Book Cover

The post after The First Post

The next character introduced is a man named Moss. He is not described in detail but his surroundings are. He is taking aim at an antelope nearly a mile off, as he is on a volcanic ridge looking through a telescopic scope mounted on his rifle. He shoots and misses the antelope and proceeds to head back to where his truck was located, but first looks over the area. He then sees two trucks, and upon further inspection, finds weapons, evidence of an armed conflict, a briefcase full of bank notes totaling $2.4 million, and a man who is begging for water. He takes the briefcase and a gun then leaves. He then returned to his home, woke up at 1:06, said good bye to his wife, and drove back to the place where he found the trucks. At home his wife calls him "Llewelyn" which I'm uncertain whether it is his real first name or something else entirely. When he leaves to go back and investigate the trucks is something that really bothered me because I didn't really find any meaning in it. He returns to the trucks, parking his vehicle on the hill above, and inspects the scene again. He finds that the dehydrated man is dead but is only incapacitated because of the result of a bullet to the head. Obviously someone had come for the money that Moss had found. After he finishes searching the spot, he heads back to his truck. As he is walking up the hill to the truck, two men return to the scene in a truck and, noticing Moss's truck, search the surroundings with their headlights. When he sees an opportunity he runs for it and a chase ensues that ends with him crossing a river and receiving a bullet wound in the right shoulder. As he waited for the right opportunity he said that he had only felt this way before once in another country and he never wanted to experience this again. This seems to me as evidence that either he was in the armed services, or has had an experience in dangerous dealings in Mexico. Moss also has great insight into many guns and bullet types that make me suspect that he most likely was in some form of the military. He escapes as the men that had chased him did not follow him across the river, but his truck is still back by the other trucks which I foresee as being the biggest problem as the men will now be able to find out everything about Moss.

The First Post

The book starts in a complicated manner. The first few pages are the thoughts of a character, whom there is no name for, about a boy he had to send to the gas-chamber. This boy was nineteen years old and had murdered his fourteen year old girlfriend in cold blood. This boy only calls the character Sheriff. The boy even tells the character that he had been planning on killing someone but wasn't sure who it was going to be. The character then goes on to describe his feelings on the morality of the situation and his fear of the devil in the young man. Next comes something that I really did not expect to hear in the book that I, wrongly, had judged by its cover. It does become complicated as now it brings the reader to a new setting, that of an office with a deputy who is talking to a sheriff named Lamar, who I'm guessing is most likely the protagonist and sheriff in the beginning of the story. In the corner of the office is a criminal of some sort named Chigurh. My opinion of the story completely changed in the next few paragraphs. In this passage of the book, Cormac McCarthy describes, in very creative language, the violent death of the deputy and escape of the convict. Chigurh slipped his cuffs under his legs and started chocking the deputy. As the struggle ensues, Chigurh pulls so forcefully on the cuffs that the deputy's right carotid bursts and sends a jet of blood shooting across the room and hits the wall. Chigurh then makes his way down the highway in the sheriff's car, pulls over a driver, shoots him, then takes off in the man's car. This is told using the same imagery and also with a bit of dark humor that makes this book more than just another crime novel.