No country for old men Research Papers (original) (raw)

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- Mythology, Media Studies, Film Studies, Film Analysis
- by Paul Collits
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- Literature, Politics, Culture Wars, 20th Century American Literature
- by Stephen Hessel
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- Walter Benjamin, Cormac McCarthy, No country for old men
- by Manuel A Crespo Rodríguez
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- Film Analysis, Chance, Review, Film Review

My thesis will focus on the gendered nature of violence that features heavily in the genres usually called Southern Gothic and the Western, using examples To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy and selected works from Flannery O’Connor and William Faulkner. The Southern Gothic genre and Westerns are often littered with violent and brutal characters. This thesis will analyse violent characters and their victims, focusing especially on masculinity and violence, targeted violence and feminine and parental conflict. Often, violence is seen as purely physical. In the Southern Gothic and Westerns, violence is perpetrated in many ways, such as lynching, beating, torture and rape. In the texts I am examining, characters suffer from racial, parental and sexist violence, and are weak in comparison to their violent counterparts. Violence in these texts is a way for some characters to show dominance and to defend what is theirs (including family). However, violence can also be a consequence of substance abuse, mental issues or parental issues. This thesis will show how heavily gendered violence is an important determinant of meaning in these works of American fiction and in the genres they represent.

This study aims to offer a contrapuntal reading of Cormac McCarthy's Western novel No Country for Old Men (2005) by drawing on the notion of frontiersman's identity. McCarthy has been predominantly viewed as a revisionist in his politics of representing the myth of American West, yet little attention has been given to the way in which this novel calls into question the public view of him as a writer who revises and critiques the myth of the West. From a contrapuntal perspective, we argue that although the text depicts the failure of the frontiersman, in particular Sheriff Bell, in contemporary society, through nostalgia for older times the writer keeps the frontiersman's dream and hope alive. Furthermore, we problematize the very older times for which the protagonist Bell expresses his nostalgia for. We argue that these nostalgic older times have been also a period of bloodshed and violence regarding other nationalities and ethnicities whose voice is not heard in this narrative. McCarthy's text is indeed silent about the sufferings of those represented as the other, the Vietnamese for instance, in the text.

- by Ben Mangrum
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- American Literature, Criminal Justice, Philosophy, Ethics
- by Maria Josefina Saldaña-Portillo
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- Psychoanalysis, Film Studies, Mexican Studies, Film Analysis

This study contends that American writer Cormac McCarthy not only is philosophical, or a “writer of ideas,” but rather that he has a philosophy. Devoting one main chapter to each facet of McCarthy’s thought – his metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, respectively – the study engages in focused readings of all of McCarthy’s major works. Along the way, the study brings McCarthy’s ideas into conversation with a host of philosophers who range from Plato to Alain Badiou, with figures such as William James, Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, and Slavoj Žižek featured prominently. Situated at the crossroads of literary studies, literary theory, cultural studies, continental philosophy, and theology, the appeal of Cormac McCarthy’s Philosophy is widespread and deeply interdisciplinary.

- by Alex Barron
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- Cormac McCarthy, King Lear, William Shakespeare, No country for old men

This paper is focused on Cormac McCarthy’s novel “No Country for Old Men”. The NorthAmerican author, also known as the writer of the contemporary classic “Blood Meridian”, is widely known for using references and allusions to mythologies, religions and even to the writing process itself. This project will perform a structural analysis of the narrative and will also analyze the elements presented in the mentioned book in order to show the influence of the Greek tragedy. As the vision of the author in “No Country for Old Men” finds its counterpart in Greek tragedy plays for presenting dark and violent tones, this study will use Aeschylus’ “The Oresteia” for purposes of comparison; the Aristotle’s literary treaty, “Poetics”, to outline the narrative structural scheme; and the studies on Greek tragedy made by Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet. This paper will explore a new line of thought to approach McCarthy’s work, complementing the already existing focused in Gnosticism and the cyclic vision of History by Giambattista Vico.

- by Bruce Torres
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- American Literature, Greek Tragedy, Poetics, Contemporary American Literature

У раду се испитује начин изградње простора границеу
роману Нема земље за старцеамеричког романописца Кормака
Макартија. Теоријски оквир рада се заснива на појмовима хронотопа
Михаила Бахтина, страног Бернхарда Валденфелса и концепта
границе Фредерика Тарнера. Граница се дефинише као простор
раширен између два поларитета у коме Макарти смешта радњу свога
романа. Таква граница не самода је историјска, већ је и данас
активна, поприште је многих сукоба и трвења, што фиктивних, што
стварних. Она сада пресеца и урбане средине, усложњавајући тиме
проблематику. У закључку рада се на примеру романа Нема земље
за старце утврђује улога границе и страног у америчком етосу 21.
века и скромног Макартијевог доприноса истом.

- by Stefan Pajović
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- Border Studies, Space and Place, Frontier Studies, Cormac McCarthy

This article examines McCarthy’s use of the genre of crime novel, especially its element of crime investigation process, in No Country for Old Men in the context of the aftermath of the 9/11 attack. Despite the facts that No Country for Old Men is marketed and commonly perceived as a crime fiction and that the plot and the style of the novel are indicative of the genre, literary critics have been reluctant to read this novel as a crime fiction. However, the elements of crime and investigation are central to the novel’s debunking of the mythologized images of the past and revelation of the history that has culminated to the present state of the United States. Through the plot of an expanding spiral of violent crimes and the process of investigation, McCarthy reveals the violent history of the U.S. and dismantles the idealized myth of Old West that covers it.

- by Yaeri Kim
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- Crime fiction, Contemporary American Literature, Cormac McCarthy, Post 9/11 literature