Moral Evil

Introduction: ‘‘Evil’’ and Evil

Introduction ‘‘Evil’’ and Evil ‘‘But I think once you quit hearing sir or ma’am, the rest is soon to foller.’’ —Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, No Country for Old Men (film) Defeated and exhausted from the fruitless pursuit of the ruthless Anton Chigurh, who got away and who is sure to continue to elude capture, Sheriff Ed Tom Bell utters these words to a fellow befuddled colleague. Chigurh is the consummate psychopath, clever and self-reliant but lacking the capacity to feel empathy or indeed an interest in forming any sort of connection with other people. Chalking a good many of his deeds up to fate, Chigurh confesses to his future victims that it is nothing personal: the ability to choose otherwise is beyond even him. Cormac McCarthy’s efficient, relentless murderer, a sure survivor against the unlikeliest of odds, is equal to the creepiest of characters thought up in all of literature, and made all the more eerie by Javier Bardem’s depiction of him in the Coen Brothers’ award-winning film of the same title. Sheriff Ed Tom Bell’s observation connects psychopathy to mundane selfishness . The unstoppable, anonymous assassin is the predictable upshot of the waning of courtesy, kindness, and love of one’s neighbor. Evil, like entropy, has the edge over hard-won virtues such as compassion and mercy. Two memorable moments of No Country for Old Men underscore the seasoned sheriff’s reflection. The first occurs in the middle of the film, when the protagonist Llewelyn Moss is badly injured and needs the assistance of three men to help him sneak over the border into Mexico for cover, for which he needs a temporary disguise. The second takes place at the end of the film, when Chigurh is hit by a car as he is leaving the scene of his latest crime and needs one of the boys who has witnessed the accident to give him the shirt off his back to 1 2 I N TR O D UC T I ON serve as a sling that will hold his badly broken arm in place. In both cases, the Good Samaritanship of would-be assisters lapses into an occasion for opportunism . One of the men Moss encounters on his way into Mexico wants to see how much more money he can get for the half-empty beer bottle needed to sell the disguise, beyond what Moss has already paid for the jacket he needs to cloak his wounds. In the second instance, the boy’s friend matter-of-factly informs him that he had better plan on sharing the hundred dollars Chigurh has just paid for the shirt. The audience cannot help but notice that in neither of these instances do the ones requesting more money pay much attention to the fact that someone has been critically injured. They are interested in the opportunity that has arisen as a result of their introduction to someone desperate for their help. These two episodes occupy only a few minutes of a film that is more than two hours long and introduce characters who are not to appear again, yet their presence is as deliberate as the most climactic scene. The three men and two boys are the viewers, people who also look for easy ways to make money and who often act on base, selfish instincts. In turn we, at least potentially, are Anton Chigurh, an individual past the point of no return, incorrigible in and resigned to his evil. If we are not careful, evil will overtake us too. As No Country for Old Men suggests, evil is inescapably with us and at least in one sense not the mirror opposite of goodness. Unlike goodness, evil does not require planning or perseverance . Although we have the propensity to be good and evil, we are more easily evil. Our biological hardwiring does not ensure our participation in wrongdoing , but we are at some point likely to be drawn into the vortex of evil by default. Evil, in other words, has its way of finding us. The point extends to occurrences that are explained as nature’s whim. In the summer of 2008, I was in New Orleans and took the Hurricane Katrina Tour, on which I was able to visit the areas most affected by the storm, such as the Lower 9th Ward, St. Bernard, and Lakeview. There I was surprised to learn that most residents who lived through the aftermath insist...