The Land of Unlikeness

The (very very) bad dude in No Country for Old Men is presented as our male hero: brave, loyal, trustworthy, unafraid, and most important of all, true to his word. He must kill an entirely innocent victim just because he said he will. He doesn’t enjoy evil for its own sake, but he simply performs what evil deed he must in order to live up to, even sacrifice himself for, some higher principle. He clearly enjoys his evil deeds, but whence cometh this enjoyment? We ask the same question about him that Augustine asked about himself when he remembered the theft of the pears, which he did not do because the pears were good to eat, or for any other reason, but simply to indulge in the shame of the act. Augustine actually doesn’t give us a good answer as to why he commits his crime–it is clearer in the film: Sigur Anton (bad dude) is the last man around, the only character with character, strength and values. A true hero, and yet when he crumbles into a puddle at the end of the film there shines a ray of something totally different, in the irrational refusal to live in his world of a cute girl who works for Wallmart, we see the beginnings of a glory on the far side of the American man.