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Imagery
Definition of Irony
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how they actually are. If this seems like a loose definition... read full definition
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how they actually are. If this... read full definition
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how... read full definition
Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—No Trace:
In the following excerpt from Chapter 1, Moss pursues the antelope he shot. As he follows the trail of blood, he takes notice of a series of ancient cave drawings along his path. The drawings, he claims, were made by ancient hunters whose presence the austere landscape has long since forgotten. Given subsequent events, the apparent absence of people surrounding Moss is an example of situational irony:
The rocks there were etched with pictographs perhaps a thousand years old. The men who drew them hunters like himself. Of them there was no other trace.
At the end of the ridge was a rockslide, a rough trail leading down. Candelilla and scrub catclaw. He sat in the rocks and steadied his elbows on his knees and scanned the country with the binoculars. A mile away on the floodplain sat three vehicles.
These ancient hunters have left no trace of their presence; indeed, in an area so devoid of human life, even these markings come as a surprise to Moss. It is situationally ironic, then, that the next thing Moss stumbles upon is a drug deal gone wrong—irrefutable presence of human life in the inhospitable desert landscape. What's more, Moss's discovery of the bodies in the desert will lead to him becoming the hunted rather than the hunter—a shift in roles his ancient counterparts likely would not have anticipated.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Faith Healer:
In Chapter 1, Chigurh kills a man on the side of the road with his cattle stungun—one of the first murders of its kind readers encounter in the novel. This murder is gruesome, yet McCarthy uses uncharacteristically nonviolent language to describe it, invoking both simile and situational irony to craft the scene:
He placed his hand on the man's head like a faith healer. The pneumatic hiss and click of the plunger sounded like a door closing. The man slid soundlessly to the ground, a round hole in his forehead from which the blood bubbled and ran down into his eyes carrying with it his slowly uncoupling world visible to see.
In this passage, McCarthy uses simile to describe Chigurh's grip on his victim's head as being like that of a "faith healer." This description is ironic on several levels: for one, Chigurh intends to kill, not heal, the man he caresses. A religious person (read: Sheriff Bell) might describe Chigurh's actions as "godless," or lacking morality, making the "faith healer" likeness even more ironic.
Chigurh does have values and moral principles, but he does not share these with the rest of society. Perhaps, in his own twisted perception of morality, Chigurh is actually healing the man by murdering him.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Hunter Becomes Hunted:
In Chapter 1, McCarthy introduces Moss to readers as an avid hunter. His name even conjures up thoughts of classic American cowboys, reminiscent of Mossberg & Sons (an American munitions and firearms company). He is a competent man, a highly skilled hunter—and yet, in a situationally ironic turn, he himself is pursued and shot by other humans later on in the chapter:
He was hit in the upper arm by a buckshot and it stung like a hornet. He put his hand over it and dove into the cane, the lead ball half buried in the back of his arm. His left leg kept wanting to give out beneath him and he was having trouble breathing.
Moss, as the hunter, becomes the hunted. He is even hit in the upper arm by his pursuers, wounded in the same manner that he wounded the antelope. All of Moss's competence aids him in escaping his pursuers the first time, but it does not save him from his impending death. Like the antelope Moss wounds, it is only a matter of time before he succumbs to the forces around him—nature, time, and Chigurh—that want him dead. He cannot escape Chigurh; and, despite all of his army training, cannot avoid becoming prey himself.
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Chapter 3
Explanation and Analysis—Natural Causes:
In the following excerpt from Chapter 3, Sheriff Bell and Wendell investigate the desert crime scene, utilizing verbal irony in their description of one dead man:
The sheriff shook his head. He got down and walked over to where the dead man lay slumped. He walked over the ground, the rifle yoked across his shoulders.
He squatted and studied the grass.
We got another execution here Sheriff?
No, I believe this one's died of natural causes.
Natural causes?
Natural to the line of work he's in.
He aint got a gun.
No.
Sheriff Bell and Wendell examine the crime scene in the desert, only to stumble across the man Moss found who crawled away with the money. The two law enforcement officers assume this man is also a Mexican drug smuggler, but ironically claim he died of "natural causes." While the man may well have died from dehydration or exposure, the officers assume that he would not have been in the desert in the first place if not for his line of work.
In general, the White Texans in this novel tend to make assumptions about Mexican people based heavily on stereotype, assuming the best intentions of Moss and the worst intentions of any Mexican people potentially involved in illegal activity.
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Chapter 5
Explanation and Analysis—Truck Load:
In Chapter 5, Sheriff Bell pulls over a trucker who appears to be carting dead bodies from the crime scene out of the desert. Unaware at first that this task has been relegated to the trucker, Sheriff Bell's initial conversation with the man contains a fair amount of verbal irony:
Have you looked at your load lately?
The driver looked in the mirror. What's the problem, Sheriff? [...]
The man walked back and took a look. One of the tiedowns is worked loose, he said.
He got hold of the loose corner of the tarp and pulled it back up along the bed of the truck over the bodies lying there, each wrapped in blue reinforced plastic sheeting and bound with tape. There were eight of them and they looked like just that. Dead bodies wrapped and taped.
The central irony of this passage is Sheriff Bell's and the trucker's choice to refer to human bodies simply as a "load," the same way one might reference a load of trees or oil or cows. This dehumanizes the bodies themselves, which are now mere objects, not treated with the respect or dignity human beings usually afford their dead. In general, Mexican people—especially those considered "drugrunners" or "criminals"—receive the brunt of such dehumanization in No Country for Old Men.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Broke Television:
In his monologue at the beginning of Chapter 5, Bell discusses a story he read in the newspaper about a young couple who would torture and kill their elderly tenants. This monologue contains a certain amount of verbal irony from Bell, who seems not to believe the tale even as he himself tells it:
What I was sayin the other day about the papers. Here last week they found this couple out in California they would rent out rooms to old people and then kill em and bury em in the yard and cash their social security checks. They'd torture em first, I dont know why. Maybe their television was broke.
This tale is intended to represent what Bell views as a horrifying shift in American culture, a "new normal" level of violence. Such violence as the couple in the story displays—detached, psychopathic, free from any motive except for violence itself—is incomprehensible to Sheriff Bell. He uses verbal irony to express his dumbfounded reaction, stating that "they'd torture [the elderly people] first, I dont know why. Maybe their television was broke." In other words, maybe the couple was simply bored. While a broken television is clearly not a reasonable motive for murder and torture, Bell offers it as a bewildered explanation for a kind of violence that seems to have no apparent motive.
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