Michael Schwartz
3rd hour AP Lit
Mrs. Mundy
ALL THE PRETTY HORSES: Review essay
For the first thirty years of his career, Cormac McCarthy was a little known
but critically acclaimed cult author. Then, with the publication of his masterful
novel All the Pretty Horses, the first book of his Border Trilogy, McCarthy finally
gained the mainstream audience and awards that had eluded him. Like most of
McCarthy’s work, All the Pretty Horses has a dark presence about it. One can sense
always that misfortune is around the corner, just a few pages forward. I think the
reason that the book attracted so much attention is that there’s just something so
profound about McCarthy writing; it’s different, provocative, it breaks the mold. In
this novel, McCarthy does away with preconceived notions about idealistic westerns
and creates a more realistic portrayal of cowboys and westward expansion.
McCarthy creates John Grady Cole, a 16-year-old boy who retains a romantic vision
of the cowboy culture, but places him in a profoundly unromantic reality. The book
primarily concerns itself with romanticism verses realism in frontier culture.
The novel All the Pretty Horses begins with the death of John Grady’s
grandfather, and his mother’s subsequent decision to sell their Texas ranch. With
nothing left for him in Texas, John Grady and his best friend Rawlins decide to head
west to Texas and become cowboys. Along the way they meet a 13-year-old, Jimmy
Blevins, who is traveling by himself with a majestic horse, which he later loses in a
lightning storm. The trio eventually comes across Blevins horse in a small town and
Blevins steals the horse back, however he wakes the entire town in the process.
Running for their lives, Blevins splits up with John Grady and Rawlins as he has the
Michael Schwartz
3rd hour AP Lit
Mrs. Mundy
faster horse. John Grady and Rawlins escape and continue to travel south, where
they find work as cowboys on the vast ranch owned by Don Hector. John Grady
quickly proves himself a remarkable cowboy with an intuitive understanding of
horses. However, John Grady's good fortune is imperiled by his forbidden love affair
with Don Hector's beautiful daughter, Alejandra.
Up until this point in the novel, everything has felt comfortable, has fit the
mold perfectly. There have been some close calls but everyone is fine, the hero has
won the girl, and Blevins will surely turn up any day now, right? Wrong. McCarthy
takes the so-far-romantic western and slaps it over the head with cold hard realism.
A long series of harrowing events batter the duo: Alejandra betrays John Grady, he
and Rawlins are arrested, they meet up with Blevins who has also been arrested and
then watch as he is executed, they are taken to prison where they are beaten
mercilessly, Rawlins is stabbed, John Grady is seriously hurt in a knife fight, and the
two barely survive prison with their lives. The action, the heartbreak, the brutality
in jail was enticing but seemed to somewhat break the western mold. Isn’t the hero
supposed to save the day with bravery and suave, win the girl against all odds, and
destroy the villain unscathed? McCarthy seems to think this should not be the case.
Although John Grady sticks strictly to his rugged cowboy morals he is unsuccessful
in all but survival.
When they are released from prison, Rawlins and John Grady split up, with
Rawlins returning to Texas and John Grady intent on reuniting with Alejandra. He
meets with Alejandra and they spend a short day together, but in the end she
decides that she cannot abandon her family for him. John Grady is heart broken. The
Michael Schwartz
3rd hour AP Lit
Mrs. Mundy
novel ends with John Grady riding back into Texas to discover that he no longer has
a home, his father is dead, the ranch has been sold, and his friend Rawlins seems like
a stranger. Dismal and depressing, this is not familiar territory for a western story
and somewhat unnerving for the reader. The only likeness to the emblematic
western is that the book ends with the lone protagonists riding off into the sunset. In
a New York Times book review of All the Pretty Horses by Madison Smartt Bell, Bell
describes that the “sense of evil that seems to suffuse his novels is illusory; it comes
from our discomfort in the presence of a system that is not scaled to ourselves,
within which our civilizations may be as ephemeral as flowers. The deity that
presides over Mr. McCarthy's world has not modeled itself on humanity.” Smartt is
describing how McCarthy strays from common conceptions, how we tend to feel
uncomfortable when faced with an unsuccessful, realistic protagonist. McCarthy’s
work is not tailored to society; it forces us to think differently, rationally. Smart also
describes McCarthy’s prose as “overwhelmingly seductive” and says “his descriptive
style is elaborate and elevated, but also used effectively to frame realistic dialogue,
for which his ear is deadly accurate.” While reading McCarthy’s work I would
occasionally become so engrossed that I forgot I was reading a work of fiction or,
rather, that I wasn’t experiencing the events first hand. It all just seems so real, so
unembellished. Another review of All the Pretty Horses describes how “His story is
told in a style often restrained and simple, embedded with lyrical passages that echo
his dreams and memory.” The beauty in McCarthy’s writing is that the language is
simple, concise, and beyond anything, elegant. He says so much with so little; can
paint an entire landscape in a sentence. “The wind was much abated and it was very
Michael Schwartz
3rd hour AP Lit
Mrs. Mundy
cold and the sun sat blood red and elliptic under the reefs of bloodred cloud before
him.”(5) His writing style takes a little getting used to, retaining traces of Faulkner
in the minimal use of punctuation, as well as the general sense of gloom that that
pervades his works. He doesn’t use any quotation marks in dialogue, which can be
confusing and takes some accommodating.
Even though the book was absorbing, even mesmerizing at times, I would
have preferred if John Grady and Alejandra had run off together, me being a sappy
romantic. Yet still, the ending did feel slightly refreshing; a reminder that in real life
sometimes the only gains of our toils and struggles are that we grew as people. John
Grady falls short in most aspects, but he has undoubtedly matured, gaining a fuller
understanding of the unromantic world of reality around him. As a work of literary
merit I believe that All the Pretty Horses will go down in history among the
American classics; it is simply too well done and too intellectually stimulating not to.
On the other hand, the story in itself is disheartening, ruthless, and unapologetic. I
can respect the book and all it stands for as a great piece of literature, but I have to
confess it just didn’t make me happy. Cut through gloom, and see the pages through
the cascade of tears undoubtedly flowing from your face by the end of the novel, and
you can clearly tell that All the Pretty Horses belongs among the ranks of great
novels.