No Country for Old Men

The 1996 prompt gives Fay Weldon's idea of a happy ending: "some kind of spiritual reassessment or moral reconciliation."   In NCFOM, Sheriff Bell explains his spiritual reassessment to Uncle Ellis, noting that he always thought God would come into his life, and now, on the eve of retirement, he is no longer sure that will happen. HAVE YOU EXPERIENCED A SPIRITUAL REASSESSMENT OR MORAL RECONCILIATION?  What has changed about your moral or spiritual life as you grow into adulthood?

I've never explicitly aligned myself with a particular faith. In my life, God has always been more of a hazy concept than an explicit being with rules and checklist, granting or denying you access to a pleasant afterlife as he chooses. In this sense, I suppose I haven't undergone a "spiritual" reassessment in the one way tends to think. I've never been anything but an optimistic agnostic, so, unlike Bell, I don't particularly expect God to come into my life at any time. Nor do I expect him to leave it.

Moral reconciliation, on the other hand, is something that has more clearly changed me during these past few years. As I've grown up, I've become more and more attached to the ideals of constant progression and authenticity (though I never had a name to call the latter), and I've become more and more comfortable with the idea of life and death as I've become more and more comfortable with the power of human choice and potential. I find it reassuring that we always move forward, and this specific moral reconciliation allows/allowed me to get over my own sense of futility. Death is inevitable, sure, but human choice is powerful. Nothing is set in stone.

What characteristics do you share with Moss, Bell and Chigurh?

I am immediately turned off by the suggestion that I am like any of the central characters in this book, because quite frankly they're all a little irritating (Moss is selfish and most of the book that was written in his perspective just felt like endless descriptions of guns I didn't care about, Chigurh's "fate" goes against most of my personal values, Bell is a jaded and emotionally paralyzed old man), but maybe my knee-jerk defensiveness is just a projection of my own self-denial. Let me think about this. I need to come to terms with myself to answer this. Hold on.

Okay.

I suppose I relate to Moss in the sense that I try to act authentically (or at least I'd like to think that I do). Rather than lamenting over past decisions and their outcomes, I just deal with what I have in front of me. It's the only way to truly survive, I think. #NoRegrets.

Bell's tendency to snowball his basic thoughts into universal questions with overly existential implications is one that I also have.

The part of me that understands Chigurh is also a part of me that I hate: that nagging idea that no matter what I do, there is no real choice--things are this way, and that's that. The idea that things cannot be changed by my own hand, the idea that human will is practically futile... I have these thoughts that correspond with Chigurh's ideas of morality, "authentic" as I may try to be.

In what ways are you "authentic" or in "bad faith" in the existential senses of these terms?

I guess I've already answered this a little. I do my best to be authentic. It's kind of a huge deal for me to constantly be moving forward, looking ahead rather than becoming consumed with past events. Destiny isn't predetermined, I think; one makes their own destiny, and as such, I do my best to abide by my own willpower and strength of self. "Bad faith" is what marked a significant period of my life. Bad faith--the resigning, futile conscience, mourning life as you live... it's what consumed me when I was depressed for the first few years of high school.

What cultural values have you inherited that can be tied to "place" (where you have lived, or the conditions in which you have lived)? Have you adopted these values as your own, or rejected them?

I've lived in many different places, and perhaps I've held onto various different things from each: in particular, being exposed to the diversity and liveliness of New York City broadened my worldview and instilled within me at a young age that it is empowering, not disheartening, to belong to something big, to know that there is a constantly moving and shifting life force driving every seemingly insignificant day. I have done my best to remember this even when PC drama-induced cabin fever strikes.

Is there any way that you, as a young person, can relate to Sheriff Bell's feeling that his job has passed him by, that he is no longer suited to the work he loves?

I wonder if to become jaded is an inevitability of life. I haven't met an old person that didn't mind being old, that kept up with contemporary life instead of retreating further back into a defensive shell, that didn't pose a rigid resistance against change. It's hard for me to understand that mentality, so my gut instinct is to refute the notion that I'm similar to Bell like this. On second thought, however, the idea of utilizing defensive mechanisms to resist a kind of change I find scary is one I can relate to despite the age difference.