earticle

영어

Yoo, Jihun. “No Country for Old Men and Mythic Frontier Landscape.” Studies in English Language & Literature. 42.4 (2016): 49-69. While many critics approach Cormac McCarthy’s No Country For Old Men in terms of the postmodern and late capitalistic setting, this essay approaches the novel within the frontier tradition. Despite the novel’s strong association with the frontier tradition, it variously deals with the development of a new frontier. This essay will explore the relationships between the new frontier tradition, determinism, free will and the American Dream. In fact, Moss, as an agent of free will, is created out of the violent confrontation between Bell’s nostalgic traditionalism and Chigurh’s destructive nihilism. In the novel, Moss emerges as a variant of a frontier character who is able to resist these two opposing world views and forces by constantly enacting his free will. But as a new frontier figure, Moss, together with Bell’s dream figure, becomes associated with the American Dream—the mythic vision of a man who must struggle on despite impossible odds. (Kookmin University)