"(McCarthy, 205) Under the pressure of the modern world, the real things remain hidden from the view of man: "When you encounter certain things in the world, the evidence for certain things, you realize that you have come upon something that you may not very well be equal to... When you've said that it's real and not just in your head, I'm not all that sure what it is you have said."(McCarthy, 56) Thus, through an edgy and even troubling plot, McCarthy manages to portray a few of the failings of modern man and of the modern world itself. As Aaron Gwyn points out, the novel is almost an elegy of the lost world forever, but which can be regained as a new Paradise later: "McCarthy composes a tale of immense terror and beauty, one which poses the most serious of moral questions even as it pushes the bounds of the literary thriller. The novel is an elegy in the truest sense. It shows a country forever lost, but leaves us with the dream of a new Byzantium, or in Sheriff Bell's words, 'a fire somewhere out there in all...

The root of evil according to McCarthy is exactly the fact that the modern world is based on a structural imbalance between the scales of good and evil. Evil in the modern world is not so much perpetuated through actual perpetration, but through the modern's universe lack of concern for the distinction between good and bad.
Works Cited

Gwyn, Aaron. "No Country for Old Men. Book Review." The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Fall 2005 v25 i3 p 138(2)

McCarthy, Cormac. No Country for Old Men. New York: Knopf, 2005.

Strong, Benjamin. "A prophet of Gore." The New Leader 88.4 (July-August 2005): 31(2).

Walter, Kim. "Texas Noir." The New York Times Book Review, July 24, 2005 p 9.