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Frontiersman’s Identity in Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men: A Contrapuntal Reading
oleh: Seyed Mohammad Marandi, Hossein Fathi Pishosta, Zeinab Ghasemi Tari
Format: | Article |
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Diterbitkan: | Lasting Impressions Press 2018-12-01 |
Deskripsi
This study aims to offer a contrapuntal reading of Cormac McCarthy’s Western novel No Country for Old Men (2005) by drawing on the notion of frontiersman’s identity. McCarthy has been predominantly viewed as a revisionist in his politics of representing the myth of American West, yet little attention has been given to the way in which this novel calls into question the public view of him as a writer who revises and critiques the myth of the West. From a contrapuntal perspective, we argue that although the text depicts the failure of the frontiersman, in particular Sheriff Bell, in contemporary society, through nostalgia for older times the writer keeps the frontiersman’s dream and hope alive. Furthermore, we problematize the very older times for which the protagonist Bell expresses his nostalgia for. We argue that these nostalgic older times have been also a period of bloodshed and violence regarding other nationalities and ethnicities whose voice is not heard in this narrative. McCarthy’s text is indeed silent about the sufferings of those represented as the other, the Vietnamese for instance, in the text.