All The Pretty Horses

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

John Grady is not your average cowboy. All the Pretty Horses is not your typical coming-of-age story. This is an honest tale. Cormac McCarthy follows John Grady as he embarks on his journey of self-discovery across the border. Armed with a few pesos in his pocket, a strong horse and a friend at his side, John Grady thinks he’s ready to take on the Wild West of Mexico. At their final steps in America, a stranger, aged thirteen, joins our heroes. This unexpected variable named Blevins challenges John Grady, testing his character and pushing him to uncomfortable limits. The dynamic of their relationship reveals John Grady’s capacity to care for others as he shelters this kid from the hardships of reality and the

The demonstration to live the dream through rejection happens more than once in All the Pretty Horses. As a new chapter opens in the life of John Grady, an oasis seems to appear in the middle of the desert, or in the middle of the darkness. This oasis is many things for John Grady. Physically, it is Hacienda, the ranch. As a person, it is Alejandra, his future lover. Emotionally, it is hope and optimism

“You live, die, and rot, then something else lives, dies, and rots” (83) the circle keeps on going. Cole realizes that he isn’t more important than anyone else in the world. “Besides him a tree has died. Already, ants and bugs were crawled among the cracked bark and splintered wood. For them life went on. With time the tree will rot and become dirt. Then a new seed would fall and grow, and another tree would push upward. Years later, that tree would fall back to the earth and begin the cycle all over again” (83). Cole never noticed what went on around him but now that he did, it helped him realize that everything and everyone must die to continue the

Death… the cause or occasion of loss of life or the passing or destruction of something inanimate. The Women of Sugar Hill features many themes such as rape, power, control, self-esteem, drugs and sex. However, the most prominent theme in all three stories is death. Death in the stories affects the characters through inanimate objects or humans. All three stories end with cliffhangers as far as whether the characters overcome the affects death has on them but the story shows how the characters are affected by death. The debate of who lost more is a hard debate but there is no debate over if the deaths affected their lives and that “something was always happening to women in Sugar Hill” (Montayj, 2015, p.

John is a unique character in this book, he acts out on what he wants. He never speaks much but he acts a lot, and for john his actions speak louder than words. Such as riding away from San Angelo into mexico. He rode with his friend Rawlins and they do not encounter much trouble, this is when they are truly living the life of the cowboys. For John this shows that he's ready for what's going to come at him. Heading out into mexico with no plan shows us that John is ready to embrace any future that hits him. Whether it hits him like a train or rolls by like a tumbleweed. John Grady will be ready for what comes his way no matter what.

Again, a main protagonist, Henry, links to the theme of death through some key events involving a character who was once alive in the novel but is now dead. This theme is evident when Henry’s “friend” named Trot, dies in an unexpected car crash. “Trot was dead. Dead. The word, although Henry had not said it out loud, began to take on some form, as if it was solidifying. He’d never had to deal with the word, or the world like this before. Trot was dead. He was gone. Now. Gone. Henry sat, hands draped, the silver case of his watch glittering at the corner of his eye. He felt weak and infinitely clueless.” (pg. 174) This quote establishes how Henry was completely and utterly shocked about the death of his friend. He couldn’t even bring himself up to saying the word. This shows a huge similarity to how individuals react to the death of a friend in today’s society. Metzenthen strongly represents the theme of death using Henry’s character. Similarly, with Henry, we sense that he is weary and heartsick over the thought of death. Throughout the novel, the author is able to illustrate the idea of death, and show how many people in today’s society also see it as a horrible and heartbreaking

The use of McCarthy’s style of writing is written in a way that someone can detect the feelings of the character rather than the story of what happened. The purpose for narratives is to focused on the plot of the story but McCarthy wants the readers to really feel exactly what the characters feel so he in repetitive of how “Cold and Grey” (McCarthy 19) the world around them is Even when they are physically battle something like hunger, you can really feel that they were almost always “Out of food” (McCarthy 197).

Though John Grady follows this template in All the Pretty Horses, love is only one aspect of his rite of passage. Before leaving San Angelo, John Grady is seen unsure of himself and in a state of perpetual blankness like most teenagers, but also is unusually possessed by a search for meaning, for fulfillment. He searches the plot of his mother's play for divine significance, looks to the landscape for answers while riding with his father for the last time, and eventually leaves his hometown not to pursue a new destination, but rather on a quest for one, for some purpose to his life. In San Angelo, his life lent itself to a vacuous limbo; his mother neither offered him guidance nor ceded him control and his father is a beaten man on his last breaths, his last relationship with a girl ended apathetically. By the end of the novel, John Grady grows up in all the capacities of a true hero he has learned to be a father to Blevins, a lover to Alejandra, and a friend to Rawlins. Most importantly, he has lost his innocence without becoming disillusioned. At the end of the novel, he is a hardened hero, but also a wise one. His spirit is no longer defined by its emptiness but by its completeness; its synthesis of the moral and amoral, the serene and

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

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.

The reader follows the Bundrens, a family of poor white farmers in rural Mississippi, as they prepare for the death, and consequent 40 mile trek to the burial ground, of the late mother and wife, Addie Bundren. All seven of the Bundrens, the six living and Addie in a coffin, pile into their wagon and embark on a journey of unforetold trials from their suffering farm in Frenchman’s Bend to the town of Jefferson with the ostensible objective of laying Addie to rest with her family. Traditionally, the epic and the quest-romance depict man’s progression through overcoming obstacles and conquering feats. As I Lay Dying parodies the epic and quest romance to show the futility of man’s efforts and to demonstrate that the perceived human progress at the end of the cycle is an illusion. The true and ostensible objectives of the quest, the characters, the events the transpire, the precious objects and symbols, and the results ultimately yielded by the quest all make

In the Red Pony, a novel by John Steinbeck, one of the themes the author investigates is death. Death is something that everyone has to deal with at one time or another because there is no way to avoid it; it is inevitable. Sometimes death will hurt, but it has to be dealt with one way or another. Jody Tiflin, one of the main characters in the novel, had to learn how to deal with unexpected, painful deaths when his horse, Gabilan, suddenly passed away, having taken cold a few months earlier. Jody also had to deal with death when Nellie, a pregnant mare, was killed by Billy Buck so her colt could be born.

The man, too, is slowly dying, as he coughs up progressively more blood. Every once in a while, all humans think about death. Mainly about when it will happen and how it will happen. In the novel, death is always on the character’s mind and can be personified as a character because of the description McCarthy gives about the earth and how it feels and looks like death. These are some characteristics people would give other people like they look very depressed and gray and pale, etc.

The book Black Beauty by Anna Sewell tells the story of a horse named Black Beauty by a few of his owners. He grows up with good owners: a farmer, then the Birtwicks, but then gets changed into the hands of owners who are more cruel, who get worse as time goes on. He then finds a good owner in Jerry Barker, who treats him well yet must work him hard as a cab-horse. Eventually, Jerry has to sell him, where he finds the worst of his owners, until being bought and recovered, then finally sold to people who knew him as Black Beauty, and determined to never sell him. The theme of kindness runs through the entire book.