The Fragile World of Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men

Abstract

In Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men (2005), not only old people’s life is fragile in that they have no place or country to live comfortably in, but also almost everybody’s life is at stake. The purpose of this article is to explore the nature of the fragile world in addition to the forms and causes which McCarthy depicts in his novel from perspectives other than the ones addressed previously by the majority of McCarthy’s critics and scholars. Those critics attempt to refer to outside or external forces to account for the fragility of the world which the novel vividly delineates. Among such approaches to the novel is the overemphasis on the destructive power of fate and chance over the inhabitants of that world. In this regard, other scholars try to shed light on the meaning of the story and its characters against an allegorical background. The current paper, however, approaches McCarthy’s novel aiming at internalizing the causes behind the weakness and vulnerability of characters and the insecurity of the world where they live. The article tries to suggest other factors, such as inaction and lack of communication, whose roles are by no means less effective than the external ones in portraying the fragility of McCarthy’s fictional world.