There comes a time in every person’s life when they are required to leave their home and begin a life separate from their parents. Leaving behind the comfort of all they know can be a challenge to many, but this step is crucial to the process of maturing and becoming an independent adult. In recent generations, adolescents often leave their homes around the age of eighteen, when they continue their education at college. In 1949, when All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy is set, going to college is rare, and many children begin their occupations early in life. John Grady Cole, the protagonist in All the Pretty Horses, decides to leave his home at the age of sixteen after his grandfather dies and his mother sells the family ranch. John Grady, …show more content…
At the beginning of All the Pretty Horses, John Grady Cole’s grandfather dies. The family ranch, previously owned by his grandfather, is left to John Grady’s mother who does not want it. John Grady will do anything to keep the ranch, including offering to buy it and discussing his situation with a lawyer and his father. John Grady’s mother denies his request to purchase the land, and she plans to sell the ranch to a different purchaser. John Grady is left disappointed, and with the loss of his family’s ranch, John Grady’s town no longer feels like home, so he decides to leave for Mexico to find where he …show more content…
After all of his difficulties in Mexico, John Grady decides to return home with his belongings. He does not allow his previous surroundings of crime to change his pure heart, and although John Grady has a difficult journey home, he still is intent on finding the rightful owner of Blevins’s horse. He searches for weeks before three men claim ownership of the horse. The issue is taken to court, and after telling the full story of his journey through Mexico, John Grady is awarded the horse. Keeping a horse that does not belong to him is difficult for John Grady to do, but he is at peace with himself because he knows he did everything he could to find the horse’s owner. John Grady remains true to himself although everything around him is