Tonight we get to discuss No Country for Old Men. Which much like The Brothers Karamazov, A Christmas Carol and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein deals with the anxiety of change. I see the cautionary greed of Ebenezer or reckless solitude of Victor Frankenstein in Moss, a more perfect Smirdyakov or Ivan Karamazov in the nihilistic and ambitious Chigur. In Brothers Karamazov many of the characters are liminal, they feel two ways about things and I see that very much in Sheriff Bell, who very much like Ivan Karamazov is locked in an existential crisis. His anxiety reminds me of that Neitzche aphorism-
"Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you."
Afraid of what the present is asking him to become.
It's also noteworthy that the novel is named after a line from a poem by Years, Sailing to Byzantium. It's worth looking up.
Next month we start our journey in East of Eden, looking forward to seeing some of you there. 💚
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