"You never combed your hair that way in your life," muses John Grady Cole as he looks upon his grandfather's body in the funeral cloth. All the Pretty Horses opens with sixteen year-old Grady mourning the death of his mother's father, contemplating the fate of the ranch he has lived on his whole life and will soon leave.

Built in 1872, the ranch belonged to his grandfather only because all the other seven Grady boys died before the age of twenty-five. Now 1949, his grandfather's death means the Grady name is buried with him - he had only one child, John Grady's mother.

John Grady's parents no longer speak to each other, but we learn more about each of their characters in the course of interacting with their son. John Grady resents his mother, but the conversations dances cryptically around the reasons. Though she owns the ranch, she is an aspiring actress and allusions to her career imply that she doesn't spend most of her time in San Angelo. Moreover, she has apparently made a decision significant enough to embitter both her husband and child. ("You know it aint what I wanted don't you?" John Grady's father says helplessly.) Snippets of conversations and aborted scenes only heighten the impact of the impending revelation - a gloomy exchange with his friend Rawlins, a tense, terse interaction with his mother in the house, another inconclusive meeting with his father.

John Grady's father is an army veteran and his persistent cough combined with his guilt-ridden smoking suggest that he suffers from some form of emphysema. He has difficulty communicating with his son - his words are meek and ridden with guilt - and their exchanges often lapse into awkward silence. The last of these conversations ends when his father hands him a key to the hall closet and tells him to go get his belated Christmas present. John Grady opens the closet to find a brand new saddle.

As if the saddle silently encourages him to find the courage to leave San Angelo, John Grady finally confronts his mother at dinner, where it is revealed that she plans to sell the ranch. John Grady seems to be beating a dead horse when he asks her to lease it or buy it on loan. She rebuffs his appeal once more, claiming that the ranch yields no money and that he's too young before walking out.

The boy visits Mr. Franklin, the family lawyer, to determine whether he has any say in the fate of the land. John Grady also learns from Mr. Franklin that his parents are not only separated, but officially divorced.

His mother is often gone in the months that follow. One night, he journeys to San Antonio to see her act in a play. He watches the show intently, hoping that "there would be something in the story itself to tell him about the way the world was or was becoming" but he finds nothing, "nothing in it at all." Later that night, he sees his mother in the lobby of the hotel with a well-dressed man on her arm. He asks the hotel clerk to look for a Mrs. Cole in his book, but the clerk finds no one by that name registered.

As if finally convinced to part with his dreams of running the ranch, John Grady severs his connections to San Angelo. In March, he goes riding with his father for the last time. He seeks out a past girlfriend, Mary Catherine Barnett, to make a tentative peace. Then, on a cold spring morning, he rides his horse up to the house of Rawlins. He waits for his friend to adjust his saddle and mount and then together they ride away from San Angelo "like young thieves in a glowing orchard...ten thousand worlds for the choosing."

Analysis

Already in this first section, we see how McCarthy laces narrative structure, genre, character, and prose style together to give All the Pretty Horses its distinctive tempo and fluid style.

Each narrative section of All the Pretty Horses is organized thematically. The long first chapter of All the Pretty Horses can be divided into two parts - John Grady Cole emotionally distancing himself from his home in San Angelo, then John Grady Cole physically leaving it. In the first section he seems a confused sixteen year-old boy, at once cocky and awkward. In the second section, he is both reticent and deliberate - and very much a man

Genre manipulation is part of the reason the plot and prose of All the Pretty Horses seems at once familiar and singular. A classic 'Western' novel set on a ranch usually depends on a series of archetypes: overbearing father, servile mother, father-son conflict over the fate/running of the ranch, sibling rivalry, the complication of outside interests (usually a wealthy buyer or corrupt sheriff). Horses abandons all of these. John Grady is an only child. Grady's father is not only powerless, but helpless. John Grady's mother owns the ranch, his mother decides what happens to it, his mother prevents all intrafamily conflict when she casually dismisses his claim: "You're being ridiculous. You have to go to school." The central character of a Western novel being told he can't be a cowboy because he has to go to school? John Grady is a cowboy in search of a story, a character in search of a novel.

