Even though these three works are all composed by the same individual, their use of the English language gives each one a very distinct voice to their narrative.
No Country for Old Men is a deconstruction of the role of the older generation in American society at an overarching level. The novel deals with the evolution of crime and the older man's growing separation between the then and the now. This is done in a variety of ways in the form of semantics. At a basic standpoint, the appearance of the Spanish language in the novel is used as a way to directly separate the Mexicans from the American protagonists. Spanish is not just a literal language barrier, the Spanish words spoken are very clean and direct, they are implied to be understood even if never stated, yet this understanding goes unspoken, only responded upon with a physical action rather than a verbal one.
Cormac McCarthy plays with the reader's way of understanding the structure of text via his way of delivery of the narrative in No Country for Old Men. The novel will switch without a warning from first person to third person narration back and forth. One moment the reader is being guided along a description of the setting to be suddenly jolted into a reflection of what the aforementioned reminds the character of. Most of these instances occur when the novel centers on Sheriff Bell, the oldest of the three main characters. Through juxtaposing his inconsistent form of narration and frame of reference, the reader is caught in a trance through which he can understand his mindset and meaning behind certain words and phrases. This can trace to the way he uses intimate words to describe nature, something so common to the human eye. Yet when it is described by the other characters, the descriptions are very clinical and direct, with little to no elaboration by their imaginations. In an overall, one can say that this novel centers on the formal and cognitive aspects of semantics, which is wildly different from The Counselor, which focuses on the more lexical portions of the subject.
