I’m currently reading through McCarthy’s No Country For Old Men and am about halfway through, but the most recent passage has left me confused.
I’ve just finished the portion at the Eagle’s Pass Hotel, where the (arguably) main character of Moss finds a radio transmitter in the briefcase of stolen money he’s been lugging around.
This transmitter has allowed several people to locate and attempt to kill Moss. Moss then decides to wait with the transmitter, and when a hitman arrives to kill him. Moss surprises the hitman taking him at gunpoint. Moss then runs away after taking the hitman’s main weapon. The hitman then shoots Moss with a second gun while he’s running away, nearly killing him in the process.
I guess my main question is this: why do any of that?
Why not run after finding the transmitter? Moss goes to sleep shortly after finding it, and you could certainly argue he’s exhausted, but why not at least move rooms or something? Why not leave the transmitter and sleep outside? Why not move the transmitter into a car or cab at the very minimum? The argument from the books end is that he believes he may be running the rest of his life. Maybe he wants to face his killer head on?
If so, why not shoot the hitman while he’s literally at gunpoint? We know Moss is fine with taking a life, he’s said that much himself. He’s a veteran. If not though, why not at least maim the guy? Shoot his knees or something. If not that, why not, at bare minimum, check to make sure the hitman sent to kill you doesn’t have a second weapon?
Moss has, up to this point, been shown to be clever and cautious. His actions here make no goddamn sense, and I don’t understand why they were written that way? The movie directors seem to agree with me here as that scene is one of the only major changes as far as I can tell from reading about the movie online. Can someone here defend this for me? I’m not sure that I can continue reading the book from here.
by MrBones-Necromancer