Book Analysis: All The Pretty Horses

All The Pretty Horses Essay

The boys’ hair flowed gracefully in the wind just as their horses’ manes did. Their horses traveled across their open, plain paradise as the boys traveled toward their own paradise. All was well for these boys have nothing to lose; they do however have to opportunity to gain. Troubles afoot on the edge of the horizon, and their youthful naivety will lead them to it. One boy, particularly well versed in his own idealism as well as fear, centers this novel. Cormac McCarthy masterly constructs All the Pretty Horses as the perfect coming of age story, one riddled with affairs of violence, indifference, and truth. Conflict is a central part of the novel as a whole; John Grady is constantly and consistently enduring an

After falling madly in love with a young woman, dubbed Alejandra, young John Grady insists on doing anything he can for her. After being invited to the residence of Alejandra’s aunt, John Grady asks “What do you want me to do?” (McCarthy 115) to which the aunt says “I want you to be considerate of a young girl's reputation.” (McCarthy 115) From where the conversation continues “I never meant not to be. She smiled. I believe you, she said. But you must understand. This is another country. Here a woman's reputation is all she has.” (McCarthy 115) From this conversation stems the continued struggle within Grady between his fear and idealism. John internally weighs the risks of seeing Alejandra again and his optimism toward the opinion of her and her father; eventually deciding to see her again. In spite of what her aunt said, we witness “them riding side by side up the cienaga road with the moon in the west like a moon of white linen hung from wires and some dogs barking.” (McCarthy 119) Well after Alejandra’s aunt forbids John Grady from seeing her, we witness Alejandra “stepping out of her clothes and sliding cool and naked against him in the narrow bunk all softness and perfume and the lushness of her black hair falling over him and no caution to her at all.” (McCarthy 120) Shortly after Alejandra and him become lovers, John Grady is arrested for assisting Blevins steal back his horse. After being held captive in a station and questioned by Mexican authorities, the boys (John Grady, Lacey Rawlins, and Blevins) are transported to a Mexican prison. After Blevins dies in Transport the two others live in the prison for a long amount of time before they are suddenly released. After parting ways with Rawlins, John Grady rides to Alejandra’s