Chapters 4 and Part of 5 of No Country for Old Men

I thought these chapters were the most exciting yet.  The basic plot of these chapters is that Moss recovers the money that he hid in the air duct and discovers a transponder.  Moss now understands how he was being tracked so easily.  Llewelyn searches for the transponder and eventually finds it.  Instead of breaking it or discarding it, he chooses to leave it in the room with him.  I thought this was a strange decision.

Early the next morning Moss suddenly wakes up for no apparent reason.  He has a feeling that something is wrong though.  Moss hides under the bed with his shotgun and waits to see what is going to happen.  Chigurh appears in the door and enters the room.  Moss immediately considers shooting him, but holds off. Chigurh goes to investigate the bathroom, but does not go in.  Instead he turns around starts to leave the room.  That's when Moss comes out from under the bed and makes Chigurh surrender his weapon.  Moss eventually leads the two of them outside and starts to run away.  Chigurh takes aim at Moss and hits him a couple of times.  Llewelyn is only able to hit Chigurh in the leg.

The confrontation continues out into town where two other men start to shoot at Moss.  Somehow Moss escapes the gunfire with just a few wounds.  He comes to a bridge.  He throws the briefcase full of money down into some tall grass and continues across.  Moss struggles to survive, but eventually finds someone who will take him to a hospital.

I figured that Moss would eventually have to face somebody who wanted to either harm or kill him.  I guess it makes sense that Chigurh was that person.  The gun fight they take part in was thrilling, but I questioned Moss' actions.

When Chigurh first enters the hotel room I figured that Moss would just shoot him right there, but instead he holds off.  That did not make sense to me.  Moss must know that Chigurh is there to take the money and probably kill him.  Maybe Moss cannot make himself pull the trigger.  Chigurh would have had no clue where Moss was if Moss would have just destroyed the transponder.  One of Moss' previous statements was that he knew he would probably have to kill somebody.  Moss might have intentionally left the transponder in the same room so that he could fight the person on his own terms instead of having them track him down without him knowing about it.

Chigurh's accuracy is unlucky for Moss.  A few pages before their fight started Chigurh had taken aim at a bird, but had missed.  Moss was not as lucky.  He was shot several times, enough to make him feel like passing out.

It seems like Chigurh operates purely on fate.  He must think that he is supposed to be doing what he is doing and that the people had it coming for them anyway.  Moss is different though.  I think Moss is lucky and smart in someways.  You could argue that finding the money was lucky for Moss.  The fact that the intruders failed to shut the blinds all the way and that he wasn't killed by Chigurh is also lucky.  Moss could be considered smart because of actions such as making a sawed off shotgun, hiding the money in the air duct, and knowing not to give in to his temptation to lay down after being shot.  I think a lot of this can be attributed to his time in Vietnam.  He probably learned a lot of valuable skills that he is now putting to good use.