioned force of the sheriff:
“ The opportunities for abuse are just about everwhere”, “ piece officers along this border
getting rich off of narcotics”

The Texas sheriff protects the herd but he does not lead them in right paths because there are
“no requirements put upon him”

Bell’s uncle Ellis reinforces this aimlessness = admits to becoming a sheriff without any
reference to the causes of the justice system: “Hell, I didn’t have nothin else to do. Paid
about the same as cowboyin”

Bell’s uncle admits he would have gone into the army if he were not “too young for one war
and too old for the next one” = Ellis enlists in law enforcement because there is no war to
justify enlisting in the military.

19-year-old boy sent to the gaschamber = his telos (purpose in Greek cf: Aristotle) is violence
= Ellis’s aimless wavering between law enforcement and war evokes a fundamental order of
human relations that is similar to the nineteen-year-old = collapsing authority= the
democratic state itself is collapsing

McCathy’s characters = aware of the national implications that an American history of

violence creates. Bell suggests that violence in America is indicative of a larger cultural
crisis. Bell believes that another dimension is undermining his enforcement of civic laws = a
larger crisis in the democratic state. People he is “supposed to be lookin after” are part of
the problem = “you cant have a dope business without dopers” = normal people are choosing
to bring in the violent forces that murder indiscriminately by purchasing narcotics from these
traffickers. Bell insists that the tendencies of his constituency are self-destructive.

Bell realizes that justice depends upon violent force, not the goodness of the population. The
measure of peace is the amount of force employed to deter stronger wills.

Bell’s retirement = also concedes to the Nietzschean view that power and self-interest govern
human relations = the essence of democratic justice is keeping stronger wills in check in order
to preserve the herd’s liberty.

Interdependent identities of Bell and Chigurh: the sheriff is “glad” of the fact that he has
never killed anyone, while Chigurh is the “prophet of destruction” = lack of sexuality, finds
pleasure in murdering his victims.

Bell cares for his people but Ch. dehumanizes them by performing their executions with a
cattle gun. Bell loves stories about the “old timers”, he is well-acquainted with the past.
Anton Ch has no past, no fingerprints. Bell cannot even find his name = Ch. is a “ghost”

Bell’s role depends upon Chigurh= democratic justice exists because of a destructive force
like Chigurh

Moss : “Suppose you was some place that you didnt know where it was. The real thing you
wouldnt know was where someplace else was. Or how far it was. Or how far it was. It
wouldnt change nothin about where you was at.” = suggests that the liberal order has lost not
only a sense of its direction but also of its relation to reality.

Anton Chigurh = his principles are based on a deterministic order of material chaos. Ch’s
order is a valueless realm for expressing a will-to-power and justifies his sense of
administering the “luck” latent in the choices of others. Carson Wells explains that Ch’s
principles “transcend money or drugs or anything like that”. Chigurh’s principles depend
upon a conception of an order of chance and power driving the world.

Chigurh’s discussion with Carla Jean: Carla Jean tacitly insists that a person is able to
determine his or her own fate, that human beings are sovereign over their lives. / Chigurh tells
her “Nothing was your fault… You didn’t do anything. I was bad luck” = he suggests that
human existence is subject to exterior forces, to the choices of others and the random results
of chance. cf: Chigurh often flips a coin to determine whether he will murder a person = “he
believes that external forces inevitably impinge upon the volitional will”. Luck for Ch.
replaces God, becoming what predetermines the universe.

McCarthy’s view, a transcendent real that humanity incompletely perceives, is absent

from Bell’s society. Ellis says that his youth was without a logos, an order directing it and
similarly that God did not “come into my life” in his old age.

Bell= not a “spiritual person”: he embraces Christianity while remaining ignorant of the
religion’s actual content = another example of the absence of any logos suffusing democratic
society.

Absence of logos in society = Bell confesses despairingly “I don’t know what to make of
that” = reflects a general cultural displacement, his disillusionment with democratic justice.
The civic and cultural pretensions of liberal democracies are collapsing. The only principles
that exist in the American West are Chigurh’s and this leads Bell to resignation = he retires
from his post as sheriff / Chigurh refuses to depart from his “one way to live”. Bell is unable
to stop evil so he abandons this losing battle.

In McCathy’s vision, human beings are political animals = oriented toward power and
they bring this interest with them as they structure society. The democratic refusal to
debate the substance of the “good life” beyond individual freedoms leaves justice
without an order.

3) “Hay justicia en el mundo” (There is Justice in the world)

McCarthy’s understanding of the transcendent // Plato’s metaphysic = contrary to

Nietzche McCarthy thinks a transcendent real exists.

Two lines of interpretation of McCarthy’s religious and philosophical position: “Southern”

school of critics = a commitment to transcendence in McCarthy’s novels / the “Western”
interpreters, who read the author as a post-transcendent nihilist.

The logos actually governing human relations is a chaotic “order” of violence and power,
not a democratic realm of benevolence and freedom. The just is not an ideal but a quality of
the transcendent, the logos beyond the world. However, for McCarthy human beings cannot
fully know this order, and their incomplete knowledge derives from dreams and
metaphorical stories // Plato’s famous Allegory of the Cave. For Plato the forms of justice
and beauty are “intelligible but not visible” = humans understand them by the intellect but not
by their senses.

McCarthy provides the contours of what this logos is like through tales, dreams and
metaphors, but he never suggests what it is. McCarthy’s view= less optimistic than Plato’s.

When asked in his only televised interview (O. Winfrey) about his beliefs regarding the
divine, McCarthy responded “it depends on which day you ask me”= hesitant to make
definitive statements about the divine.

Distinct from Platonic realism in the sense that McCarthy associates transcendent reality
with tragedy, not philosophy. McCarthy’s reading of the world= articulates the transcendent
through the dreams and stories of those who have experienced loss, tragedy and
didinheritance.

Chigurh is a “ghost” who doesn’t leave fingerprints.Th only sign of his existence is the
destruction left in his wake.

End of NCOM= Bell’s dream signals the hope. Facing the world’s chaos and violence
requires justice. Bell encounters the possibility of the just life through the promise of a
fire. “Bell’s vision suggests that the good life lies on a dark path through an inevitably
tragic world.”