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.