No country for old men

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No Country for Old Men (English title: No Country for Old Men ) is a novel by American author Cormac McCarthy in 2005. The German translation of Nikolaus Stingl was released in March 2008, which according to the German theatrical release with four Oscars excellent Film adaptation of No Country for Old Men by the Coen brothers from 2007 . The title comes from the first line of the poem Sailing to Byzantium by William Butler Yeats from 1928.

action

The actual main character of the book is the aging Sheriff Bell. His paths cross with those of the other protagonists in the course of the plot: The hobby hunter and Vietnam veteran Llewelyn Moss makes a gruesome discovery on a morning hunting trip in the Texan desert: Several wagons are completely abandoned in the sun; on closer inspection, he discovers several dead and one wounded in and around the wagons. One of the dead holds a torn bag of heroin in his hand, another a suitcase with $ 2.4 million. Moss immediately realizes what happened here: a failed drug deal. Moss takes the money and disappears. When he returned that night, plagued by a remorse, to bring the wounded water, he was attacked by several killers, apparently people who were involved in the drug deal and who are now keen to get the money back. For this purpose, the psychopathic hitman Anton Chigurh is set on Moss. Although this is on the one hand a merciless murderer, he seems to see himself as an executor of fate . So he sometimes lets a coin toss decide whether a victim should be spared. His favorite weapon is also characteristic of Chigurh: a nail gun , which is actually intended for stunning during the slaughter of cattle on farms, but is used by him for silent killing as well as for “opening locks”. Chigurh begins to mercilessly pursue Moss, which is possible thanks to a tracking device hidden in the money. Moss, suspecting that he is in danger, sends his wife Carla Jean to her mother and promises to comply himself.

Moss quartered himself in various motels, where he was driven out again and again, mostly by the Mexicans who were looking for the money. The first meeting between Moss and Chigurh takes place that night in the last said motel. This is where Chigurh locates Moss after he is at his house. At the motel, Chigurh opens the door with the bolt gun. Moss is forced to jump out of the window onto the street. Injured he pulls himself up and tries to flee when Chigurh shoots him out of the window and hits him in the hip. When Moss hides behind a car in an alley, he manages to shoot Chigurh in the thigh.

To take care of his wound, Chigurh steals drugs from a pharmacy. Meanwhile, Sheriff Bell meets Carla Jean. Only now does she find out what danger her husband is actually in and asks Bell to help him.

Meanwhile, Moss throws the suitcase into the no man's land on the Mexican-Texan border and is treated as an in-patient in a Mexican hospital. Another party has hired Carson Wells, a Vietnam veteran, hit man and friend of Chigurh, to kill him and get the money back. Wells speaks to Moss at the hospital and offers to help him with Chigurh in exchange for the money. When Wells goes to his hotel room, he is shot by Chigurh there. Then Moss wants to call Wells, so a dialogue between the two opponents ensues. Chigurh threatens to kill Carla Jean if he does not receive the money immediately. He adds that he will kill Moss anyway, he can only save his wife. Moss does not respond and tells his wife to come to El Paso . There he wants to meet her in a motel.

In the motel, however, Moss is tragically shot to death by Mexicans just before Bell and his wife arrive. Chigurh finds the money in the ventilation shaft in this motel and runs away with it.

Towards the end of the book, according to his strange morals for promising to kill her, he visits Carla Jean. He gives her a chance and flips a coin that should decide her life, but she loses and he kills her. When Chigurh drives away, he gets into a car accident, barely survives and escapes with difficulty from the scene of the accident.

Finally, the plot returns to the unsuccessful investigation of Sheriff Bell and his mind.

filming

→ Main article No Country for Old Men

The brothers Ethan and Joel Coen ( Fargo ) filmed the novel in 2007 with Tommy Lee Jones as Sheriff Bell, Josh Brolin as Moss and Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh. The Coens wrote the script themselves and co-produced the film with Scott Rudin . The plot in the film and in the book differ only in nuances and the book can therefore almost be seen as the script for the film. One big difference, however, is the chase that Cormac McCarthy describes precisely in terms of geography, which is not discussed in detail in the film. Many small towns in West Texas are named so that one can easily follow the grueling journey of Anton Chigurh with an atlas. Bardem won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his performance . The Coens received awards in the categories of Best Film , Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay .

Publication date

The novel was published in the United States on July 19, 2005.

literature