Early in the novel, after Bell surveys the carnage in the desert, he tells Lamar: “I just have this feelin we’re looking at something we really aint never even seen before” (page 46). In what way is the violence Sheriff Bell encounters different than what has come before?

In No Country For Old Men, Sheriff Bell quickly becomes horrified, depressed, and overwhelmed by the senseless violence that occurs among the Mexican drug cartels, Llewlyn, and Anton Chigurh.
The carnage in the desert is abysmal; a large number of drug dealers, thugs, and dogs are found shot dead with the drugs still intact and the money missing. Yet, it's not until Bell discovers the dead deputy and the dead man on the side of the road that he begins to become truly disturbed by the violence. The violence in the desert is one thing; Sheriff Bell has experience with drug dealers and greed-based violence. However, the murders of these two victims of Chigurh seem entirely senseless. Anton Chigurh is a psychopathic sadist who kills because he wants to; Bell recognizes his breed of violence as being inherently different from that of the drug dealers. Where the drug dealers may simply be criminals, Chigurh possesses a true evil that frightens Bell.

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