Literature Analysis: All the Pretty Horses

GENERAL
Apologies for the long summary.  The story is fairly complex, and anything shorter would not have made much sense.  For those who don't want to read the whole summary (or don't want the entire story spoiled), it's basically about a trio of teenagers who go to Mexico in search of work as ranchers.  A horse gets stolen, and a snowballing series of events leads to prison, heartbreak, violence, and eventually death--a modern day Western indeed.

1.  The story begins with the death of John Grady Cole's grandfather.  John Grady belongs to a long line of Texas ranchers.  With his family ranch finally being sold, he decides that Texas holds nothing for him any longer.  Accompanied by his best friend, Lacey Rawlins, he rides his horse over the border into Mexico, where he hopes to find work as a rancher.  Along the way, the two meet a kid (who claims to be older than he appears) by the name of Jimmy Blevins.  Blevins is riding a stately horse that John Grady is almost positive is not his.  Rawlins is adamant that bringing Blevins along will bring nothing but trouble, but John Grady can't bear to leave the youngster behind.  During their travels, they are overtaken by a lightning storm. Blevins, who allegedly has multiple family members killed by lightning, believes he is destined to die by lightning.  In a panic, he rides off furiously in an attempt to out-ride the storm.  John Grady and Rawlins later find him cowering off the road without his horse or clothes (in an attempt to minimize the chances of a lightning strike).  The trio head to a nearby town in search of Blevins's lost belongings.  The locals have found Blevins's gun and horse, and claimed them as their own.  Thinking the horse is rightfully his, Blevins steals it back.  The trio are chased out of town by locals, guns blazing.  Blevins tells John Grady and Rawlins to split off, since it is Blevins that they seek.

John Grady and Rawlins eventually arrive at a ranch where they find work breaking horses.  Things are going well for sometime, and John Grady falls in love with the rancher's daughter, Alejandra.  However authorities are soon tipped off and arrive to arrest John Grady and Rawlins.  The rancher initially holds them off, but later learns that John Grady is sleeping with his daughter.  Thinking she is dishonored, he briefly contemplates killing John Grady, then hand him over to the authorities instead.  John Grady and Rawlins are shipped off to a prison, where they are reunited with Blevins.  While John Grady and Rawlins were working at the ranch, Blevins has gone back to the town for his gun and killed a man in the process.  Because of this, he is executed while John Grady and Rawlins are sent to a new prison where they must endure daily prisoner brawls.  John Grady narrowly escapes a fatal stabbing before he is "bailed" (bribed, actually) out of prison by Alejandra's great aunt on the condition that he stops seeing Alejandra.  After a final visit to the ranch, John Grady heads off to retrieve his horse along with Rawlins's and Blevins's.  Taking the captain who executed Blevins hostage, he rides off.  He lets the captain go, then crosses the border back into Texas.  He attempts to find the real owner of Blevins's horse for some time, then gives up.  The story ends with John Grady riding aimlessly through Texas.

2.  The novel's themes revolve abstractly around morality.  There are numerous aspects of morality discussed in the novel, such as whether morality is innate, acquired, or God-given, and whether morality should be subjective.  A strong example of this is the captain who kills Blevins.  Objectively, it was an evil act.  However, while the captain is obviously corrupt, the fact that Blevins did in fact commit murder complicates the matter.  John Grady kills another inmate in self defense during his stay in prison, but is still troubled by it months later.  He originally intends to kill the captain while holding him hostage, but eventually lets him go saying, "I'm not like you."  Back in Texas, John Grady has a discussion with a judge about these events.  He laments that he did not even know the name of the inmate he killed, who could have been a "pretty good old boy" for all he knew.  When asked why he initially intended to kill the captain, he does not know why.  McCarthy presents a story in which there are clear protagonists and antagonists, but nobody definitely in the right or wrong.  What separates All the Pretty Horses from other novels with similar themes is that it does not invite readers to speculate and arrive at their own answers.  Rather, it adopts the perspective that sometimes a situation is just what it is, nothing more.  As the judge says in the last few pages, "Maybe the best thing to do might be just to go on and put it behind you.  My daddy used to tell me not to chew on somethin that was eatin you."

3.  For much of the book, the author's tone is pensive and philosophical.  Descriptions are sweeping, and the reader is generally detached from any sense of specific time.  For example:

"He rode with the sun coppering his face and the red wind blowing out of the west.  He turned south along the old war trail and he rode out to the crest of a low rise and dismounted and dropped the reins and walked out and stood like a man come to the end of something." 

"A single mud street rutted from the recent rains.  A squalid alameda where there stood a rotting brushwood gazebo and few old iron benches.  The trees of the alameda had been freshly whitewashed and the upper trunks were lost in the dark above the light of the few lamps yet burning so they looked like plaster stagetrees new from the mold."

