Abstract：No Country for Old Men, one of Cormac McCarthy’s later works, was not well received since its publication. The novel’s writing style was under heavy criticism, but McCarthy’s perspicacious portrayal and diagnosis of a highly-modernized decadent and growingly divided American society via a fictionalized deadly cat-and-mouse game was admirable. In the novel, McCarthy addresses the social consequences of instrumental rationality, degradation of human subjectivity and American social disintegration as a crippled liberal democratic praxis. The story warns about the illusive achievements of social progress and calls for an examination into the boon and bane of modernity for the sake of building social faith and morality. Although McCarthy, embodied as the Sheriff in the story, criticizes the social indulgence of extreme multiculturalism, he fails to reflect on the democratic tyranny of the majority.
Key words: No Country for Old Men; Cormac McCarthy; modernity; instrumental rationality; social disintegration
