Book Club Discussion Questions
For supplemental discussion material see our Beyond the Book article, and our BookBrowse Review of No Country For Old Men.
Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!
- The title of the novel comes from William Butler Yeats's poem "Sailing
to Byzantium": "That is No Country for Old Men, the young / In one another's
arms, birds in the trees, / Those dying generationsat their song." The
poem also contains the lines: "An aged man is but a paltry thing, / A
tattered coat upon a stick, / Unless soul clap its hands and sing, and
louder sing / For every tatter in its mortal dress." Why has McCarthy chosen
a line from Yeats' poem for his title? In what ways is No Country for Old
Men about aging? Does Sheriff Bell experience any kind of spiritual
rejuvenation as he ages?
- McCarthy has a distinctive prose stylepared down, direct,
colloquialand he relies on terse, clipped dialogue rather than narrative
exposition to move his story along. Why is this style so powerful and so
well-suited to the story he tells in No Country for Old Men?
- Early in the novel, after Bell surveys the carnage in the desert, he
tells Lamar: "I just have this feelin we're looking at something we really aint never even seen before" [p. 46]. In what way is the violence Sheriff
Bell encounters different than what has come before? Is Anton Chigurh a new
kind of killer? Is he a "true and living prophet of destruction," [p. 4] as
Bell thinks? In what ways does he challenge Bell's worldview and values?
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- How does the author develop themes of identity and belonging throughout the narrative?
- What role does the setting play in shaping the characters' decisions and relationships?
- Discuss how the ending reframes the events of the story. Were you surprised?
Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Vintage.
Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.