To set his main character free, McCarthy subtly shifts the focus from Grady's lack of control over the fate of the ranch to his assumption of control over his own fate. Subtle character development - free from obtrusive 'realizations' or intrusive narrator commentary - is one of McCarthy's strengths. Often, character is revealed not in an omniscient narrator's description or a character's explanation of a decision, but in the decision itself. In John Grady's case, for instance, his rite of passage is found not in his precocious desire to run the ranch, but rather in his decision to leave it. At first, he seems to be just waiting. First, he waits for his father to intercede:

Grady: What do you think I should do?

Father: I don't think there's much you can do.

Grady: Will you talk to her?

Father: I caint talk to her.

Grady: You could talk to her.

Then, he waits for someone to tell him what to do:

Rawlins: What did she say?

Grady: She didn't say nothing. What would she say? There aint nothing to say.

Rawlins: Well I dont know what you expect.

Grady: I don't expect nothin.

Desperate, he waits for his mother to change her mind:

What are you doing? she said

Settin.

She stood there in her robe for a long time. Then she turned and went back down the hall and up the stairs again.

And finally, hopeless, he waits for divine intervention:

He watched [his mother's] play with great intensity. He'd the notion that there would be something in the story itself to tell him about the way the world was or was becoming but there was not. There was nothing in it at all.

When it at last becomes clear that his mother has not only abdicated the ranch, but also given her heart to another man (a man in a suit and topcoat - the antithesis of a cowboy), he realizes there is nothing to wait for.

McCarthy's prose - both pacing and diction - adds to the feeling of limbo. In particular, we can focus on his use of dialogue, description, and imagery. The dialogue between father and son is so uncomfortable that the narrator interruptions at once provide relief from and prolongs the awkwardness.

I'll get your all's bread.

His father tucked his napkin into his shirt.

It aint me I was worried about, the boy said. Can I say that?

His father took up his knife and cut into the steak. Yeah, he said. You can say that.

McCarthy crafts his descriptive rhythms carefully to simulate the adrenaline of consciousness - burst of realization, waves of meditative nothingness. The latter take form in paragraph-length sentences, reminiscent of Faulkner. Though they might seem rambling or a purposeless novelty, they are the heart of both John Grady's psyche and McCarthy's skill. This passage from his last ride with his father is perhaps the best example:

So thin and frail, lost in his clothes. Looking over the country with those sunken eyes as if the world 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. The boy who rode on slightly before him sat a horse not only as if he'd been born to it which he was but as if were he begot by malice or mischance into some queer land where horses never were he would have found them anyway.

We can feel the desperation, the indeterminacy of John Grady's thoughts. The mix of syncopation and protraction only add to the flood of feelings - the fear, the hope, regret, the deflected rage. The little child in his mind's eye is talking at a breathless pace, lazily trying to hurl culpability on the boy in front of him when he runs out of air. But the adrenaline flows and then ebbs and finally, his mind calms. Possessed by clarity, John Grady severs his connections to San Angelo one by one - a last ride with his father, a visit to his ex-girlfriend, a 'I'm leaving with or without you' ultimatum to Rawlins. And finally on a cold spring morning, he rides from San Angelo with his best friend. McCarthy's language in the superb description that closes Section I uses imagery to emphasize that John Grady is not running away, or even running to - but simply leaving, riding onwards:

They heard somewhere in that tenantless night a bell that tolled and ceased where no bell was and they rode out on the round dais of the earth which alone was dark and no light to it and which carried their figures and bore them up into the swarming stars...like thieves newly loosed in that dark electric, like young thieves in a glowing orchard loosely jacketed against the cold and ten thousand worlds for the choosing.

There is no mention of San Angelo. There is no mention of a destination. But in the rich spaces between and synthesis of light and dark, burning 'electric' and night 'cold,' a 'tenantless' earth and 'ten thousand worlds' that await, he creates a physical and spiritual void. The act of leaving San Angelo has been emptied of meaning. The story begins now.

