I think the theme is very clearly death, but the message the Coen brothers delivered was far less grim than most would expect. The theme seems to be more indifferent than it is anything else. Take Moss's death for example. He's the seeming protagonist. Then, suddenly he's dead a little more than half way through. We don't get to see him go out, guns blazing. He isn't even killed by the antagonist. His death just... happens. Chigurh is unexpectedly t-boned in his car. He gets out of the crash, severely hurt and walks away. Even a death dealer is prone to his master. Chigurh got lucky, but he could have easily met misfortune. The coin toss is the perfect example of the Coen brothers' approach to their theme. If it's your time, it's your time. Chigurh could have just killed him, but it doesn't work like that. Death comes for you when Death wants you. GAS ATTENDANT I didn't put nothin up. CHIGURH Yes, you did. You've been putting it up your whole life you just didn't know it. Oddly, the most violent of the characters may have the greatest appreciation for life. Chigurh seems to be the Sage of the characters and the embodiment of the theme. While the other characters (and probably audiences) conceive him as violent, malevolent, what have you, it's because he runs on a moral code of his own. A moral code that differs because he views life far differently than any of the other characters. We see his view on life articulated in the coin toss scene. I think the Coen brothers (or Cormac McCarthy) were illustrating how all the other characters simply have flawed views. This is also pointed out: ELLIS Whatcha got ain't nothin new. This country's hard on people, you can't stop what's coming, it ain't all waiting on you. That's vanity.

I think the theme is greed (Moss) vs retribution (Chigurh). Bell, who also represents honesty and goodness, gives us the eyes we view the the moral universe through.

Death. Greed. Retribution. Definitely at play. How about this one: Order vs. chaos. And let me parse that from the vantage point of Chicurgh, Bell, and Moss. C may come across as evil personified or an 'angel of death' [more on this later], but in his world view, what he is about and who he kills is tied fundamentally to his idea of a well-ordered universe. There are rules and with them a kind of destiny. If a person acts in such a way as to break those rules, then they and their loved ones must suffer the consequences. For me, this is most clearly in evidence by what happens to Carla Jean. Check C's dialogue to her on P. 114: "But I gave my word... Your husband had the opportunity to remove you from harm's way. Instead, he used you to try to save himself... What's done can't be undone... People always say the same thing... They say 'You don't have to do this.' But in his mind, he does have to do this. There is a basic order to his universe with a strict code that must be obeyed. The very best he can do with Carla Jean, even though the object of all the killing, Moss, is already dead, is to flip a coin and let CJ call it. Hence order = destiny for C. That is why anyone he meets who he decides to kill - the initial arresting police officer, the man he stops driving the car, the two associates who take him to the site of the shootout, the guy with the chicken truck, the car he blows up, and on and on and on - 'deserves' to die because their destiny puts them in his path. To C, all of that makes sense due to his rigid and predetermined sense of order in his universe. Now let's jump to Bell. He conducts what must be one of the least investigative investigations by a law enforcement officer in cinema history. He is utterly outside the sphere of what transpires, all the way until returning to the scene of Moss' death where he could be thought to be in C's vicinity [at the motel]. Because of this distance, he is, in essence, an observer. And just like the horrible murder he talks about to his deputy Wendell [P. 87-89] while reading the newspaper, the world to him seems like it's falling into chaos: "...it sounds like these boys died of natural causes... Natural to the line of work they was in... My lord, Wendell, it's just all-out war. I don't know any other word for it. Who are these folks? I don't know..." Then he goes on to describe a senseless crime he read about in the newspaper. Later after he appears just too late to find Moss, then breaks the news of Moss' death to Carla Jean, he sits in a diner with a local police authority Roscoe [P. 103-105]: ROSCOE It's all the goddamned money, Ed Tom. The money and the drugs. It's just goddamned beyond everything. What is it mean? What is it leading to? BELL Yes. ROSCOE If you'd a told me twenty years ago I'd see children walkin' the streets of our Texas towns with green hair and bones in their noses I just flat out wouldn't of believed you. BELL Signs and wonders. But I think once you stop hearin' sir and madam the rest is soon to follow. This last line seemingly innocuous, but points to Bell's sense that order is breaking down and chaos is on the march. As Roscoe says in his very next comment: "It's the tide. It's the dismal tide." After Moss' death, Bell goes to see an aging law enforcement veteran Ellis. Standing outside this moment as a writer assessing the character dynamics, if I look at this with B as the Protagonist, then Ellis is clearly a Mentor. B has come to E to seek an answer about quitting his job. And he gets it, but obliquely. The conversation is about two acts of violence, both of them seemingly random, combined with a third random event: * Ellis getting shot in the line of duty years and years ago, sending him to a life of disability in a wheelchair. * The man who shot Ellis, died in prison. Not through anything Ellis could do for retribution, simply something that happened per the ebb and flow of the universe. * And the story Ellis tells about Uncle Mac who was shot and killed in a random event by some Indians years ago. In this context, Bell says the following: BELL I don't know. I feel overmatched... I always thought when I got older God would sort of come into my life in some way. He didn't. I don't blame him. If I was him I'd have the same opinion about me that he does. And then this exchange: ELLIS (CONT'D) ... What you got ain't nothin' new. This country is hard on people. Hard and crazy. Got the devil in it yet folks never seem to hold it to account. BELL Most don't. ELLIS You're discouraged. BELL I'm... discouraged. ELLIS You can't stop what's comin. Ain't all waitin' on you. Bell is discouraged, in part, because the world is changing, devolving into chaos. And while Chigurgh sees order in what he does, B, who is as I said an observer more than a participant in the events that unfold, interprets it from a distance and can only see meaningless and madness. Finally there is Moss. Consider that he exists in between these two polar extremes: Chigurh's sense of order, what we might call predestination, and Bell's sense of disorder, what we might call free will. [And yes, I am hearkening back to my old days at Divinity School]. Moss takes the money. That is an act of free will. In so doing, he intersects with C's universe and the latter's sense of justice meted out, based on his rigid understanding of order. C has M in his cross-hairs twice, both times M escapes. But in the end, M is killed by characters we barely even see, a long shot as their truck slaloms away from the motel. Those murderers? Per Bell's vantage point, another example of chaos. But I suspect in Chigurh's perspective, a sign of a well-ordered moral universe because Moss got what he deserved. Finally let me end with this thought: The idea of Chigurh as a 'spirit,' an angel of death, a 'ghost'. He appears and disappears seemingly in a flash. In both assaults on Moss, we see the effects of his attacks -- air blasts, gun blasts, things shattering -- but we don't see him except for a reflection in a store window and a few other fleeting images in the second assault before Moss pulls his rifle and begins pumping violence back at C. Yet when Moss goes to see where Chigurh surely must be lying after getting shot, C is gone. Just some blood. This sense of C's let's call it 'transcendence' is underscored by Bell's experience. Again he is more of an observer, so all he sees is the evidence of C's actions, in fact never once laying eyes upon C [also note the number of times people say of C, "You've seen him?", like this is an unusual thing]. All of this ending up with a line Bell utters to Ellis about Chigurh: [P. 105]: "Sometimes I think he's pretty much a ghost." Now I am not saying that C is actually a ghost. But the way C interacts with the physical universe feels like he has some sort of special, almost superhuman quality. And I suppose we could think of it this way: Chigurh's commitment to his rigid world view of order is so strong, so committed, so powerful that it makes him an almost 'transcendent' type of being. Again I'm not saying he is, but rather our experience of him can feel like that. Those are some rough thoughts I had after watching the movie last night and reading the script while doing that. By the way, a practice I highly recommend.