Who Is The Character Of John Grady Cole In All The Pretty Horses
Abby Slate
English IV
Period 2
17 September, 2014
Surroundings and John Grady Cole In All the Pretty Horses, cultural, physical and geographical surroundings shaped John Grady Cole as a character and aided to illuminate the book as a whole. The isolated Texas land, the open Mexican wilderness and the struggles that came with each land are only a few examples of how John’s environments made him into the character he was, and in turn, affected the meaning of the book. From the very beginning, John Grady Cole is introduced on a Texas ranch that he has lived on since birth, and a sense of immobility because of this. One of the first sentences in the book explains how there was “no sound in the house [except] the ticking of the mantel clock… he shut the door.” This sentence explains how John lived a quiet life trapped in his house, only knowing the land around him. He later states, “he stayed there for a long time,” suggesting that there was no sense of time in the house.
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After John Grady Cole traveled “hours down the mesa” to Mexico, he soon ran into a storm opposing his once grandeur view of Mexico. He talks about how “…the rain had almost ceased” and that “in the gray twilight… [The natives] seemed to echo like the calls of some rude provisional species loosed upon that waste”. The backdrop that had once seemed like heaven to the John quickly became a “waste,” inhabited by a “rude provisional species.” This change in narrative tone set around Mexico suggests that John Grady Cole has learned the truth; Mexico wasn’t as much of a utopia as he first expected. With this new geographical development, there is parallel character development, suggesting that the scenery around John affected him more than anything else. This helps the reader to understand the meaning of the novel by setting John in a new environment with real struggles. This low in Mexico helps to set John Grady Cole up later in the story to become the hero he was intended to
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