John Grady and Rawlins head towards Mexico, stopping occasionally to eat and rest the horses. Their journey is unhurried, their conversation terse. "I could get used to this life," says Rawlins.

After crossing the Pecos River, John Grady tells his friend that he's noticed a rider behind them - they're being followed. They wait by the river, but when no one shows up Rawlins suggests that they conceal themselves off the path and wait for him. The rider turns out to be a thirteen year-old kid. Rawlins and John Grady question him intently, but the boy brashly claims that he is neither following them nor riding a stolen horse. Convinced that the horse is the target of pursuit, Rawlins urges his partner to ride on. "You aint ridin with us," he tells the boy. "You'll get us thowed in jail."

They encounter the boy again the next day. He tells them his name is Jimmy Blevins, though Rawlins doubts this is true. The boy asks to ride with them to Mexico, claiming that even though he has no food, no money, and a stolen horse, that the two should welcome his company because he's "an American." While riding towards the plains, Rawlins continues to make cracks at the boy's expense. Blevins, however, precociously stands his ground. At one point, he reveals that he's not only carrying a gun but that he's an expert shot - he puts a hole through the center of Rawlins' wallet when it's thrown into the air as a target.

They ride into the town of Reforma and are welcomed into a small 'estancia', or private home. At dinner, however, Blevins blunders when he leans back from the bench and crashes to the floor. Though the hosts' young daughters clap gleefully, Blevins tells Rawlins that he can't sit at the table anymore because he doesn't "like to be laughed at." Unable to let go of his embarrassment, he spends the night and the next morning in the yard.

They ride on for several days, into the mountains, and over time, Blevins slowly begins to open up to his riding companions - he tells them that his father never came back from the war and that he ran off because he couldn't tolerate anymore abuse from his stepfather. They try to buy water from some passing caravans of migrant traders, but end up getting drunk off some cheap liquor. Blevins has an especially hard time handling it - when a lightning storm approaches, he anxiously recounts his family's history of encounters with lightning bolts and gallops off on his horse.

When John Grady finds him later, Blevins is wearing nothing but his underpants, shivering in the rain. He's lost his clothing - all of which he'd stripped off because of its metal buckles and snaps - his pistol, and his horse. John Grady gives him his spare shirt and swings him up onto his horse. The trio rides on silently, Blevins barefoot in his underwear.

They ride into a raggedy Mexican camp, where one of the men offers to buy Blevins as a slave. Since the boy doesn't hear this exchange, he presses his companions about the subject of the conversation. When he badgers them a few too many times, Rawlins tells him the truth. "There wasn't no call to do that," John Grady tells him later.

The next day they ride into Encantada where they see Blevins' pistol sticking out of the back pocket of a man. Knowing that a pants-less, bootless boy would clearly draw the attention of the horsestealers, Rawlins and John Grady leave Blevins in a gully and tell him to stay out of sight. They ride into the town and find the horse staring out the window of an abandoned mud house. Rawlins suggests to his partner that they leave the boy. "I cant do it," replies John Grady.

Early the next morning, they saddle the horses and return to the mud house. Blevins climbs through the window while Rawlins and John Grady wait across the street. They wait but hear nothing. Finally, a horse whinnies in the dark and Blevins explodes through the fence atop the horse, followed by a pack of howling dogs. Pistol shots soon follow and the three riders dig their heels into their horses and fly out of the town. They split up soon after, Blevins storming up the path to evade the pursuing riders, Rawlins and Grady heading towards the country.

The rest of the chapter follows Rawlins and Grady as they ride through the mountains and catch up with a group of 'vaqueros', or cattle-ranchers. While helping to steer their cattle towards a ranch, they encounter a beautiful young girl on an Arabian horse. She clearly has affected all of them - the Mexicans try hard to conceal their admiration, Rawlins is taken with the "little darling" and John Grady stares fixedly down the road as she rides away.

