All The Pretty Horses Analysis

All The Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy, follows a trio of teenage boys who are making their way from Texas to Mexico, the hardships they face along the way, and what they encounter once they get there. The dynamic between these, loosely titled friends, is an interesting one that changes throughout the book based on how the characters themselves change. With wildly contrasting personalities but the similar goal, the relationships between the boys are both strained and cordial throughout the novel. John Grady, although being the leader of the pack, is a man of little words and a lot of actions. Like the famous saying goes, opposites attract, this is true for the relationship that John Grady shares with Lacey Rawlins. Rawlins is more of

In Cormac McCarthy's All The Pretty Horses, John Grady Cole's departure of America and search for identity leads him on a tortuous journey. Sprouting in San Angelo, Texas, John Grady Cole blossoms into life on a ranch his grandfather presides over. His grandfather dies when he is just sixteen, causing him to depart America - the country he once called home - with his best friend Lacey Rawlins for Mexico, to be cowboys. As he explores the southern country, he feels that Mexico is exactly where he belongs. But, during his visit, he runs into trouble as he falls in love with a ranch owner's daughter who comes from a strictly traditional family, he is jettisoned in a moral-absent jail, and he stabs a man to death. Because Cole has nowhere else

A man and his son travelling alone amidst the ruins of a previously prosperous nation; a young man venturing into a treacherous land to tie up the loose ends in his life; a broken ranch hand that suspects he had a conversation with death: in the most desolate and uncertain environments, the surrounding world can lend a bleak and lifeless perspective to one’s struggle to survive. In lands without accompaniment from other humans, the will to live can be as difficult to muster as shelter for the night or the first meal in days. Cormac McCarthy explores the difficulties of survival under the tension of barren landscapes and youthful inexperience and their effects on the loss of innocence. Gained maturity enables humans to persist and stay hopeful, even in the least hopeful situations. These environments and mindsets play an important role in the messages of three novels by Cormac McCarthy: The Road, The Crossing, and Cities of the Plain.

In a journey across the vast untamed country of Mexico, Cormac McCarthy introduces All the Pretty Horses, a bittersweet and profoundly moving tale of love, hate, disappointments, joy, and redemption. John Grady sets out on horseback to Mexico with his best friend Lacey Rawlins in search of the cowboy lifestyle. His journey leaves John wiser but saddened, yet out of this heartbreak comes the resilience of a man who has claimed his place in the world as a true cowboy. In his journey John’s character changes and develops throughout the novel to have more of a personal relationship with the horses and Mother Nature. He changes from a young boy who knows nothing of the world

Syntax in All the Pretty Horses varies and has quite an impact on the novel. The sentences are predominately simple, as like most dialogue. However, the descriptions of the setting and other objects in the story are complex. Sentences vary in size from short or long, with rarely medium length sentences. Dialogue tends to be short, with phrases or single sentences. There are long pieces of dialogue. The language used is not very formal. Fragments are used within the story, like on page 161, with just the word, “Dogs.” There are some rhetorical questions throughout the novel, such as, “And what did she have to give in return?,” with John Grady already knowing the answer. There is some parallel structure in the story, with a person close

Both to the reader and to the characters. Blevins was a thirteen-year-old runaway who followed John Grady Cole and Rawlins to Mexico. He was ultra-hypersensitive to mockery, insult, and anything impinging on his dignity. After separating from John Grady and Rawlins, Blevins worked for a German family until he earned enough money to journey back to the town where “his” horse and gun were stolen. After stalking the thief for a few days, Blevins “... walked up behind him and snatched it out of his belt.” (McCarthy 159). After that, Blevins tries to run away, but gets into a brawl, and ends up killing one person. Consequently, The captain, bribed by the brother of the child Blevins killed, shoots him. John Grady and Rawlins are shocked, but show no empathy for Blevins at the time, instead fearing for their own lives. But Blevins, in an ironic way, saves John Grady and Rawlins lives in the prison. With the money Blevins gives to John Grady, John Grady is able to buy a knife, which is particularly useful in saving his life when he is attacked by a “cuchillero,” or a fighter with a knife. Additionally, the death of Blevins helps pull John Grady and Rawlins back into reality. They realize then that much of Mexico is a corrupt, cruel, and lawless place. It seems like the horses are the only pretty things in Mexico. John Grady and Blevins now know that they must go back to the United States. Finally, the death of Blevins causes John

