Connection between Pa and Ed Tom Bell

After reading No Country for Old Men and while reading The Grapes of Wrath, there are some similarities I see between the character of Pa in Grapes of Wrath and Ed Tom Bell in No Country for Old Men. While Pa is the leader and the instigator of the journey the Joad family takes to California, he is also somewhat hopeless and losing touch with he true essence of who he is as a person. He begins to drown in his surroundings as his family suffers loss after loss and their dream of a life in California seems farther and farther away. Ed Tom Bell is similar in this way as he watches crime and police work shift to something much more cynical. He feels inadequate to handle the intensity of the uprising of crime in Texas and begins to recede into himself. They are also similar in the way that their growing age is causing them setbacks. They’re finding that they are no longer able to keep up with the lives they lived as younger men. In a way they are both stuck in the past, reminiscing about better times. For Pa this was working on the farm surrounded by family where they had enough money to have food on their table and a roof over their head. For Ed Tom Bell this was an era of crime where he felt he was in control, but as the level of crime rose, he lost control and realized there was nothing he could do to stop it.