The end of John Grady Cole’s life in Texas spurs a new life in Mexico. At the death of his grandfather’s life, all that John Grady has known is taken away from him. His mother’s decision to sell his grandfather’s property and his father’s willingness to let her do it puts John Grady in a place where he no longer knows where he stands. Accompanied by his best friend Lacey Rawlins, the two run off to Mexico to create a new life with the horses. The unexpected company of Jimmy Blevins turns their smooth journey into one that makes sixteen-year-old John Grady Cole into a man. Throughout All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy writes John’s coming of age transition, or Bildungsroman, as shown by the archetypes and blood motif and parallel structure. …show more content…
He leaves Texas for Mexico with naïve expectations. He believes that going to Mexico and living there will be easy. Lacey Rawlins on the other hand is the well-known sidekick who follows the main protagonist to the ends of the earth without hesitating loyalty. Rawlins tells John Grady, “I could understand if you was from Alabama you’d have ever reason in the world to run off to Texas. But if you’re already in Texas. I don’t know” (27). He, unlike John Grady, likes living in Texas and fears his father coming to get him to bring him back. In John Grady’s conversation with Don Hector, the man says to John “you are the leader” (114). John’s response that they are equals show their strong companionship. Though Blevins joined with them on their journey, he was never fully acknowledged by the both of them to be officially in their group. Blevins changes the tight dynamic between John Grady and Rawlins. Blevins is also a bit of a hero of his own. He is naïve and holds loyalty to John Grady and even Rawlins who does not hesitate to vocalize his dislike for their tagalong. Blevins acts as John Grady and Rawlin’s sacrificial lamb. By giving the captain fake names in his interrogation, his friends are cleared from the same sentence that he faces. His last act is giving John Grady “a wad of dirty and crumpled up peso notes” (177). This confirms how Blevins sees John Grady, as a …show more content…
John Grady pays for the things he feels passionate for and loves with his blood and those of others. The nights John Grady and Alejandra sleep together in the dead of the night she draws blood “with her teeth where he held the heel of his hand against her mouth that she not cry out” (142). The blood he bleeds is the love he holds for her. If they were to be careless and get caught, Alfonsa would surely kick him out of la Purisama and Don Hector would feel betrayed by the three of them with no warning. When Blevins’ reckless actions gives the captain no choice but to punish him. John Grady and Rawlins do not see Blevins die but they hear where the “pistol shot came from beyond the ebony trees” (178). Blevins’s death allows John Grady to continue his journey instead of having a similar fate. While at the prison John Grady purchases a knife for safety. A fight nearly kills John Grady as a “red boutonniere blossoming on the left pocket of his blue workshirt there spurted a thin fan of bright arterial blood” (201). Here he unwillingly pays for the experience of life with his own blood. The price for his life is that of
Everyone has a different way to deal with overwhelming situations. It can be more difficult for people with mental illness to cope with the hardships of life. For instance, in “Horses of the Night,” the character of Chris has dissociative symptoms that can be linked to his depression. Margaret Laurence’s short story tells the story of Chris, a young teenager who moves to from a small farm to the town of Manawaka in order to go to high school. The story is told by his younger cousin, Vanessa. As she grows up, she learns that Chris is depressed. The author uses the theme of fantasy to show that he does not cope well with reality. The horses, Shallow Creek, and the children are symbols that show us the fantasy that Chris lives in.
Many authors use different styles of writing and different ways to show different things and different types points of views. In the articles The Georges and the Jewels and Black Beauty: The Autobiography of a Horse, the authors are both using first person point of view, but using different ways to reveal the character traits. First, In The Georges and the Jewels, the person telling the story is a little girl and also she is talking about her experiences with horses, whereas in Black Beauty: The Autobiography of a Horse, the article is being told by a horse, and the horse is telling about his life and about all the equipment that has to be used for him.
In John Chasteen’s book Heroes on Horseback we learn about the life and struggle of the brothers Saravia. These two brothers Gumercindo and Aparicio led rebellious movements in Brazil and Uruguay. These rebellious movements not only galvanized thousands of people from rural areas but also threatened large governments that had both numbers and weaponry in their favor. One important thing about the brothers that Chasteen mentions is not their prowess in battle or their tactical movements but fact that they were able to inspire so many individuals and unlike many rebel leaders did not become generals until after they had secured an army worthy of their cause. Despite the fact that these brothers drew men from rural society, it was in fact the
One 's actions are first sparked by their goals and passions, but as they grow, outer forces invade those thoughts and make them clouded, their passions start to fade and eventually disappear. As children, we dream about what we want to be when we grow up. We have hope in our eyes, and nothing can hold us back. As we grow and learn, we are forced into realization of the harsh realities we live in, making our dreams sink. We must decide if we are going to let these forces knock us down, and conform to them, or stand strong and not take 'no ' for an answer. Margaret Laurence allows us to follow the development of Chris and how outer forces effect him in the short story "Horses of the Night".
