The Rule You Follow

The title of this post is a reference to a pivotal point in the novel No Country For Old Men, and of the Coen Brothers' film of the same name. The novel, written by Cormac McCarthy, is stylistically unique, in that the details of the plot are sparse. The story starts and ends without all the moving pieces being revealed, putting the audience in the place of Llewelyn Moss, one of two protagonists in the novel. Moss happens upon a what was apparently a drug deal that exploded into violence. He finds a satchel containing over two million dollars, and decides to take it. The audience never discovers what caused the drug deal to go wrong, or what becomes of Anton Chigurh, the main antagonist, how Llewelyn was killed, etc.

Because the reader is aware of the presence of these other actors in the story, but rarely see them or their direct actions (in fact, usually only the outcome), it feels almost as if the reader was plopped down in the middle of all these events without hardly any context, which is the exact position Llewelyn is in. Read the book, watch the movie, whatever.

My main reason for writing this is to say a little something about character. And obviously to talk about one of my favorite books of all time. I love Cormac McCarthy, I'm just gonna put that out there now. The man is a genius. A slow, philosophically inclined, grim, cowboy genius. But one of my favorite things about his writing is the way he does characters. Here's the important part. His characters often have three tiers. The first tier is what they actually think - and they may or may not even be aware of what they truly believe deep down. The second tier is what they say - how they articulate their thoughts and beliefs to other characters. Most writers stop at this point, or are unable to go any deeper than this. We are left with characters who say what they mean, and mean what they say. This doesn't mean they are necessarily boring; characters can be exciting for their philosophies, their actions, etc. They don't necessarily have to be terribly complex, or engaged in some battle with their inner natures to be interesting. But Cormac McCarthy goes one step further than this.

He takes us to the third tier: what characters think about what they say. This is where characters really become compelling. And the man displayed above, Anton Chigurh, is the perfect example of this. On the surface, Chigurh does not seem to be a very compelling character. He seems to be more of a relentless force of nature than a complicated and troubled person. He's a remorseless, occasionally needlessly violent, hit man. He says little, feels nothing, and acts with a cold deliberateness that makes him appear more machine than man, like a Terminator pursuing it's target, no questions asked.

Except, that's not really who he is.

The scene depicted in the photo above is a confrontation between Chigurh and another hit man, named Carson Wells. Chigurh ambushes Wells in his hotel, sneaking up on him while Wells walks up the stairs. He then forces Wells to take him into his room, has a brief conversation with him, and then kills him, making sure not to get any blood on his boots. But just before he does, Chigurh asks Wells: "If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?" This is clearly an important line in understanding the novel as a whole, but not in the way that is immediately obvious. This is where a characters perception of themselves becomes so important in understanding this work.

Chigurh, a sociopath, is criticizing the fact that so many people follow a "code of honor", rules which they consider to be valuable to their lives. To someone such as Chigurh, this seems to be a weakness. I could ask you, what is the value of having a personal code? The answer, whatever it is, comes from an emotional plane. Your code could be as simple as the "golden rule" or the ten commandments, or whatever. But regardless, it is easy for us to understand why it would be valuable to live by a code. To Chigurh, someone who is mentally unable to have empathy for another person, it must come across as utter insanity, or even weakness. In Chigurh's mind, the only thing of value is one's own life, a belief that clearly suits his line of work.

Chigurh does not think there's anything wrong with him; on the contrary, he thinks he understands something that everyone else cannot. So what he's saying when he asks wells: "Of what use was the rule?" is that, if the code you follow led to the end of your life, then why would you follow it? For Chigurh, the only maxim is the extension of his own life. He does not seem to enjoy killing, or anything for that matter. He appears to us as a violent, blank slate.

So, people often feel that McCarthy's work has an inherent Nihilism, due to the often violent, chaotic, and remorseless worlds he creates. But I have never really found that to be the case with McCarthy. No Country for Old Men is, I would say, his most straightforward work, in that the characters do no constantly share their personal philosophies or anecdotes (read: The Border Trilogy). But I think readers tend to look at a work like No Country, and a character like Chigurh, and say, "see, he's saying that codes aren't worth being followed", or something like that. But it's quite the opposite. What McCarthy is really showing the audience in this story is that it is impossible not to follow a rule. To not act in alignment with whatever it is you believe about yourself. This is shown perfectly through Chigurh, because, unlike the other characters in the story, Chigurh does not have a lick of self-assessment. He does not perceive himself. He says and acts exactly how he feels. Which is what makes the ultimate conclusion of the story more obvious.

Chigurh derides Wells for having a code. But Chigurh himself actually does have a code. He shows this in two important scenes. The first scene is when he essentially forces a store clerk to bet his life on a coin toss. All the man did was ask if there had been any rain in Dallas. This, for whatever reason, was an affront to Chigurh. He wants to kill the man, but instead leaves it up to a coin toss, which the man wins. Chigurh then leaves the story, apparently havind had his bloodlust sated. Chigurh sees himself as inevitability personified, that his actions come not from himself, but from some other force which led him to that action.

The other important scene is when Chigurh finds Carla Jean, Moss's widowed wife. Chigurh had told Moss earlier in the novel, that if Moss brought him the money, he would spare his wife. If not, he would kill them both. Moss rejects this, thinking that he can get to Chigurh first. However, Moss ends up getting killed by another hit man hired by the cartel. Chigurh eventually recovers the money, and gives it back to the man who presumably organized the drug that went awry and led to this whole fiasco in the first place. But then, he goes back and kills Carla Jean anyways. He has no reason to, and she says as much to him, that he'd already recovered the money and that her husband was dead. He replies that he had given Moss his word, and so he offers Carla Jean a coin toss, but this time, Chigurh wins, and he kills her. He drives away from her home, and a few streets down, gets t-boned, flips his car, breaks his arm, and is nearly caught by the police.

How is that not following a rule?! A rule that, coincidentally, almost gets him killed! He would've looked pretty damn stupid if he'd gotten himself killed from going back to make good on a threat he made to a dead man.

The point of all this, in the end, is that Chigurh of course does follow a rule. A rule that proves just as impractical and only slightly less deadly than Moss' and Wells' were. Chigurh questions the logic of following a rule without realizing that he does it as well. This shows the audience that Chigurh is not necessarily "right" in denouncing code-following. He's just oblivious to it, and that is what I think is what McCarthy is really trying to say throughout this novel. Whatever a person's code is - it doesn't look like a "code" to them. It's just how they live. They may or may not have put a lot of thought into that code, but the point is that Chigurh is simply incapable or understanding anyone else's perspective, because he's a sociopath. He's a brilliant character, as a result of this. His words are not really the "point" of the book - it's how his actions and beliefs relate to his words, and how they are shown to be just as hollow as how he perceives everyone else's beliefs to be. How, to oneself, the rule they follow hardly seems like a rule.

So...what rule do you follow? What will it bring you to?