Themes In All The Pretty Horses

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

Allan Strang is a seventeen-year-old boy with a conflicted upbringing, especially on the topic of religion. His religious mother and atheist father lead Alan onto a confused path, and into the idolization of horses. His obsession with this animal caused Allan difficulty to form a connection with people and in turn

The novel clearly reiterates the notion that more people conform than rebel when confronted with authoritarian control. The animals in the novel are divided into two categories. Those who have knowledge and therefore power, and those who lack knowledge and therefore are submissive. The main difference is that the submissive animals such as the horses and sheep represent the people that chose to stay uneducated, as it is a much less difficult pathway. They chose this because knowing consequences creates threatening actions against the livelihood of the animals. Despite the animals suffering from violence, poor conditions, and being overworked, they continue to conform as it becomes an easier lifestyle for them. The repetition of the lines “Napoleon is always right” and “I will work harder” showcases how the farm animals follow the routine of others and resign to conformity as their means of life, for it is an easier, simpler outlook to life for them. The idea of being an outlier and having a voice is forsaken by the animals, as the narrative evolves they witness more and more unruly acts of behaviour from the pigs, who are controlling the farm. The emotive language used within the line “Silent and terrified, the animals crept back into the barn” effectively demonstrate how a wave of melancholic and frightened emotions flood through the farm animals, creating a sense of compliance within. The use of threatening tone within the lines “At this there was a terrible baying sound outside, and nine enormous dogs wearing

In the book titled “All the Pretty Horses” by Cormac Mccarthy, 16 year old John Grady Cole decides that he wants to build a ranch at his home in Texas. However, when his grandfather says no, him and his friend, Rawlins, go on a journey down south to mexico to build a ranch themselves. The author’s purpose for writing the story was to inform the audience that if someone tells you not to do something then don’t do it because nine times out of ten, it is mostly because the outcome might not always be what you expected. Mccarthy often uses different styles of descriptive and imagery writing to help the reader better understand the book and what Grady is getting himself into. I personally believe that the author gets his point across effectively

Between leaving their home and arriving at the camp, the characters stay in horse stalls, implying that the characters are no better than livestock. Furthermore, horses appear as the characters are on the train, going to camp. The girl “pulled back the shade and looked out into the black Nevada night and saw a herd of wild of wild mustangs galloping across the desert” (45). The freedom of the wild horses conversely juxtaposes with how the characters are traveling to confinement. In addition, interactions between the boy and the girl reveal that horse meat is one of the staple foods in the camp. When the boy asks the girl where the meat comes from, she says that most of it comes from the wild mustangs being shot. The horses lose their freedom, much like the family lost

In his journey across the landscape of Mexico, John’s character in the novel begins to transform. He is beginning to move away from that boyish and naive kind of behavior and more towards the middle stage of between being a boy and a man; adolescence. McCarthy spends a great deal in describing John’s adolescent’s stage in this novel. Much of the time that McCarthy describes in this stage is when they are out on the prairie with the horses connecting with nature. This connection allows John to have and a clearer understanding that there is a divine line between men and horses and that you can’t apply the same characteristics that you would apply to a horse to a man.

     There is also a message about the relationship with, and abuse of, nature. This new chance for a more peaceful existence works on the assumption that the horses are there voluntarily. This makes the newfound relationship more meaningful, less precarious: “that free servitude still can pierce our hearts”. There is also therein a warning that the world cannot work where one force is overpowering, such as technology or the reign of man.

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.

In the novel All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy, the author shows how important the roles of the horses are in the story and how they relate to John Grady, the protagonist of the novel. The horse has played an important role in the development of America. It has been a form of transportation, easy muscle, and companionship. In the Wild West, it was an essential resource for a cowboy to do his daily chores. McCarthy describes horses as spiritual and as resembling the human soul; meaning that horses came in many different forms. Horses are pretty, ugly, wild, tame, etc. in the story, they have so many different descriptions and different types of personality that they appear to resemble

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.

Cormac McCarthy is a man who holds few interviews. Even today, he is known as one of the world’s greatest, most prolific authors though most of his personal opinions are left unreported. In a rare interview with a New York Times journalist, McCarthy says the philosophical words: “There's no such thing as life without bloodshed” completely revealing the coveted theme of his novel, All the Pretty Horses. Considering the amount of violence that manifests itself in the book; Blevins’ murder, the prison fight, and the gunfight between John Grady and the ranch workers; all of which results from Grady’s pursuit of a peaceful life, the theme McCarthy wished to broadcast, a theme of inescapable violence, was true in its delivery.

Throughout the book horses are used many times and the thematic idea of freedom seem to change. In the book the motif of horses start to change

The horses however, try as hard as they can, much like the narrator, to roam free for as long as possible, seemingly unaware of the forces acting against them in an attempt to deny them their freedom. For the horses, this force was the narrator’s father, who felt that they had a purpose to be served, in the narrator’s case, it was her mother’s thought that she had a place to be served as well; inside the home. In the case of the foxes and horses, neither win, as they both die in the end, much like people. However, although the horse’s lives end much sooner, they get to experience something that the foxes do not, and that is freedom. The protagonist’s desire for freedom is clearly desirable as she expresses her resistance to conform to societies ideals by continuing to do things against the norm, “thinking that by such measures [she] kept

Nature ignores human desire. The Red Pony is a short novel that consists four stories of a family living on a western American ranch. In the book, the central theme is the cycle of life and death. All four stories center on the phenomenon of nature.The principal issue of The Red Pony is the exploration of man’s complicated relationship with nature. It is presented through Jody’s maturation. For Steinbeck, all life, including human, is bound together. Even though people can occasionally make decisions and change the circumstances, nature, indeed, is the leader of the whole novel and the world.