Tree of Smoke

[Richard Ryan]

The writing is evocative, but that scene made no sense to me.  Why did Wells, a trained killer like Chigurh, go docilely to his death? Why did he walk into Chigurh's trap and then submit to his own execution?  And why did McCarthy introduce an interesting character - in some sense a sane version of Chigurh - and then eliminate him? To make a some didactic point about the implacability of Chigurh and the evil that he represents?   

----- Original Message ----
From: Keith <keithsz at mac.com>
To: Pynchon-l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sunday, November 18, 2007 4:55:24 PM
Subject: Re: Tree of Smoke


I like this better:

"He closed his eyes and he turned his head and raised one hand to  
fend away that which could not be fended away. Chigurh shot him in  
the face. Everything that Wells had ever known or thought or loved  
drained slowly down the wall behind him. His mother's face, his First  
Communion, women he had known. The faces of men as they died on their  
knees before him. The body of a child dead in a roadside ravine in  
another country. He lay half headless on the bed with his arms  
outflung, most of his right hand missing. Chigurh rose and picked up  
the empty casing off the rug and blew into it and put it in his  
pocket and looked at his watch. The new day was still a minute away."

    --off camera from McCarthy's _No Country_

On Nov 18, 2007, at 7:02 AM, Monte Davis wrote:

"From all around came the ten thousand sounds of the jungle, as well  
as the
cries of gulls and the far-off surf, and if [Bill] stopped dead and  
listened
a minute, he could hear also the pulse snickering in the heat of his  
flesh,
and the creak of sweat in his ears."