What Are The Similarities Between The Road And All The Pretty Horses

In Cormac McCarthy’s novels, The Road and All the Pretty Horses, the protagonist and their companion(s) face many hardships during their respective journeys. Although each story takes place in completely different situations, they share common themes and dramatic plot points. When transformed into movies, Hollywood transforms these stories through vivid visual images that the written word does not quite grasp; overall making one work more outstanding while leaving the other to fall short of the audiences’ expectations. Even though written by the same author, The Road and All the Pretty Horses carry completely different story lines leading to conflicting themes. The Road depicts the struggles of a man and his son during their journey south

The Road was told in a third person point of view that throughout the story stays fairly omniscient – revealing each of the character’s feelings and opinions about the things they go through. While in this point of view, the main characters remain unnamed; only refereeing to them as “the man,” “the boy,” and other terms respectively used for one another such as “father” and “son.” McCarthy also leaves dialogue without quotations and some contractions without apostrophes, emphasizing the harsh reality of the world’s questionable end. All the Pretty Horses is also told in a third person limited point of view. Through this point of view we rely on dialogue between the characters to know the thoughts and feelings of anyone other than John Grady throughout their journey. Overall, the differences in the point of view leads to an exclusive connection between the novel and the reader, in All the Pretty Horses the reader feels like they are a part of the journey with the three boys; whereas while reading The Road it is almost as though you are being told the story of a journey that has long

See Rock City” (The Road 21). This insight shows us that they are in Chattanooga, Tennessee early on in their journey but time remains unmentioned. Due to the absence of a set time and the surroundings of the boy and his father we can hypothesize that this novel is in fact written in a futuristic time period. On the other hand, All the Pretty Horses is quite the opposite due to its large emphasis on setting. In the early pages of the novel, McCarthy places John Grady Cole riding his horse in or near San Angelo, Texas, “He rode where he always chose to ride, out where the western fork of the old Comanche road coming out of the Kiowa country … between the north and middle forks of the Concho River” (All The Pretty Horses 5). It does not take much longer for McCarthy to reveal a specific year for John Grady’s story to begin as he explains why John Grady was riding in the first place – to mourn the loss of his grandfather, “The house was built in eighteen seventy-two. Seventy- seven years later his grandfather was still the first man to die in it” (All the Pretty horses 6). This description of the house that John Grady soon leaves automatically