An hour later, the manager of the ranch, the girl's father, gives the two Americans jobs as cowboys. They eat with the vaqueros that night and then tuck comfortably into their beds. "How long do you think you'd like to stay here?" Rawlins asks his friend. "About a hundred years," comes the reply.

Analysis

The second section of the first chapter passes like the lightning storm -calm and clarity, then thunder and a perilous downpour, a flight to safety, and finally, a return to stillness. This pattern of 'precarious' calm followed by inescapable evil is one of the significant themes of All the Pretty Horses and McCarthy's work in general. We will cover this more in future chapter analyses as the plot thickens, but it is important to realize how theme and narrative rhythm interact as part of the author's style. A New York Times critic perhaps put it best when he said that there is no such thing as peace in a Cormac McCarthy book: "Death, which announces itself often, reaches down from the open sky, abruptly, with a slashed throat or a bullet in the face. The abyss opens up at any misstep."

The second section also builds on the literary techniques we discussed earlier - genre, prose style, and character development. The Western genre usually relies on impending conflict: the anticipated showdown between the lawful and the lawless, the hero's race against time to save his sidekick or the girl - or at the very least, that "something bad is going to happen" feeling that prevents either the characters or the reader from getting too comfortable. No one seems to have that feeling here. These are two reticent cowboys who speak only out of necessity or climactic realization, who neither have a purpose nor are searching for one. It remains to be seen what will turn either one of these characters into heroes.

We get our first clue when we meet Jimmy Blevins. (Indeed, Rawlins makes this foreshadowing explicit: 'Somethin bad is going to happen', he tells his partner.) Unlike Rawlins and John Grady, who seem to attract nothing but smiling waiters, glorious weather, and babbling brooks, Blevins is a magnet for chaos. Suddenly the riders are besieged by lightning storms, thieves, howling dogs, a gun-toting posse. And fittingly, the moment he splits up from Rawlins and John Grady, the two men rediscover their vistas, sunshine, and silence. They go to sleep on the gerente's ranch, reprising their conversation from earlier - only this time it is John Grady who says he could get used to this life, who says he could stay here for a 'hundred years.' It's as if Jimmy Blevins was nothing more than a storm himself.

In the course of this storm, John Grady's character begins to change. If he's unsure and uncertain as a son, he is decisive and dogged as a 'father.' The change can be noticed in the tone of the dialogue between initial encounters with Blevins and subsequent interactions:

Hell, said John Grady, that was your idea. I was the one said just leave him for the buzzards.

You want to see who gets to shoot him?

Yeah. Go ahead.

Call it, said Rawlins.

Heads...

Heads, he said.

Let me have your rifle.

John Grady shook his head. He reached and unbuckled his saddlebag and took out his spare shirt and pitched it down to Blevins.

Put that on before you get parboiled out here. I'll ride down and see if I can see your clothes anywheres.

I appreciate it, said Blevins...

When he came back Blevins was sitting as he'd left him.

That boot's gone, he said.

I figured as much.

John Grady reached down a hand. Let's go.

He swung Blevins in his underwear up onto the horse behind him. Rawlins will pitch a pure hissy when he sees you, he said.

His psyche certainly hasn't changed - both passages find their emotional center in deflected anger. Just as he tried to blame the 'boy who rode on before him' for his misery earlier in the chapter, John Grady blows off steam by affecting control over Blevins. What has changed is the tone of his anger. Suddenly, he's passive aggressive - the genial father who protects the son from the nefarious 'brother' or 'uncle'. At this point, we have only fleeting clues why John Grady looks after him - why he shares his food, comes looking for him after he flees the estancia and the lightning storm, rejects Rawlins appeal to abandon him, and colludes in retrieving his horse. Does he empathize with the boy's courage or does he sympathize with his ingenuousness? Is he amused by the boy or saddened? And perhaps most significantly, does he help the boy out of altruism - or guilt?

