"Track the money!": The Moral Consequences of Tom Sawyer in No Country for Old Men

Abstract

abstract:Llewelyn Moss of Cormac McCarthy's crime thriller No Country for Old Men bears significant resemblance to Mark Twain's bad-boy hero, Tom Sawyer. The most striking resemblance is that their stories feature their possession of stolen money, which they earnestly and inordinately desire to the point that they jeopardize life itself to gain or keep it. The relationship between these two characters, consequently, clarifies the moral-economic dimensions of No Country for Old Men and their bearing on the novel's interaction with American culture. As McCarthy responds to Twain, he challenges his predecessor's lighthearted depiction of Tom's brutal ambition and greed as well as Huck Finn's naïve notion that abandoning society provides protection from its immorality. McCarthy's interaction with both the Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn traditions suggests that the refusal to participate in degrading, consumerist transactions combined with a commitment to human community are the ethical imperatives for a society sustained by the ideological assumptions of optimism and individualism.