Each text represents an experience that both the author and the reader jointly construct; the author writes down the details, drawing on empirical influence, and the reader filters those details through their own experience. However, when the reader is the intended reader, the author's more manipulative skill regarding writing can greatly shape the reader's perception. McCarthy's 2005 novel, No Country for Old Men, describes his ability to maintain control of the reader's perception and guide him towards a particular, sad understanding of the reality of American civilization. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay To properly position my evaluation of this novel, particularly for reader response criticism, it is incumbent upon me to admit that I watched the film adaptation of the novel several times before reading the text itself. The film, therefore, played a significant role in shaping my perception of the events in the book, especially since many scenes in the film are almost direct adaptations of corresponding scenes in the book. Part of my argument involves the idea that the book itself—its narrative, its imagery, its description, the pacing of the plot—strikes me as very cinematic. As such, it is important to note that some measure of that perception is undoubtedly the result of having seen the film before reading the novel. That said, the text operates on a balance that favors showing over telling, offering the reader an overview of the cinematic plot even compared to many other contemporary works of American literature. The syntax occupies what I might have simply called Southern vernacular if not for the contextual specificity I gleaned from the film, but in no time the book establishes (after strongly suggesting) that the story is a border work. fiction, a subgenre often attributed to multiple different genres including modernism and postmodernism due to their contemporaneity. The text provides the necessary materials and establishes the necessary boundaries to create the reading, (i.e. the experience), and in doing so, "creates for itself an implicit reader and uses certain structures to predispose the real reader, who brings his own unique whole of experiences in the act of reading the text, to respond as the implied one” (Dobie 140). In other words, there is a type of reader for whom the work is intended and who is familiar with the drug trafficking that occurs among the United States of America and the United States of Mexico. Many North Americans are well aware that the southern border of the United States is riddled with drug trafficking, drug wars and even guerrilla warfare; neither country is officially responsible. The relevance of the cinematic reading of the text comes from the fact that the aforementioned materials it provides and the boundaries it establishes are realized through this cinematic narrative. The scenes move quickly and the narrative is thorough in its descriptions despite only describing select things. The story expects the reader to be able to extrapolate with minimal prompting and only with what is strictly necessary some key concepts that trigger the understanding of what is happening. For example, when Llewelyn Moss stumbles across the remains of a drug deal gone wrong, very little is said. Dialogue is sparse and every observation made by Llewelyn is important for the reader to understand what is being seen. McCarthy manipulates the reader in a variety of subtle ways, playing gameson the empirical knowledge he expects from the reader, which he knows he will give him to make some hypotheses that drive the plot itself. When Llewelyn reaches the site of the failed drug deal, he finds holes in all the cars, several dead Mexicans, and two dead dogs. Surface details are important, and the reader is expected to recognize that a shooting occurred. Looking more closely, however, a Mexican is still alive, and this leads the reader to assume, before seeing any drugs, that the conflict is recent. Furthermore, the narrative never enters the minds of the characters, so the reader is responsible for understanding what the characters think based only on their words, actions, and behaviors. Llewelyn finds the drugs and asks for an "última hombre", a survivor who he knows must have taken the money. It is from the question and Llewelyn's subsequent actions that the reader must assume that he intends to find the money, which marks a tragically tragic decision on Llewelyn's part. The antagonist, Anton Chigurh, is an excellent character to watch for analysis of how McCarthy manipulates the reader into understanding what he is trying to convey. Chigurh is a complex character with a code of ethics that one might say borders on insanity, and his sociopathic nature is much harder to communicate to the reader implicitly than explicitly. It would be easier for the writer to simply compose discursive paragraphs dedicated to in-depth analysis of the character so that the reader can properly understand him, but McCarthy chooses only to show the character through exchanges with others and interactions with the surrounding world. him. The implied reader is not only someone familiar with North American drug policy issues, but also with the sad perspective that North American society is full of sociopaths and generally senseless violence, making it a country for old men. Chigurh is first seen strangling a police officer to death after being arrested and booked. He takes the police car, stops someone else, kills him and gets a new car. These are crimes that can be rationalized, but Chigurh is later seen in several scenes of the book as completely irrational, which calls into question the idea of ​​what constitutes rationality in the first place, a challenge that literary modernism often throws. One scene depicts a conversation between Chigurh and a gas station manager. Chigurh is hostile towards him in ways that do not advance any particular agenda and deliberately accepts a polemical response to everything the manager says. Finally he flips a coin and forces the manager to call heads or tails. It never explicitly threatens the man's life, but the reader is expected to understand that the man's life is at stake. Even though Chigurh tells him that he can win it all and that he's put it all on the line his entire life without knowing it, it's worth considering that American culture might simply be so susceptible to the idea of ​​losing everything with the flip of a coin that McCarthy we could simply let these lines speak for themselves and allow the reader to draw the right conclusions from there. Capitalism, after all, breeds an attitude that favors boldness and risk-taking thanks to its promises of potential upward mobility and the so-called pursuit of happiness, so it makes sense for an American to take risks , that every opportunity must be seized and that there is always the ever-present possibility that everything could be lost as a result. In tandem with the numerous pop culture depictions of coin flips making very serious decisions (e.g. the DC Comic villain Two Face), the reader is likely.