Theme of Fate and Free Will in Cormac Mccarthy's No Country for Old Men (Essay Sample)

The nature of fate and the existence of free will have been topics of contention since the begging of time. Cormac McCarthy has meticulously laid out his ideas about free will throughout the book. The goal of this paper will be to investigate the two views regarding free will laid out by McCarthy through Chigurh and Llewellyn Moss. McCarthy shows in No Country for Old Men in no uncertain terms that free will does not exist and that fate is holding the strings of one’s life’s course in an absolute manner. In McCarthy’s frame of thought no action matters, no behavior is relevant, and no choice can change the pathway of one’s life. In other words, things will be as they should and no one, not even God can change that. This essay will attempt to expand upon and prove these assertions.

McCarthy shows his belief in fate and his disbelief regarding free will in the very beginning of No Country for Old Men. At the very beginning of the book, Sheriff Bell says in regards to a man he was sending to the gas chambers “What do you say to a man that by his own admission has no soul? Why would you say anything?”(McCarthey,3). In this quote, Bell is talking about how any action or comment towards a person with no soul would not change anything. In a way, Bell is expressing that fate will dictate the outcome of some people’s lives without them or the people around them having any say or choice about it. Sam harris reflects this sentiment in his book titled Free Will when he says “The men and women on death row have some combination of bad genes, bad parents, bad environments, and bad ideas (and the innocent, of course, have supremely bad luck). Which of these quantities, exactly, were they responsible for?”(Harris,54). Here harris reiterates that some people are doomed to what cards fate has dealt them and no intervention by self or others can change the path towards which they are headed. 

McCarthey displays this point throughout the book, but nowhere more glaringly than with Anton Chigurh. Chigurh is the embodiment of a character that believes in fate and denies choice or free will. His belief in fate is displayed when he has his interaction with the gas station owner. In that interaction, when flipping a coin to decide whether or not to kill the gas station owner, Chigurh says “It’s been traveling twenty-two years to get here. And now it’s here. And I’m here. And I’ve got my hand over it. And it’s either heads or tails.”.(McCarthey, 56). This passage is particularly interesting as he is forcing the gas station owner to make a decision, but is also showing that no one, not even Chigurh himself is in control of The gas station owner’s life and that fate and fate alone in the form of a coin flip was in control. He also refers to how the coin getting to his hand and him using it at this moment has been intentional and that its twenty-two-year journey was to hold the gas station owner’s life in its hands. 

In this regard, Chigurh is very interesting. As, though he is a micromanager, he does routinely leave his decision to something out of his control like a coin toss. The reason for this is stated when he says “There’s a reason for everything.”.(McCarthey, 256). This passage is the explanation for this behavior of Chigurh as it shows that he believes that everything that must happen will happen and nobody's choices, not even his can change the outcome of any interaction.  Or as Dr.Patrick O'Connor puts it “Chigurh encapsulates Derrida’s logic of the calculable, where an ethical decision is valuable only if instrumental, only if reproducing a predetermined program.”(O'Connor,5). This passage is why Chigurh allows a coin to decide in crucial situations. That reason is that he believes that the outcome of the coin toss is nothing, but the embodiment of what someone’s fate should be. This idea is epitomized in his interaction with Carla Jean. In this interaction, when discussing the coin toss, he says “But look at it my way. I got here the same way the coin did.”.(McCarthey, 258.). In this quote, Chigurh clearly shows his belief in fate and the idea that he and the coin are nothing, but fate’s vehicles in taking  Carla Jean’s life, just like they were vehicles in not taking the gas station owner’s life. All of these examples show transparently that McCarthey is communicating the non-existence of free will and the dominance of fate in determining life’s outcomes through Chigurh. This is an argument he is building up to throughout the book and is some sense part of the book’s message. 

The counterpoint to Chigurh's views is provided through the mouth of Llewellyn Moss. Contrary to Chigurh, Llewellyn believes that one’s actions are what makes one's life path. He is a staunch believer in free will and he shows it in no uncertain terms when he says to the young hitchhiker “Every step you take is forever. You can’t make it go away. None of it.”(McCarthey,227). In this passage, Moss indicates that he believes in staunch consequentialism and that the free choices one makes throughout their life are what creates their future. This point of view flies directly in the face of Chigurh’s view of a fixed future and the supremacy of fate. Additionally, Llewellen believes that life should be taken seriously and one must make every one of their decisions with the highest levels of diligence possible, or as he says to himself right after finding the money “You have to take this seriously, he said. You cant treat it like luck.”(McCarthey, 23). This passage shows how seriously Moss takes his decisions and how he believes that one must take positive action to prevail in life. He believes that the future is malleable and that taking moral action will lead to good life outcomes. As O’Connor puts it “McCarthy presents Moss as tragically human. He makes a mistake, he experiences guilt, and he tries to rectify his initial mistake by returning to the dying man with water. Again, Derrida’s analysis of the ethical decision is relevant. The idea that seduces Moss, is that he can willfully choose and transform his existence so that previous and future selves become irrelevant.”(O’Connor, 16). This passage explains Moss’s rationalization for taking action and his belief in free will, a belief that ends up being unfounded as his moral behaviors are rewarded with the gift of death.

 At the end of the movie, Chigurh is the last man standing and that could be interpreted as a message from the author. The message is that what happens to a person is not a consequence of their decisions, but a product of fate. Chigurh, the worst person in the novel survives, and Llewelyn Moss the good-hearted husband and the kind human dies and the so-called decisions that he believed would lead to his survival, lead to his demise. As Harris puts it in “You can do what you decide to do — but you cannot decide what you will decide to do.”(Harris, 38). This quote puts the nail in the coffin of the idea of free will, as it asserts that one cannot make any objective decisions and that anything one does is nothing, but a fidget in the scheme of fate. This in the end is why Chigurh prevails and Llewellen dies. The moral decisions of Moss and the immoral decisions of Chigurh are nothing but tools for fate to layout its twisted plans and so in such a landscape morality, choice, and decisions are not free they do not exist. Only one thing exists and that is fate. This is McCarthey’s view on life and he shows this view at the end of the book just as much as he did throughout when Cheriff bell says regarding his second “he was fixin to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there.”(McCarthey, 309). One could interpret fire in this quote as a signifier of the future and the permanent nature of the fire to be a reference to the unmaluable nature of the future. As uncle Eliss put it in conversation with Bell “Do you think God knows what’s happenin? I expect he does. You think he can stop it? No. I don't.”(McCarthey, 269). This quote and all thoughts that proceed in this essay all come together to make the point I made in my original thesis. The point of McCarthey's story is that no action matters, no behavior is relevant, and no choice can change the pathway of one’s life. In other words, things will be as they should and no one, not even God can change that.