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[Rev. Rye]

I've heard great things about the film "No Country for Old Men," so I decided to read the source material. His writing style confused me a little in the beginning (mostly the lack of quotes when characters spoke). But it was very good and I liked what the story had to say. Though I wish McCarthy had

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actually written Moss' death. I didn't like that the character who I had been following since the beginning was killed "off screen". But I'm sure there was a reason behind it. Also a little anticlimatic to have Moss killed by no-name Mexicans when the book was hyping up a confrontation between Moss and Chigurh.

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Maybe it's because, on some level, Moss sees himself as some action hero, and, while he certainly does pretty well in the part,

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it turns out life doesn't work out the way we like to think it does. Good doesn't always triumph over evil (indeed, the opposite may be more likely), and the big showdown you may be waiting for may never even happen. See Friedrich Durrenmatt's "The Pledge" (made into a quite good film starring Jack Nicholson) for more information. A police officer is sure he's found the true identity of a child rapist/killer that his coworkers missed, and he even sets up the perfect trap for him. But he never comes, and it turns out it's because he died in a car crash on the way there.

Sometimes, an anticlimax like that is not only entirely intentional, but the whole point.

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