Over the weekend, I presented a paper on Dante and Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men. I focused on my paper on Sheriff Bell’s retirement and spiritual malaise, which is expressed well in this passage:

Somewhere out there is a true and living prophet of destruction and I dont want to confront him. I know he’s real. I have seen his work. I walked in front of those eyes once. I wont do it again. I wont push my chips forward and stand up and go out to meet him […] I think it is more like what you are willin to become. And I think a man would have to put his soul at hazard. And I wont do that. I think now that maybe I never would.