No Country For Old Men

Okay. I saw the film. It featured Michelle Monaghan, the "look at those stems" girl from Kiss Kiss, Die Die. So you know I would watch that movie. I decided I would start the novel too. I hope to finish it but am suddenly having some tough going. The opening of the film shows a young man who is an experienced hunter happening upon the aftermath of a drug dealers shoot-out and appropriating the money for himself.

The novel is able to bring out more of the hunters careful analysis of his situation, his decision making skills and the wisdom of his actions. He correctly assumes that the last man standing left with the money, he tracks it down knowing that a wounded man won't get far, he takes the money home and stashes it. He carefully reminds himself that he has to be careful and not think of it as luck. He has to stay alert to danger because he knows that someone is going to come looking for that money.

So far, so good! Now why would a man like that, who has the loot and has reached a place of seeming safety go and screw his life up by heading back to scene of the shoot-out with a glass of water for the wounded victim who had muttered Aqua Por Dios? I just can't see a shrewd hunter who is so fully aware of the situation as being so weak and so stupid as to take water to a dying man. Yes, he does tell his wife "I'm fixin to do somethin dubern hell but I'm goin anyways". Sure, its a novel. The characters have to have flaws. Without the hunter being a fool, the novel would end right there. I just wonder how plausible it is that man with a whole lot of loot who has made a clean getaway would go back to give a drink of water to a man who clearly is likely to be dead either by the time the hunter gets there or very shortly thereafter. All his self preservation skills that he had just exercised suddenly desert him. Strange. Perhaps the essence of the situation is captured in the terse dialog wherein the wife says "Its a false god" and the highly competent, realist husband replies "Yeah, but its real money".

I hope I am able to finish the novel. I have my doubts however. I wonder too if the killer of JonBenet Ramsey may have made mistakes. Sure those mistakes have not yet tripped him up, but what sort of man was he? Did he have a background involving home intrusions in the dead of night? Or was this his first time? Did he leave the grandiose note to mislead investigators or solely to entertain himself? Did he make a prompt departure in response to the scream or was it planned right from the start? If we adopt a 1:00am departure, do we narrow the "window of enjoyment" so much that it becomes a ploy rather than a goal? Would a pedophile want to linger in the basement or make quick work of the task? Do pedophiles draw out their time with the victim or is the perverted sex itself considered to be simply a sort of foreplay for the murder? Clearly the real goal in the murder of JonBenet Ramsey was indeed murder. Yet it is obvious that the perversion was a major and critical task. What conclusions are proper for us to make when we are dealing with subjects that are so alien to us?

Okay. I finished the novel. Not a satisfactory resolution of the issues. Life is like that. It was interesting. The triumph of evil is often a proper subject. The Hunter got into the mess because he went back to give water to a dying man. The Hunter later got killed because he was protective of a teenage runaway girl. The Hunter's wife was killed simply because the psychotic hit man had promised to kill her. Not entirely satisfying.