In a journey across the vast untamed country of Mexico, Cormac McCarthy introduces All the Pretty Horses, a bittersweet and profoundly moving tale of love, hate, disappointments, joy, and redemption. John Grady sets out on horseback to Mexico with his best friend Lacey Rawlins in search of the cowboy lifestyle. His journey leaves John wiser but saddened, yet out of this heartbreak comes the resilience of a man who has claimed his place in the world as a true cowboy. In his journey John’s character changes and develops throughout the novel to have more of a personal relationship with the horses and Mother Nature. He changes from a young boy who knows nothing of the world
The opening of the novel presents a prelude of how life for the 19th century cowboy was and how
In Cormac McCarthy's All The Pretty Horses, John Grady Cole's departure of America and search for identity leads him on a tortuous journey. Sprouting in San Angelo, Texas, John Grady Cole blossoms into life on a ranch his grandfather presides over. His grandfather dies when he is just sixteen, causing him to depart America - the country he once called home - with his best friend Lacey Rawlins for Mexico, to be cowboys. As he explores the southern country, he feels that Mexico is exactly where he belongs. But, during his visit, he runs into trouble as he falls in love with a ranch owner's daughter who comes from a strictly traditional family, he is jettisoned in a moral-absent jail, and he stabs a man to death. Because Cole has nowhere else
Reality rejects the fantasy of escaping the situation without consequence. Eventually, John Grady and Rawlin are arrested. The crime committed resulted from Blevin’s stupidity and John Grady’s desire to follow his instinct be helping Blevin retrieve his horse and rifle. Darkness and suffering was the only result of this frivolous attempt.
Cormac McCarthy All the Pretty Horses depicts the American romanticized view of the west. John Grady, emerging from a dilapidated family ventures out on a journey in pursuit of his dream of the cowboy lifestyle. Through out the novel there is a constant tension between John Grady destiny or fate and the nature of his dreams. Dreams keep the dreamer from reality and because they are unreal, they paralyze the dreamer’s reality. Nonetheless, they motivate his journey through Mexico. The different roles that his dreams play depict the different characters that John Grady assumes: the Texas teenager, the lover, the prisoner and the man. John Grady’s
John Grady Cole, the last in a long line of west Texas ranchers, is, at sixteen, poised on the sorrowful, painful edge of manhood. When he realizes the only life he has ever known is disappearing into the past and that cowboys are as doomed as the Comanche who came before them, he leaves on a dangerous and harrowing journey into the beautiful and utterly foreign world that is Mexico. In the guise of a classic Western, All the Pretty Horses is at its heart a lyrical and elegiac coming-of-age story about love, friendship, and loyalty that will leave John Grady, and the reader, changed forever. When his mother decides to sell the cattle ranch he has grown up working, John Grady Cole and his friend Lacey Rawlins
All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy is a coming of age novel centered around the protagonist, John Grady Cole as he ventures to Mexico to pursue his ideal life. The exact moment in which John Grady Cole’s character changes irrevocably, and truly comes of age, is when he stabs another prisoner in the heart while in prison in Mexico. In that moment, his youth and innocence fall away, and he gains the kind of understanding of the world that can only come when one becomes a man. In the beginning of the novel, John Grady Cole is stubborn with the foolish optimism of youth; he thinks he can run a ranch and make enough money to sustain him and his mother, and he runs away to Mexico to pursue his ideal life as a cowboy. By the end of the
Though John Grady follows this template in All the Pretty Horses, love is only one aspect of his rite of passage. Before leaving San Angelo, John Grady is seen unsure of himself and in a state of perpetual blankness like most teenagers, but also is unusually possessed by a search for meaning, for fulfillment. He searches the plot of his mother's play for divine significance, looks to the landscape for answers while riding with his father for the last time, and eventually leaves his hometown not to pursue a new destination, but rather on a quest for one, for some purpose to his life. In San Angelo, his life lent itself to a vacuous limbo; his mother neither offered him guidance nor ceded him control and his father is a beaten man on his last breaths, his last relationship with a girl ended apathetically. By the end of the novel, John Grady grows up in all the capacities of a true hero he has learned to be a father to Blevins, a lover to Alejandra, and a friend to Rawlins. Most importantly, he has lost his innocence without becoming disillusioned. At the end of the novel, he is a hardened hero, but also a wise one. His spirit is no longer defined by its emptiness but by its completeness; its synthesis of the moral and amoral, the serene and
John Grady is not your average cowboy. All the Pretty Horses is not your typical coming-of-age story. This is an honest tale. Cormac McCarthy follows John Grady as he embarks on his journey of self-discovery across the border. Armed with a few pesos in his pocket, a strong horse and a friend at his side, John Grady thinks he’s ready to take on the Wild West of Mexico. At their final steps in America, a stranger, aged thirteen, joins our heroes. This unexpected variable named Blevins challenges John Grady, testing his character and pushing him to uncomfortable limits. The dynamic of their relationship reveals John Grady’s capacity to care for others as he shelters this kid from the hardships of reality and the
Then John gets desperate. He realizes that he will not raise the money in time before his son’s condition gets to serve to be saved. Unsure what to do, he starts thinking of different ways to come up with the money, but none seem good enough. John receives a phone call from his wife, Denise, who is crazed and grief-stricken. She is at the hospital and reveals to John that the hospital is going to release their son, who is going to die shortly after being released. John, says that he will talk to the hospital again, and he is trying his best. His wife states, “But it’s never good enough, is it? Now, you need to do something! Do you hear me? Do something!” This statement is what pushed John over the edge. It was the final push that made John commit the crime that he did.
The pressure and stress John feels from his code breaking and relationships, actually influences his schizophrenia to worsen and build momentum. He begins to have more intense hallucinations about code breaking for a man named, William Parcher. William Parcher only shows up in moments of great stress. Again, John is unable to see that William Parcher is only a figment of his imagination but to him, Parcher is incredibly intimidating and forceful. When Alicia becomes pregnant, John realizes that he needs to stop code breaking from Parcher. John builds up the courage to actually tell Parcher that he is done code breaking, as if he has some sort of innate knowledge of his condition. However, Parcher’s forceful manner coerced him back into his ‘code breaking’ work.