At other times, however, Cormac McCarthy writes directly to the moment, encapsulating the reader in urgent immediacy.  These parts tend to be related to moments of extreme violence or pain.  The writing still retains descriptive qualities, but is far more visceral, such as when John Grady is forced to cauterize his own gunshot wound with the heated barrel of his pistol:

"John Grady had begun to shout before the gunmetal hissed in the meat...He'd seized the fleshy part of his thumb in his teeth, shaking in agony.  With the other hand he reached for the waterbottle standing unstoppered on the rocks and poured water over his leg and heard the flesh hiss like something on a spit..."

4. [page numbers reference the First Vintage International Edition (1993)]

Repetition: A bulk of the novel is written in a rolling style that shifts seamlessly from one place or setting to another.  However, McCarthy throws in repetition every so often to to draw attention to a point that might otherwise be lost in the flowing style.
"That was not sleeping.  That was not sleeping." (pg 3)
Additionally, McCarthy uses the exact line "he rode with the sun coppering his face and the red wind blowing out of the west" at both the beginning and end of the novel, presumably to emphasize the fact that John Grady is right back where he started.

Characterization: McCarthy uses indirect characterization early on to establish John Grady as a savvy cowboy, part of a dying culture.
"At the intermission he rose and put on his hat and went down to the lobby and stood in the gilded alcove and rolled a cigarette and stood smoking it with one boot jacked back against the wall behind him.  He was not unaware of the glances that drifted his way from the theatregoers.  He'd turned up one leg of his jeans into a small cuff and from time to time he leaned and tipped into this receptacle the soft white ash of his cigarette." (pg 21)
This particular passage has an interesting juxtaposition between the two cultures, especially given that John Grady is only sixteen years old.

Contrast:  There is frequent use of contrast to help compare two ideas.  This is usually presented during a character's train-of-thought pondering, such as John Grady's analysis of his father.
"So thin and frail, lost in his clothes.  Looking over the country with those sunken eyes as if the worlds out there had been altered or made suspect by what he'd seen of it elsewhere.  As if he might never see it right again.  Or worse did see it right at last.  See it as it had always been, would forever be." (pg 23)

Evocation:  McCarthy is a master at evocation.  Even simple actions are described in such an elaborate way that they capture the feel of the moment.  Things that would be too insignificant to mention otherwise become a defining moment of the scene, creating complex feelings such as nostalgia.
"Rawlins propped the heel of one boot atop the toe of the other.  As if to pace off the heavens." (pg 26)

Comedy: Although the novel is extremely serious in its subject matter, there is occasionally a moment of humor that lightens the dark tale.  It is ultimately a story of adventure in a similar vein to westerns, so the humor is used to appropriately support the setting.  In one scene, Rawlins and John Grady encounter a stranger who questions them on their purpose traveling by horseback.
"We're runnin form the law, Rawlins said.
The Mexican looked them over.
We robbed a bank.
He stood looking at the horses.  You aint robbed no bank." (pg 34)

Style: All the Pretty Horses has a very unique writing style.  Those familiar with another of McCarthy's acclaimed novels, The Road, will be familiar with the lack of quotation marks.  The effect is a more flowing conversation, with each character's dialogue transitioning into the other without an obvious break.  It can be confusing at first, but eventually leads to more fluid and natural conversation.  There is no specific example of this as it is prevalent throughout the novel, but the above passage is a direct example.

Simile:  Due to the heavily descriptive nature of the writing, similes are plentiful.  As already stated, McCarthy tends to use these to describe something ordinary in more detail, and in doing so elevate it above the normal.  A good example is his description of the boys vomiting after drinking excessively.
"The browsing horses jerked their heads up. It was no sound they'd ever heard before.  In the gray twilight those retchings seemed to echo like the calls of some rude provisional species loosed upon that waste.  Something imperfect and malformed lodged in the heart of being.  A thing smirking deep in the eyes of grace itself like a gorgon in an autumn pool." (pg 71)

Vernacular:  The entire novel is written in the vernacular.  Whether it be the Texan-drawl of John Grady and Rawlins, or the Spanish of the vaqueros, formal speech is almost nowhere to be found.  This often means that dialogue involves profanity.
"Yeah.  For pure crazy I nominate that bucketheaded son of a bitch standin right yonder." (pg 105)

Romanticism:  All the Pretty Horses adheres closely to Romanticism.  The plot is centered on the fact that John Grady is unwilling to accept the advance of society past the need for ranchers.  His time working the ranch in Mexico is represented in an idyllic light until the cold reality of authorities and nationalistic struggle crashes in upon his perfect world.
"How long do you think you'd like to stay here?
About a hundred years." (pg 96)

