here are many similarities and differences between the novels Raylan by Elmore Leonard and No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy. While both novels are thriller novels about crime and law enforcement, their narratives, characters, and the entirety of their plots differ greatly. Raylan is a novel which makes for light reading, fast pacing, and a likeable hero. No Country for Old Men, by contrast, is a novel which is neither for the faint of heart of the dull of mind, tearing through a brutal landscape and a complex ideology build upon pessimism.
The narrative of Raylan jumps from character to character depending on whomever can give the audience the most useful information to the plot or create the most suspense in standard form for a thriller
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novel. This narration inevitably returns to protagonist and namesake for the novel Raylan Givens, who will dispels any misconceptions which other characters or the audience may have made. Raylan’s inability to misstep and perpetual correctness hinders some readers’ feelings of suspense with this novel. McCarthy’s narrative engulfs the reader into the traumatizing events unfolding throughout his novel, each twist and turn rendering the reader unable to turn away. Dark and twisted is the plot of this novel, which is centralized around Anton Chigurh, a merciless gun for hire who is hunting Llewellyn Moss, who stole millions of dollars from Chigurh’s employer, and Sheriff Bell, who’s tasked with dealing with the carnage left in the wake of the others. Interspaced between this tale of murder, a desperate struggle to survive, and the horror of the aftermath is introspection from the sheriff which serves to display McCarthy’s world view: life is pain, death is inevitable, and nothing accomplished in life matters beyond. Whether discussing the protagonist, antagonists, or supporting characters, Raylan’s ensemble comes off flat and static. The first antagonist is an angry, envious, manipulative woman who preys on the weak and unsuspecting, and does not value lives of others. The secondary antagonist is a two-faced, profit motivated executive from a large coal mining company who cares more about publicity than human life. The final antagonist is a man who, by abusing and addicting them to drugs only he can supply, uses women to rob banks. Raylan, the protagonist and namesake for the novel, is best summarized by Carol Conlan, the mining executive, who describes him as, “Marshal One-Liner” (156). In addition to his reservations in speaking, Raylan’s character motivations and actions are easily summed up as being the right thing. He is portrayed as infallible, even when making baseless statements, he inevitably is correct. Despite being one dimensional, Raylan is the sole desire of every woman in the novel. By contrast, characters in No Country for Old Men are believably human, and even change over the course of the novel.
While there is a definitive, singular villain of the story, Anton Chigurh, a gun for hire referred to as “a true and living prophet of destruction” (4) even he has more complexity and reality to him than most are willing to admit. A psychopath who seems to kill without a care, Chigurh is often described as impossibly inhuman. However, those claims ignore the reality of serial killers in the real world, such as Luis Garavito, Pedro Lopez, and Daniel Camargo-Barbosa who each raped and murdered hundreds of boys and girls as young as six years old. Also ignored are those who caused death and destruction for a cause or country which history has deemed acceptable, such as Sgt Dillard Johnson, Simo Hӓyhӓ, and Klaudia Kalugina, who collectively have killed over 3,500 people. However, even Chigurh is shown to display restraint and change by the end of the novel, and while not explicitly stated, he even has deeper motivations for his actions than violence for violence’s sake or for the money. Another character who could easily fall into tropes is the investigating officer of all the destruction Chigurh leaves in his wake, Sheriff Bell. Bell could have easily been written as a hero, brave and strong, and the moral compass of the novel. Instead, Bell is uncertain about the world around him, about what is right and wrong, and afraid of Chigurh. This fear of having to continue hunting Chigurh leads Bell to resign as sheriff, along with a a number of other morally and bravery deficient decisions. The third major character is McCarthy’s story, Llewellyn Moss, is neither hero nor villain, but a regular man who makes dubious decisions which ignite and drive the plot of the
novel. In order to more easily convey the complex ideology within his novel, Cormac McCarthy utilizes a very common three act plot structure. The setup introduces the characters, gives basic information about them, and explains how Llewellyn found himself in Chigurh’s sights, and why Bell cares. Confrontation follows as the chase continues, more players get involved, and the bodies begin piling up. A twist, more escalation, and finally a climax occur before the novel settles on a conclusion which, while uncommon, is concrete in styling. Unorthodox is the best way to describe the plot structure of Raylan. As opposed to a central opposing force, or three acts, the novel utilizes multiple, separate antagonists. This has caused some readers unhappiness, such as New York Times book reviewer Olen Steinhauer, who called the book, “less a novel than a collection of novellas in disguise.” While there are connections between the three individual plots, this doesn’t cure the feeling of being conned out of a proper plot, as there are also references to prior novels, but they are not packaged together as one cohesive story. Unique as this approach may be, it has left many readers to feel robbed of a fuller story which could have had more depth, greater twists, and better flow. Neither novel is for everybody, nor for every situation. McCarthy’s writing can bear too heavily on the heart and mind at times, leaving the reader feeling depressed and alone despite, or perhaps because of, the complex characters struggling through the savagery of his novel. Leonard, on the other hand, writes an easily digestible trio of novella with a champion to cheer for and a nice happily ever after.