“I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I'd always known. That all courage was a form of constancy. That it was always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals came easily.” (Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses) Humans are fallen, they have a tendency to be self centered and for one to take themselves out of their own body and see themselves, in the way they think and process images and words is

In the Novel “All The Pretty Horses” by author Cormac McCarthy, the book develops the ideas about how imagination affects an individual’s willingness to embrace or reject an uncertain future. The people in John Grady's life affect his future in certain ways, the decisions he makes based on the opinions of his peers, to the death of loved ones.

Everyone has a different way to deal with overwhelming situations. It can be more difficult for people with mental illness to cope with the hardships of life. For instance, in “Horses of the Night,” the character of Chris has dissociative symptoms that can be linked to his depression. Margaret Laurence’s short story tells the story of Chris, a young teenager who moves to from a small farm to the town of Manawaka in order to go to high school. The story is told by his younger cousin, Vanessa. As she grows up, she learns that Chris is depressed. The author uses the theme of fantasy to show that he does not cope well with reality. The horses, Shallow Creek, and the children are symbols that show us the fantasy that Chris lives in.

The decimation of a Community is an important aspect of how stability and control are lost in both Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958) and Richard Wagamese’s Indian Horse (2012). In these culturally unique texts, both protagonists experience the transition from being a part of a community to being unwillingly pushed away from it and seeing it slowly being destroyed. The result of both protagonists being forced out of their beloved communities causes them to go down a spiral path thereby losing control and stability in their lives. The progression in which stability and control are possessed and then lost in both novels forces the characters to adapt to the changes at hand.

In an enticingly realistic novel, contemporary western writer Cormac McCarthy tells the coming-of-age story of a young John Grady Cole whose life begins and, in a sense, ends in rustic San Angelo. Page by page, McCarthy sends his protagonist character creation on a Mexican adventure, complete with barriers, brawls, and beauties. The events which bring about John Grady’s adventure and the reasons behind his decision to flight familiarity are the most intriguing aspects of the novel. Through an examination of the text, readers can determine that John Grady Cole’s hellish plunge from his position of grace on his grandfather’s ranch in Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses is a

John Grady Cole, the last in a long line of west Texas ranchers, is, at sixteen, poised on the sorrowful, painful edge of manhood. When he realizes the only life he has ever known is disappearing into the past and that cowboys are as doomed as the Comanche who came before them, he leaves on a dangerous and harrowing journey into the beautiful and utterly foreign world that is Mexico. In the guise of a classic Western, All the Pretty Horses is at its heart a lyrical and elegiac coming-of-age story about love, friendship, and loyalty that will leave John Grady, and the reader, changed forever. When his mother decides to sell the cattle ranch he has grown up working, John Grady Cole and his friend Lacey Rawlins

In All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy, the main protagonist, John Grady Cole, exiles himself to Mexico when his known and beloved way of life is threatened. This experience to him is both alienating and enriching. He gets to where he is going only to have everything he has worked for taken from his hands. He is left alone and sad, but full of new insights about the world around him. John’s relationship with and the death of Jimmy Blevins, his love for Alejandra and her abandoning him, and his lost position at the hacienda ranch are three main events that leave John alienated, but enriched with worldly ideas and understandings he would take to the grave.

All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy is a coming of age novel centered around the protagonist, John Grady Cole as he ventures to Mexico to pursue his ideal life. The exact moment in which John Grady Cole’s character changes irrevocably, and truly comes of age, is when he stabs another prisoner in the heart while in prison in Mexico. In that moment, his youth and innocence fall away, and he gains the kind of understanding of the world that can only come when one becomes a man. In the beginning of the novel, John Grady Cole is stubborn with the foolish optimism of youth; he thinks he can run a ranch and make enough money to sustain him and his mother, and he runs away to Mexico to pursue his ideal life as a cowboy. By the end of the

1.) Characters in the novel are John Grady, Lacey Rawlins, Belvins, Alejandra, Senor Rocha, Cole, Franklin, Captain and Perez. The most important characters throughout the novel are John Grady, Belvins, Rawlins, and Alejandra as they are the major characters.