Zeitgeist:  Zeitgeist is arguably the most important literary element to the novel.  At the core, it is a story of the wild west transposed into the modern day.  McCarthy is both able to capture the feeling of both the frolicking open wild west and the general paranoia of the mid 1900's.
"The desert he rode was red and red the dust he raised, the small dust that powdered the legs of the horse he rode, and the horse he led.  In the evening a wind came up and reddened all the sky before him." (pg 302)
[The Mexican authorities question Rawlins:]
"What is the number of men you kill.
I never killed nobody.  I never stole nothin in my life.  That's the truth.
Why you have guns for.
To shoot game.
Ghem?
Game.  To hunt.  Cazador.
Now you're hunters.  Where is Rawlins.
Rawlins was close to tears.  You're lookin at him, damn it." (pg 165)

CHARACTERIZATION
1. Indirect Characterization:
"At the intermission he rose and put on his hat and went down to the lobby and stood in the gilded alcove and rolled a cigarette and stood smoking it with one boot jacked back against the wall behind him.  He was not unaware of the glances that drifted his way from the theatregoers.  He'd turned up one leg of his jeans into a small cuff and from time to time he leaned and tipped into this receptacle the soft white ash of his cigarette." (pg 21)
"You throw your pocketbook up in the air and I'll put a hole in it, he said." (pg 48)

As discussed earlier, the characterization of John Grady as a rough but knowledgeable rancher is important, especially to the translation of the western motif.  This also establishes John Grady early on as an independent individual.  His ability to stand apart from the crowd and not be bothered is part of what makes him the unofficial leader of the trio.  The second quote is said by Blevins.  It is one of the most significant parts of his characterization as it reveals both his skill with a gun (indicating how he was able to survive this long in the first place) as well as his boastfulness and propensity for spur of the moment action.

Direct Characterization:
"The boy's bony legs were pale in the firelight and coated with road dust and bits of chaff that had stuck to the lard.  The drawers he wore were baggy and dirty and he did indeed look like some sad and ill used serf." (pg 77)
"She wore a blue dress and her mouth was red...her black hair done up in a blue ribbon and the nape of her neck pale as porcelain." (pg 123)

The first passage describes Blevins after he loses his belongings to the storm.  The condition he is in does not lend itself well to subtlety.  Saying it as it is helps contrast his former exuberance with his presently decrepit situation.  The latter is a description of Alejandra from John Grady's perspective.  Using direct rather than indirect characterization emphasizes how enraptured John Grady is, almost to the point that he is stupefied (as he admits earlier in the novel).

2.  McCarthy's syntax and diction actually do not change much when describing characters.  Character description is more or less restricted to the core characters, and even their characterization is done in the loping descriptive manner that the rest of the novel deals with.  Their character is typically revealed over time through dialogue and subtle tendencies.  The whole novel is written from an almost timeless perspective.

3.  John Grady is both dynamic and round.  When he leaves Texas for Mexico, he has a clear idea what he is searching for.  Despite the troubles he faces with his ranch being sold, he views the world in a generally idealized light, firmly believing that he can actually start up a new life in Mexico and that everything will work out in the end.  By the end of the story, John Grady is morally shaken and not sure what to do with himself.  In sharp contrast to the beginning of the novel (where John Grady sets his eyes on Mexico and does not think twice), the novel ends with John Grady wandering aimlessly.  After attempting to find the real owner of Blevins's horse, it seems he is at a lost.  When saying goodbye to Rawlins, he notes that he no longer knows where he belongs, but it is certainly not in Texas.  There are multiple facets to his character.  On one hand, he is a fairly stereotypical cowboy, wrangling horses and rolling cigarettes.  On the other, he is still a sixteen year old kid that is finding his place in the world.  He does feats disproportional to his life experience, but is uncomfortable viewing himself as exceptionable.

4.  The book definitely left me feeling like I've met a person after reading the book.  Because of the use of vernacular and the generally well written dialogue, all the characters seem very alive.  None of them are representations of an idea or symbols for the theme; they are just people.  Frankly, any passage with dialogue could serve as a textual example, so I flipped to one at random:
"John Grady leaned and stubbed out the cigarette in the tin ashtray on the table.  Cigarettes in that world were money themselves and the one he left broken and smoldering in front of his host had hardly been smoked at all.  I'll tell you what, he said.
Tell me.
I'll see you around."
Even without a clear indication of the speaker, the reader can easily tell from the style of speech which character is talking.  After getting to know his character (because that is what it really does feel like), it is easy to imagine the scene playing out with John Grady coolly ending conversation with the self-serving prison baron and walking out.  His character is not the type of over-the-top roguish cool that has become cliche in recent years--it is more of a respect that stems from being reserved and in control.  Further testament to the excellent characterization is the significance of stubbing out the cigarette.  It is not as if John Grady does not smoke, as he is seen rolling cigarettes practically every other page.  He does it simply to spite his host, adding a bit of awesomeness to the scene in the process.  Without proper characterization beforehand, the significance would be lost on the reader.