Each text represents an experience that the author and reader jointly construct; the author writes the details, relying on empirical influence, and the reader filters these details through his or her own experience. When the reader is the intended reader, however, the author's more manipulative ability in writing can greatly shape the reader's perception. McCarthy's 2005 novel, No Country for Old Men, showcases his prowess in maintaining control of the reader's perception and guiding them toward a particular, grim understanding of the reality of American civilization. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essayIn order to adequately position my assessment of this novel, especially for reader response criticism, it behooves me to admit that I watched the film adaptation of the novel several times before reading the text itself . The film therefore played an important role in shaping my perception of the events of the book, not least because many scenes in the film are almost direct adaptations of their corresponding scenes in the book. Part of my argument involves the idea that the book itself – its narration, its images, its description, the pacing of its plot – seems very cinematic to me. As such, it is important to note that some measure of this perception undoubtedly results from having viewed the film before reading the novel. That said, the text operates on a balance that favors presentation over narration, giving the reader a step-by-step overview of the story. a cinematic plot even in comparison to many other contemporary works of American literature. The syntax occupies what I might have simply dubbed a Southern vernacular without the contextual specificity I gleaned from the film, but in very short order the book establishes (after strongly suggesting) that the History is a frontier work. fiction, a subgenre often assigned to several different genres, including modernism and postmodernism due to their contemporaneity. The text both provides the required materials and establishes the boundaries necessary to create the reading (i.e. the experience) and, in doing so, "it creates for itself an implicit reader and uses certain structures to predisposing the actual reader, who brings his or her own unique set of experiences to the act of reading the text, to respond as an implied reader” (Dobie 140). In other words, there is a type of reader the book is intended for, and that reader is familiar with the drug trafficking that takes place between the United States of America and the United Mexican States. Many North Americans are well aware that the United States' southern border is rife with drug trafficking, drug wars, and even guerrilla warfare; all of this maintains a drug economy that neither country officially accounts for. The relevance of the cinematic reading of the text comes from the fact that the materials it provides and the limits it establishes are realized through this cinematic narration. The scenes move quickly and the narration is thorough in its descriptions even if it only describes selected things. The story expects the reader to be able to extrapolate with minimal prompting and only the gist, some key concepts that trigger understanding of what is happening. For example, when Llewelyn Moss discovers what remains of a drug deal gone bad, very little is said. Dialogue is rare and every observation madeby Llewelyn is important for the reader to understand what is being seen. McCarthy manipulates the reader in various subtle ways, playing on the empirical knowledge he expects from the reader, which he knows will lead him to make certain assumptions that themselves drive the plot. When Llewelyn reaches the site of the botched drug deal, he finds holes in all the cars, several dead Mexicans, and two dead dogs. The surface details are important and the reader is meant to recognize that a shooting has occurred. However, upon closer analysis, a Mexican is still alive, leading the reader to assume, before seeing any drugs, that the conflict is recent. The narration also never enters the minds of the characters, so the reader is responsible for understanding what the characters are thinking based solely on their words, actions, and behaviors. Llewelyn finds the drugs and inquires about an "ultima hombre", a survivor who he knows must have taken the money. It is from the question and Llewelyn's subsequent actions that the reader must infer that he intends to find the money, which marks a tragic and critical decision on Llewelyn's part. The antagonist, Anton Chigurh, is a great character to watch to analyze how McCarthy manipulates the reader into understanding what he is trying to convey. Chigurh is a complex character with a code of ethics that borders on insanity, and his sociopathic nature is much harder to communicate to the reader implicitly than explicitly. It would be easier for the writer to simply compose discursive paragraphs dedicated to in-depth analysis of the character so that the reader can fully understand the character, but McCarthy chooses to show the character only through exchanges with others and interactions with the world around him. The implied reader is not only someone familiar with the problematic drug policies of North America, but also the grim perspective that North American society is rife with sociopaths and generally senseless violence, which which does not make it a country for old people. Chigurh is first seen strangling a police officer to death after being arrested and incarcerated. He takes the police car, arrests someone else, kills them and gets a new car. These are crimes that can be rationalized, but Chigurh is then presented in several scenes in the book as being completely irrational, which calls into question the idea of ​​what constitutes rationality in the first place – a challenge that literary modernism often poses. . One scene depicts a conversation between Chigurh and a gas station manager. Chigurh is hostile to him in a way that advances no particular agenda, and he deliberately responds argumentatively to everything the manager says. Finally, he flips a coin and forces the manager to call heads or tails. He never explicitly threatens the man's life, but the reader is meant to understand that the man's life is at stake. Although Chigurh tells him that he has everything to gain and that he set it all up his whole life without knowing it, it is worth considering that perhaps American culture is simply so sensitive to the idea of ​​losing everything to a coin that McCarthy might simply let these lines speak for themselves and allow the reader to draw the right conclusions. After all, capitalism breeds an attitude that prizes boldness and the ability to take risks because of its promises of upward mobility and the so-called pursuit of happiness. So it makes sense for an American to take risks, to seize an opportunity and that there is always a possibility.