"To transform 'It was' into 'Thus I willed it'; that alone do I call redemption."

--Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Deserts are places of extremes: dry winds and scorching heat by day, cold, black and empty in the night. Life is full of such extremes, and often we find moderation preferable. But the quality of life depends far more on choice than circumstance, and in the end, moderation might be only a mirage; every choice has consequences, some we can anticipate and some are unforseen, but in “No Country for Old Men”, inevitably, all consequences come in the cold, black form of Anton Chigurh.

The Coen brothers production is remarkably faithful to Cormac McCarthy's novel, and since likely more have seen it than have read the book, here we will deal primarily with the film.

Accountant: Are you going to shoot me?

Chigurh: That depends. Do you see me?

The question goes unanswered, and scenes like this leave many asking, exactly who, or what is Anton Chigurh; some say he represents death, some say he is fate.

In one reviewer's opinion, Anton Chigurh is:

“...a machine, as cold and calculating as the Terminator but worse: flickers of sympathy or humanity or something decent tease us. Or, no: not flickers of humanity but of a commitment to his own heartless set of rules, to a capriciousness that is its own weird kind of honor.”

And Carson Wells, the only character who has met Chigurh before and lived to tell about it, says: “He's a peculiar man. You could even say that he has principles. Principles that transcend money or drugs or anything like that. He's not like you. He's not even like me.”

Wells finds himself sitting almost toe-to-toe with the man he describes as having “principles that transcend money” and nevertheless attempts to buy his way out of the predicament:

Wells: I know where the money is.

Chigurh: If you knew, you would have it with you.

Wells: I need dark. To get it. I know where it is.

Chigurh: I know something better.

Wells: What's that.

Chigurh: I know where it's going to be.

Wells: And where is that.

Chigurh: It will be brought to me and placed at my feet.

Wells: You don't know to a certainty. Twenty minutes it could be here.

Chigurh: I do know to a certainty. And you know what's going to happen now. You should admit your situation. There would be more dignity in it.

We know, too, what's going to happen but just before Chigurh does, in fact, kill Carson Wells, he makes a cryptic, quasi-existential query which seems superfluous if he is meant to be symbolic only of either fate or death: "If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?" 

“Do you know how crazy you are?”, Wells replies, but Chigurh isn't "crazy”, if by that one means not properly oriented in time and space; on the contrary, Chigurh seems incomprehensible because of the hyper-, or meta-reality in which he operates, and this may also be what leads many to conclude he represents fate, or death. Yet both are too limited to adequately explain this character; there is no reason for Chigurh to be concerned whether Carson Wells dies with dignity, if he is simply meant to represent fate. And whether one dies with dignity, or not, ironically, has more to do with life, than death.

Probably the most well-known scene in “No Country for Old Men” involves a coin toss and a tense exchange between Chigurh and the proprietor of a small roadside store. It has already been much talked about and debated, but here let us look at it in the context of Nietzsche's definition of redemption, the transformation of what seems chance or random into that which one has brought about, or willed.

Chigurh: You've lived here all your life?

Proprietor: This was my wife's father's place. Originally.

Chigurh: You married into it.

Proprietor: We lived in Temple Texas for many years. Raised a family there. In Temple. We come out here about four years ago.

Chigurh: You married into it.

Proprietor: If that's the way you wanna put it.

Chigurh: I don't have some way to put it. That's the way it is. What's the most you ever lost on a coin toss?

Proprietor: Sir?

Chigurh: The most. You ever lost. On a coin toss.

Proprietor: I don't know. I couldn't say.

Chigurh: (takes a coin from his pocket) Call it.

Proprietor: Call it?

Chigurh: Yes.

Proprietor: For what?

Chigurh: Just call it.

Proprietor: Well - we need to know what it is we're callin for here.

Chigurh: You need to call it. I can't call it for you. It wouldn't be fair. It wouldn't even be right.

Proprietor: I didn't put nothin up.

Chigurh: Yes you did. You've been putting it up your whole life. You just didn't know it. You know what date is on this coin?

Proprietor: No.

Chigurh: Nineteen fifty-eight. It's been traveling twenty-two years to get here. And now it's here. And it's either heads or tails, and you have to say. Call it.

Proprietor: Look... I got to know what I stand to win.

Chigurh: Everything.

Proprietor: How's that?

Chigurh: You stand to win everything. Call it.

Proprietor: All right. Heads then.

Chigurh: (tosses the coin, takes his hand away and looks at it) Well done...Don't put it in your pocket.

Proprietor: Sir?

Chigurh: Don't put it in your pocket. It's your lucky quarter.

Proprietor: Where you want me to put it?

Chigurh: Anywhere not in your pocket. Or it'll get mixed in with the others and become just a coin. Which it is.

Knowing as we do what Chigurh is capable of, we feel badly for the proprietor, and relieved when the coin toss turns out in his favor. But look at the information Chigurh elicits from him; the store, the last place this man will ever see if the coin toss turns out badly, is not his, nor even his wife's, but his “wife's father's place.”  Content to work behind a counter he doesn't even own--or as Chigurh says, you've been putting it up your whole life, you just didn't know it--this is an encounter the proprietor is not likely to forget. It is not his wife's, or his wife's father's choice to make this time, but his; the exercise of will is transformative no matter how the quarter lands because redemption lies in simply having made a choice. 

As an icon of evil, Chigurh is every bit as menacing as, say, Hannibal Lecter, to whom he has been likened. But an all-too-human desire for revenge, a “do unto others” tenet, bent but not unrecognizable, guides Dr. Lecter as he goes about determining others' fate. And given the right circumstances, if one were to meet the cannibalistic psychiatrist of “Silence of the Lambs”, no doubt one would find him mannered, witty, and urbane—in other words, charming.

Completely lacking in anything so humanizing as charm, and quite unlike Hannibal the Cannibal, Anton Chigurh is no mere villain. "You should admit your situation. There would be more dignity in it" clearly echoes Zarathustra's formula of redemption.

One may seek redemption with the hereafter in mind, but its immediate benefit belongs to the living, and to life. And fate, and even death are also a part of life, and if there is an art to living it is the art of learning how to choose; the villain of “No Country for Old Men” could offer you an air gun to the temple just as easily as a coin toss, but there will be no moderate alternative. Either way, certain choices brought you to the place where you now.

And now you're here and you must call it, the final word rests as it always has, with you; violent, and redemptive, not merely fate or even death, Anton Chigurh is Life, in the extreme.