If the first section of the chapter introduced to the rhythms of McCarthy's language, the second gives us deeper insight into what makes his prose so potent and yet so serene. While the scenes in San Angelo are a collage, the journey of Rawlins and John Grady to Mexico is treated as a fairly linear narrative. Still, McCarthy's prose continues to gain its power from broken cadences - sprawling description, then staccato exchange. But here, instead of simulating consciousness, the effect is to mimic the tempo and silence of two cowboys not looking for anything in particular - just looking:

...They built a fire and skinned out the rabbit and skewered it on a green limb and set it to broil at the edge of the fire. John Grady opened his blackened canvas campbag and took out a small enameled tin coffeepot and went to the creek and filled it. They sat and watched the fire and they watched the thin crescent moon above the black hills to the west.

Rawlins rolled a cigarette and lit it with a coal and lay back against his saddle. I'm going to tell you something.

Tell it.

I could get used to this life.

Moreover, his dialogue is virtually free of modifiers and adverbs, so that the words seem to dangle in the silence of the scenery:

Here you go, he said.

What's that?

Salt.

I wish we had some bread.

How about some fresh corn and potatoes and apple cobbler?

Don't be an ass.

Aint them things done yet?

No. Set down.

This exchange could be continuous, or it could be broken by lengthy lulls. But the pauses seem to arise naturally, as if we're hearing the conversation rather than reading it:

Here you go, he said.

What's that?

Salt. [long pause]

I wish we had some bread.

How about some fresh corn and potatoes and apple cobbler?

Don't be an ass. [pause]

Aint them things done yet?

No. Set down.

McCarthy's imagery, though sparkling and scrupulous, is not laden with figurative language. He uses metaphors and similes cautiously, perhaps to enhance the newness of the land to the riders, or perhaps to enhance the effect when he does choose to use them:

The grasslands lay in a deep violet haze and to the west thin flights of waterfowl were moving north before the sunset in the deep red galleries under the cloudbanks like schoolfish in a burning sea...

Often he finds the space between description and figuration: riders disappear into a "golden gauze of dust," "yellow squares of windowlight" give warmth and shape to the world. The prose is like the panorama, at once epic and spare.

By the end of Chapter I, we can sense each character's Achilles heel. Blevins is both too easily embarrassed and too easily provoked. He's liable to get trigger-happy at any moment, even riding backseat in his underpants:

Yonder's my goddamn pistol, sang out Blevins.

John Grady reached behind and grabbed him by the shirt, or he'd have slid down from the horse.

Hold on idjit, he said.

Hold on hell, said Blevins.

What do you think you're going to do?

Of course, the boy hasn't thought about it. John Grady, on the other hand, seems to do nothing but think. The difference in temperament between John Grady and Rawlins becomes evident when Alejandra, the beautiful Mexican girl rides by:

Rawlins fell back among the riders and alongside John Grady.

Did you see that little darling? He said.

John Grady didn't answer. He was still looking down the road where she'd gone. There was nothing there to see but he was looking anyway.

Blevins sings out, Rawlins catcalls, John Grady stares. Indeed, he has a tendency to keep looking when there is nothing there to see - probing for answers in his mother's play, searching the vista for personal meaning while riding with his father, and now waiting to understand how this beautiful girl will affect his life. Stephen Tatum notes that John Grady's "sentimental idealism underpins his charismatic presence and defines his naivete, his innocence, as well as his immaturity. It also defines his capacity for self-deception" (40). But as the chapter ends idyllically amidst candlelight and amiable banter, the question still remains: What will bring out this 'self-deception'? A classic rivalry over the girl? A showdown with the Encantada gang? Or perhaps McCarthy will, as he has done all along, find richness and revelation in landscapes that are familiar only from a distance.

For next two days, John Grady and Rawlins tend to cattle at the Hacienda de Nuestra Senora de la Purisima Concepcion, a ranch in the mountains of Coahuila, Mexico. The ranch is run by Don Hector Rocha, a forty-seven year old hacendado (land-owner) with over a thousand head of cattle.

