| No Country for Old Men,one of the masterpieces of the American writer Cormac Mc Carthy,tells the story of violent and bloody fight between the war veteran Moss and the underworld hired killer Chigurh with escape and chase as the main clue.As the work has been adapted into the film,most of the current studies in China are mainly based on the film adaptation.In the studies of the original work,scholars have different interpretations of the moral sense of the work,and the key reason for the different judgments lies in the different focalizations of the novel.Examining this novel under Genette’s focalization theory,it can be found that Mc Carthy mainly uses two different narrative techniques: zero focalization and internal focalization.Zero focalization is the main body of the work for it occupies the majority of the length.The internal focalization is at the beginning of each chapter and plays an obvious role in framing the whole novel which defines the most important theme of the work,and therefore becomes the research focus of this thesis.From the perspective of focalization,this thesis argues that the novel is actually weaved by three stories together,namely,the story of Moss,the story of Chigurh,and the story of Bell,each of which reflects certain aspects of violence and contributes to the theme of the novel.It can be found that the zero focalization mainly focuses on the description of Moss’ s story and Chigurh’s story,such as escapes,chases and shootings.The scene is scary and visually striking,which highlights the violent theme of the work.Specifically,Moss’ s suffering epitomizes the universal circumstance faced by human beings: the influence of social incidences,poverty,temptation,conceit and lack of self-control.While Chigurh’s cruelty and loyalty manifest the complexity of human nature,and that the crime is not a matter of easy curse or redemption.As the analysis indicates,the internal focalization mainly concentrates on the story of sheriff Bell,which considers the root of violence from the perspective of Bell.As a police officer,Bell’s understanding of crimes,his reflection on social environment,his sense of helplessness,his professional integrity,his pursuit of inner peace and his observations on how to survive unavoidable violence,all of which constitute the moral theme of the story.Specifically,violence can be a result of multiple factors,including the frailties of human nature,political ecology and social environment.Violence can be curbed to some extent,but it involves social governance,improvement of living conditions and education.The individuals have to live with it and purse inner peace when violence is unavoidable. |
