No+Country

Pick an essay and bust it out...Due end of class friday...One page double spaced

1. Sheriff Bell reflects on what he feels is the moral decline and growing violence of the world around him. Do you agree? why?

2. Near the end of the novel, Bell says: "I think we are all of us ill prepared for what is to come and I dont care what shape it takes" What kind of future is Bell imagining? Why does he think we are not ready for it? How can __No Country for Old Men__ be understood as an apocalyptic novel?

3. When asked about the rise in crime in his county, Bell says that "It starts when you begin to overlook bad manners. Any time you quit hearin Sir and Mam the end is pretty much in sight" [p. 304]. Is he right about this? Why would deteriorating manners signal a larger social chaos?

4. Early in the novel, after Bell surveys the carnage in the desert, he tells Lamar: "I just have this feelin we're looking at something we really aint never even seen before" [p. 46]. In what way is the violence Sheriff Bell encounters different than what has come before? Is Anton Chigurh a new kind of killer? Is he a "true and living prophet of destruction," [p. 4] as Bell thinks? In what ways does he challenge Bell's worldview and values?

5. Below is the script for the scene with Chigurh and the Gas Station guy. Explain the big idea here and whether you agree or disagree with it

Well, we need to know

what we're calling it for here.

You need to call it.

I can't call it for you.

- Or it wouldn't be fair.

- I didn't put nothing up.

Yes, you did. You've been

putting it up your whole life.

You just didn't know it.

- You know what date is on this coin?

- No.

1958. It's been traveling

22 years to get here.

And now it's here.

And it's either heads or tails.

You have to say. Call it.

Well, look,

I need to know what I stand to win.

- Everything.

- How's that?

You stand to win everything. Call it.

All right. Heads, then.

Well done.

- Don't put it in your pocket.

- Sir?

Don't put it in your pocket.

It's your lucky quarter.