Final Nonacademic Essay PDF

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Final comparative essay of a humantiies rutgers class that compares a short story to a movie claled no country for old men...

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Oliver Kim HSS 1 Professor Menon Final Non-Academic Essay

The Unpredictable Nature of Life and Death in “B. Wordsworth” and No Country for Old Men

The short story “B. Wordsworth” by V.S. Naipul has a rather unusual premise and becomes even stranger when the text is closely analyzed. Although extremely different in terms of plot and tone, the story shares many thematic similarities with the critically acclaimed movie No Country for Old Men. Whereas “B. Wordsworth” is a humorous tale that tells of the bond between an elderly poet and an abused child, No Country for Old Men is a violent thriller that depicts a hitman and a sheriff trying to locate a man who had come across the money of a drug deal gone wrong. Evidently the two stories share very little in common in terms of plot and tone, yet they possess remarkable similarities in regard to the theme they try to convey: much of life is random and naturally has a chaotic element to it. Even though the two stories are extremely different in many ways, the two portray the common theme of chaos, particularly through their seemingly meaningless scenes and abrupt endings. The parallels between the two stories can be seen right from the very start of their respective plots. In “B. Wordsworth,” the character of Black Wordsworth very suddenly appears in the story; he approaches the young boy’s character and asks him if he can watch the bees in

his yard. From that point on, Wordsworth becomes an integral part of the plot, yet his mysterious origins are never explained. Similarly, in No Country for Old Men, the villainous character of Anton Chigurh is injected into the story, but aside from brief mentions of him being hired by unknown men to retrieve the stolen money, the conception of his character is never explained. Both of these mysterious characters connect to the notion of randomness that the two stories present throughout the course of their plot. The movie continues to present scenes that reinforce the theme of chaos and volatility, especially in regards to death. Near the start of the film, Chigurh steals a policeman’s car and uses it as leverage to pull over a random elderly man. Although the man had done nothing illegal or even wrong, Chigurh kills him with a captive bolt pistol. There were no further consequences or connections to this scene; it simply demonstrates the random and violent nature of Chigurh’s character. Both the short story and the film continue to highlight their themes of unpredictability in life, particularly through two scenes that are pivotal to each story’s respective theme. In “B. Wordsworth,” the young boy and Black Wordsworth are walking along a sea-wall at Docksite, when the young boy asks if a pin would sink if he were to drop it into the water. Wordsworth replies by saying that “this is a strange world. Drop your pin, and let us see what will happen.” The pin then sinks. Although it is obvious to the reader and Black Wordsworth that the pin will sink, the fact that he tells the boy that he is unsure of what will happen in this strange world underscores the theme of irregularity in life; Wordsworth is essentially saying that life is so unpredictable that even outcomes that seem obvious must be questioned, such as the idea of a pin sinking into water. No Country for Old Men has a scene that parallels the pin scene in regard to its ideals. The infamous coin flip scene delivers a similar notion in a very different way. While paying for gas, Chigurh asks the station owner to guess the outcome of a coin flip. When the

owner asks what the stakes of the coin flip are, Anton pressures him to guess anyways, telling him that he has been putting off an outcome for all his life. Evidently, Chigurh is implying that the owner has been putting off his death, and that his fate will be decided with the flip of a coin, conveyed extremely effectively through the rising tension created throughout the scene. There is no clear motivation for Chigurh to kill the owner; instead, he is leaving it up to the random chance of a coin flip to determine his fate. Anton spares the man’s life after the coin flips in favor of the man. This scene further asserts the idea that death has no ulterior motivations and is instead aimless and arbitrary, similar to the flip of a coin. Both the pin scene and coin scene emphasize the idea that life is extremely unpredictable and inconstant. The latter uses a humorous situation to drive home its point, whereas the film utilizes tension in its scene to engrain the idea that death is always looming, and could strike at any time for no obvious reason. The endings to both stories create fitting conclusions that impress the overarching theme of chaos. At the end of “B. Wordsworth,” Black tells the child that he was not able to actually finish the poem that he had been working on for so many years, despite conveying the notion that he was the world’s greatest poet. The child then leaves the house, later realizing that the poet’s house had vanished at some point after walking by the same street a year later. He remarks that “it was just as though B. Wordsworth had never existed.” There are many different interpretations to this ending, yet it is clear that the ending is rather abrupt. Having B. Wordsworth disappear so suddenly, as if existed only in a dream, relates to the theme of unpredictability. Having such a pivotal character suddenly vanish to create a shocking and sudden ending instills a sense of surprise in the reader. The film uses a similar technique by creating a sudden ending that subverts the reader’s expectations. Llewelyn Moss, who initially stole the money from the crime scene, Llewelyn Moss, who initially stole the money from the

crime scene, Llewelyn Moss, who initially stole the money from the crime scene, had been confronting Anton Chigurh throughout the entire film; yet the ending has Moss die by the hands of unnamed Mexican cartel members, rather than having a climactic confrontation with the villain of the story. Having unimportant characters kill the main one develops the idea that life has no expected pattern, and is quite unpredictable. Chigurh’s fate further emphasizes the point. The reader would expect the villain to face justice in some form, whether it be being jailed or killed. However, by the end of the film, Chigurh escapes with the money, only suffering a broken arm in a sudden car crash that he suffers. The last scene of the movie has Sheriff Bell, an aging man who had been attempting to catch both Moss and Chigurh, describe a dream that he had after failing to capture Anton. In the dream, he and his father were riding through a snowy mountain pass; his father went ahead of him to make a fire as Bell traveled alone through the darkness, knowing that he would be able to find the comfort of his father and the fire ahead of him. The last line of the movie is Bell saying, “And then I woke up.” The movie has a sudden ending that, on the surface, has little relation to the rest of the film. By analyzing the dream sequence though, we can see how it relates to the themes of chaos and violence. Throughout the film, it is clear that Bell is not accustomed to the violent ways of Chigurh, as he constantly expresses his extreme confusion when trying to piece together the logic of Chigurh. The high age gap between him and the rest of the characters further emphasizes how different he is from his surroundings. By the end of the film, Bell still does not have a clear understanding of how the violence in the world operates. In the dream, Bell is confident that he will find warmth and comfort with his father and feels fine traveling alone through the uncharted darkness. But then the dream suddenly ends, and he wakes up. Having the dream suddenly end and waking Bell up asserts the notion that the dream is simply a dream, and not an attainable reality. Bell cannot find

warmth and comfort in the world he lives in, and must instead live on in the darkness of the chaotic world that he does not understand. Both stories have dream-like endings that accentuate the point that the world is violent, random, and is difficult to understand. The vanishing of B. Wordsworth and the multiple character-related endings of No Country for Old Men draw out the ideas of chaos that had been building up throughout each story. Although “B. Wordsworth” and No Country for Old Men differ in extreme ways, such as their widely different plots and tones, the two stories convey similar themes about the unpredictability and chaos of life. Both utilize seemingly insignificant scenes and endings that contrast the typical audience’s expectations to convey notions about how arbitrary and random life can be at times, even when we expect the obvious to occur.

Works Cited Naipul, VS. “B. Wordsworth.” https://687faweb.blackbaudondemand.com/ClassDocuments/3670/B.%20Wordsworth %20Text%20PDF.pdf. Web. 12 December 2019....