These three characters’ behaviors, personalities, and their thoughts affect the story “Catch a Killer”. Also Tawney’s behaviors, that shoots Gladston’s theory down and finds Corso and Andrew, show his honesty. The beginning of the story tells how rebellious Andrew is. Bullying and cruelty is the reason that Corso becomes a killer. These three main characters are revolved around each other in the
Both “Full Circle” and “The Most Dangerous Game” have many differences with how the murder is presented in the story, but both also have many similarities. In the short story “The Most Dangerous Game” the murder was done for fun and sport, General Zaroff killed his victims to fulfill a hunting sensation. But in the short story “Full Circle”, the murder was done out of jealousy, because the Terry was rejected. Throughout my paper I hope to show the similarities and differences of the murder cases within the two stories.
“She still today never told me she loved me…never… never in her life … it’s too hard to explain,” says Anthony Sowell as he mentions his mother while he is being interrogated by Cleveland Homicide Detective (Sberna). The classic neighbor that every family wishes to have, friendly, helpful and caring was holding back numerous secrets. In Anthony Sowell’s actions of the rape, beatings and murder of 11 innocent women, he demonstrates the qualities of a human monster while showing how nurture creates a personality as well as proving that humans are capable of creation more fear than those who are written about in fiction.
They both have a theme of racism and the author gave out what it was like for the black community in the past on having to go threw what they did everyday. In these novels, the characters and the society are alike however, unfortunately they have different endings.
... almost nothing alike from a superficial aspect. The stories have different historical contexts and they simply don’t have much in common to the average audience. It is easy to contrast the stories, but deep within certain elements, the stories can be linked in several ways.
The similarities are prolific in their presence in certain parts of the novel, the very context of both stories shows similarities, both are dealing with an oppressed factor that is set free by an outsider who teaches and challenges the system in which the oppressed are caught.
It is a given that every piece of work that people read will contain all sorts of characters. Those characters can range from villains, victims, or venerables. Two pieces of work that easily portray those types of characters is in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, and in Arthur Miller’s tragedy, The Crucible. It is revealed to the readers that Mr. Wilson in The Great Gatsby takes the role of the victim because of the how he was lied too and deceived throughout the entirety of the novel, and in the end died from it. Also, in The Great Gatsby, Daisy Buchanan is almost an undercover villain. It is not revealed to most, but by speculating on her actions she does some things that prove her to be a villain. Lastly, in The Crucible Giles Corey comes off as a venerable,
In this short story, O’Connor depicts a violent character to the reader known as ‘The Misfit.’ The Misfit can be described as a distorted, violent character that questions the true meaning of life and his role within it. The Misfit uses the anger that he possesses inside of him as a form of violence, and this is why he is known to be a wanted murderer, ever since he escaped from the penitentiary. This Misfit was put into the penitentiary when he was accused of murdering his own father, which might have been a lie based upon the head-doctors accusations. O’Connor reveals violence in a very peculiar way, and this is based upon the struggle of living in a world where finding a good man is hard to find in our society.
Such a series of tragic events has a great toll among the two main characters (Cox ) . For a vicious, careless indivi...
In many works of Literature, a character comes forth as a hero, only to die because of a character trait known as a tragic flaw; Hamlet from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Okonkwo from Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, and Winston Smith from Orwell’s 1984 all exhibit that single trait, which leads, in one way or another, to their deaths. These three tragic heroes are both similar and different in many ways: the way they die, their tragic flaws, and what they learn. All three characters strongly exhibit the traits needed to be classified as a tragic hero.
The characters in the novel, including the operative himself are willing to lie, cheat, and kill in cold blood for their own personal gain. Although infidelity, greed, and self-preservation are expected from characters involved with the murders and inner crime ring; the story becomes more complicated when characters like the operative, and chief of police begin to get their hands dirty. Bringing the age-old crime ad punishment theme to a higher tier where the reader is unable to make an impulsive decision on who is a “bad guy”, and who is a “good
Neither of the two men was the average “John Wayne” war hero that fights and dies for his country. This is what makes these two books stand out from other war books. Both of these books also were used during the Vietnam War as anti-war books denouncing the war. One major theme that comes up in both of these books is the theme of no free will.
To the character and to the author, it seems that ghastly nature murder and the immoral approach of treachery is merely an element of reality. This story is a true representation of author’s anguish and torment nature.
Amongst other things, “The Dead Man” is a story of political ambition, and personal pride which ends up being the downfall of our protagonist. Benjamin Otalora, the Argentinean Buenos Aires hoodlum turned Uruguayan gaucho, is ambitious and most of all brave. However, he is also reckless and lacks any kind of discretion whatsoever. His physical daring is un-complimented by any higher meaning or purpose. He doesn’t save Azevedo Bandeira, the mobster boss, in the knife fight because of any morals or virtues he believes in, but simply because he was drawn “to the sheer taste of danger.” Otalora’s braveness is also completely selfish. It is a raw, violent, braveness that ultimately blinds him to the reality to which he becomes self-aware in the last moments of his life; he is a man who is completely oblivious to forces outside himself. Otalora’s uncontrolled ambition and unchecked bravery disallows him the ability to calmly make calculations, to make the most intelligent choices, to think things through; all essentials in leadership and especially in ultimately coordinating a power grab from someone the likes of Azevedo.
The basic ideas of the two novels are also similar. They have to do with rebellion against the so-called perfect new world and the sanctuary