>The crime you see now, it's hard to even take its measure. It's not that I'm afraid of it. I always knew you had to be willin' to die to even do this job. But, I don't want to push my chips forward and go out and meet somethin' I don't understand. A man would have to put his soul at hazard. He'd have to say: 'O.K., I'll be part of this world.'
Was he right, Sup Forums?
Literally doesn't make any sense
>says he's not afraid
>says he doesn't want to meet something he doesn't understand or put his soul at hazard
BRAVO MCCARTHY
doesnt mean he is afraid
Are you retarded? What does it mean than? Why doesn't he want to put his soul at hazard?
I read this essay on the film once and it was very enlightening.
>experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/2010/10/theodicy-and-no-country-for-old-men.html
>As we follow Sheriff Bell we see a growing existential fatigue. The violence he follows begins to weigh on him, to age him. And the root of the problem is that Bell can't make sense of what he is witnessing. The evil he finds is Other, inexplicable and incomprehensible. And this incomprehensibility "ages" him. He becomes the "old man" who can no longer recognize his "country" as home, as something he understands. Eventually, this burden becomes too much and, toward the end of the movie, Sheriff Bell retires from law enforcement. Unable to grasp the evil in the world, he walks away from the task of marking right from wrong. He's become too old for that job. The world, morally speaking, is something that makes no sense to him anymore.
>In short, I think the major theme of the movie is this failure of making sense of the moral universe. The world becomes morally opaque and the effort at trying to make sense of it becomes too heavy. The sheriff is worn down by what I'll call theodicy fatigue.
>The concerns here are epistemological. After expressing nostalgia for the good ol' days when the world was morally comprehensible and peaceable (e.g., the old timers never wore guns), we see the sheriff struggle to make sense of the evil he is encountering. He can't take the "measure" of the evil in the world. He can't understand the killer in the jail. He doesn't want to meet something he "don't understand."
>But it is worse than that. The sheriff feels that the act of comprehension would be contaminating. To take the measure of evil is to risk one's own moral integrity, to put one's "soul at hazard." In the end, the sheriff refuses to become a "part of this world." He doesn't want to understand. So he walks away, befuddled and fatigued in his efforts to "make sense" of a moral universe that seems so broken.
because if someone is killing for grievances that aren't rational, you risk becoming similar to what you're fighting, without knowing the 'why'
its more complex than the old 'starting into the abyss' bullshit. It's more about being changed as a person without making the decision yourself, and without knowing why, or having a goal for those changes
in a larger sense, it's the unwillingness to upgrade into a true knowledge of the world, and its true vicious craziness
Still pure fear.
The Western impulse is toward analysis and order, while Easterners are sometimes said to be oriented toward more holistic or reactionary impulses. He's not a man of contingency I think he's saying, he could never be a Scorsese character for example, because those films concern characters that are fully ensnared in contingencies.
So youre saying to prove he's worthy, he should have just thrown his life away without fully understanding the evil he faced?
He doesn't get what hes facing, what hes fighting or why it even exists to start with.
Its the standard musings of an old man who looks at the world and its now unrecognizable. Hes saying that what hes witnessing is now normal, and it shouldn't be.
No, I'm saying he's still scared shitless, even if he does the right thing.
Yes, but he's still afraid of this unknown evil.
He's not the type willing to stand before the forge and strike the hot metal unflinchingly until the impurities are all about gone.
That's like saying he's a coward for not swimming in a lake that has a bull shark in it. All he's ever known was a lake filled with fresh water fish, now there's a bullshark in it. How exactly is he less because he's not willing to jump into a lake that now has a bullshark in it?
you dense fuck
He strongly objects to the increased level of preoccupation within his occupation. What he's dealing with has introduced a wide range of ramifications for society at large. It implies that a kind of political restructuring process is now at hand.
The job itself just requires someone a little younger or a little more blindsided to what they're involved in.
child: I dont want to eat my vegetables
parent: why? are you scared of them
child: no I just dont like them
parent: you coward you are SCARED shitless of these vegetables!
No, no, no, NO! He says "I don't want to put my soul at hazard". He's fucking shitting his pants.
Yeah, he just doesn't want to fight this obscure evil he doesn't understand because he doesn't feel like it, it's just a preference, right?
Why doesn't he want to put his soul at hazard?
Yeah,because he's out of his depth, he's out of his league, and he's scared. And rightly so. Sugah's like an apex predator or something.
...
I think 4. applies here; he's looking to retain his analytical faculty in order to remain whole.