66 pages • 2 hours read
Cormac McCarthyNo Country for Old Men
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2005A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 11-13Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 11 Summary
Bell tracks down Llewelyn Moss’ father and tells him about how Llewelyn died. His father says that Llewelyn was a sniper in Vietnam and the best shot he ever knew, and that it was impossible for him to be involved with drugs. Bell agrees that Llewelyn didn’t have anything to do with drugs or drug dealing. Llewelyn’s father also says that Llewelyn beat up some hippies who spit on him when he got home from Vietnam, and that Vietnam was very different for soldiers than his experience in World War II. The country didn’t offer support or send its strength and hope with the soldiers.
Bell reports that he simply doesn’t believe in the job that he’s doing anymore; he doesn’t think that anything he does will have a positive impact. Even though he is in debt to the job because of fund raising for the election, he just cannot go on doing a job he no longer believes in. He tells Loretta this, and she doesn’t want to believe him at first. However, being who she is, she supports his decision.
He goes to the prison to talk to the Mexican put on death row for killing the state trooper. He tries to tell him that he did the best that he could for him. The man laughs in his face and says that he did kill the trooper. After Bell leaves, he talks to the man’s lawyer. The lawyer asks him if he knows anything more about the mystery man he believes killed the trooper. Again, Bell refers to him as a ghost. He continues, saying that he knows he’s not up to finding this ghost. When Loretta tells him none of this was his fault, he disagrees. He says that if people know you have a mean enough dog in your yard, they will stay out of it, and they didn’t stay out of his yard.
Bell. When Bell gets home, he finds that Loretta is out on her horse. He gets worried, so he saddles his horse and goes out to find her. He does and they ride together for a while, then sit and watch the sunset. She tells him that she’s content to leave Sanderson, though it will be difficult to start over again in a new place. He asks her if she would ever tell him if he did something wrong, and she tells him she wouldn’t. He doesn’t think that that’s a good thing, but she says that that is the way their marriage is. If they disagree about something, Loretta just gets over it, because she knows that Bell cannot.
Chapter 12 Summary
Bell wakes up at night worrying about the way the world is headed. He wakes Loretta up simply by being awake himself. He worries that drug money might eventually own the whole country, including the government, as it does in other countries.
However, he realizes that the real problem is that people want to drug themselves, apparently by the millions, rather than deal with their lives. He doesn’t have an answer for that, except that the downfall starts when people don’t use manners as a show of respect to one another, particularly “Sir” and “Mam” (304). Without people to buy and use the dope, there would be no dope dealers and no drug crime. Bell knows that he would have nothing without Loretta, who reports that she is reading the Revelations from the Bible and will inform him if she finds anything that is relevant to current events.
Bell. Bell walks out of his office for the last time and sits for a long time in his truck. He tries to identify how he is feeling: he feels defeated, bitterly beaten. He tells himself he needs to get over it and starts the truck.
Chapter 13 Summary
The last chapter consists of an italicized section containing Bell’s memories. He describes a stone trough carved by a man in France at the farmhouse that was later blown to bits. The man who carved that trough, which was meant to last a thousand years, had a promise in his heart for the future. Bell wants to carry that type of promise in his own heart; he wants to try to create something that will last.
Finally, Bell describes a dream that he had about his father. They are riding horses in the mountains at night in a snowstorm, back in olden times. His father passes him, wrapped in blankets, carrying a light inside a horn. Bell knows that his father has gone ahead of him into the darkness and cold with that light to guide him. When Bell gets there, his father will be waiting for him.
Chapter 11-13 Analysis
Llewelyn’s father echoes many of Sheriff Bell’s beliefs about the state of the country in his conversation with Bell. In particular, they share a belief that the country has changed and doesn’t offer its young people the strength and certainty that it once offered them.
Significantly, Moss and Bell are tied together as protagonists by several circumstances. First of all, they both went to war at nearly the same age—Bell at 21 and Llewelyn at 22. Llewelyn was born the same year that Bell ran away from battle and received a medal—1944. Both are hunters. Llewelyn hunts antelope and other game. Bell hunts criminals. Both men make a significant mistake that shadows the rest of their lives. The only difference is that Bell survives his mistake and must live with the consequences. Llewelyn doesn’t live to see his wife pay the price for his mistake.
Despite the fears that Bell expresses about the future of the country, particularly the drug wars, the novel ends on a positive, hopeful note. Bell believes that the stone trough is still there in France, though the house was destroyed. The man who toiled to create that trough, which he knew would last far longer than he would, left something of value behind him—his legacy. Bell hopes to still be able to create a legacy of which he can be proud. His life is not over because he left a job behind. He also believes that those who die go before us into the darkness and cold, but symbolically carry a light for us to follow and find our way.
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