On the third day, they're taken to a holding pen with sixteen wild, spooked horses. John Grady studies the horses and convinces Rawlins that they can 'break' all the animals in four days. Rocha doubts this is possible, but one by one, the two Americans tame the horses. Indeed, their prowess with the thrashing animals is so impressive that a crowd of vaqueros, women, and children gathers to watch them work, even waiting by the pen while the men eat their dinner. As he rides one of the tamed horses, the beautiful girl he had noticed earlier passes by him on her Arabian. She tilts her hat in greeting but before he has the chance to stammer out a greeting, she rides away.

After a sojourn in the mountains, Rawlins and John Grady return to the ranch to meet Rocha. Rocha is an imposing figure and dominates the conversation, implying that it is unusual for the Americans to be in Mexico simply to "see the country" and that John Grady is the "leader" of the two. They discuss horses and Rocha's plans to raise quarterhorses for the ranch, but the conversation ends with Rocha again questioning their motives for being at the ranch.

The next afternoon, while working in the barn, he finally musters up the courage to say hello to the girl, whose name we learn is Alejandra. A dance is held at the ranch grange weeks later. He dances with her under the paper lights and they speak as if already intimate. "I bet she aint as pretty as you," John Grady replies when Alejandra says she's introduce him to her friends. "Oh my," responds Alejandra in turn, "You must be careful what you say."

Over the next few days, John Grady gets to know Rocha better as they discuss his horse breeding and rearing plans. And soon, he gets to know Alejandra better as well. One evening, while riding Rocha's prized stallion, he meets her near the lake. Flippantly and flirtingly, she demands to ride the horse. He reluctantly agrees, though he knows that somebody will see him riding back on her Arabian - and thus draw conclusions about their relationship.

John Grady is invited to meet Duena Alfonsa, Alejandra's grandaunt. They play chess over tea and she gradually steers the conversation towards the subject of her Alejandra's stay at the ranch during the coming summer. She insinuates that she doesn't want her grandniece involved with him and then quite clearly states, "I want you to be considerate of a young girl's reputation." John Grady offers a muted protest, but Duena Alfonsa denies him any say in the matter: "I am the one who gets to say."

Still, he doesn't reject Alejandra's advances when she visits him late one night in the barn. She tells him that she knows of her grandaunt's interference - and it was indeed because Armando had seen him ride her horse in the night she took the stallion. They become nighttime companions, riding their horses side by side into the night down the Cienaga road, along the western mesa, to the lake where they swim together in the dark. She starts coming to his bunk when everyone else is asleep.

Rocha invites John Grady to play billiards. In the same way that he subtly questioned the American's motives when he arrived at the ranch, he cryptically maneuvers the conversation towards a criticism of French education. John Grady is surely mystified, but Rocha waits long before lining up his eight ball: "Alfonsita tells me I am only being selfish in wanting to send Alejandra." When John Grady asks where he plans to send her, Rocha looks up and smiles. "To France. To send her to France."

A week or so later, Rawlins and John Grady return horse herding from the mountains but find no sign of Rocha. The next morning two men in uniform burst into John Grady's bunk with guns and force him out into the saddleroom. He finds Rawlins there, cuffed and slumped in the saddle of his horse. The captain and lieutenant force John Grady onto his own horse, cuff him, and then together with six officers, proceed to lead the two Americans off the ranch towards the north.

Analysis

Chapter Two begins by reprising the narrative tenor of Rawlins journey to Mexico, leisurely and blissfully recounting their exploits on Rocha's ranch. But whereas the first chapter unfolds more symmetrically and conventionally, the second relies on a more careful, more latent build-up of the action. The difference in plot structure between these sections might be represented as following:

Chap. 1: Climax Introduction Resolution

Chap. 2: Climax Rising Action Introduction

The difference in narrative structure impacts virtually all the techniques and elements discussed earlier - particularly theme, character, and prose.

By building the action slowly, sometimes almost imperceptibly, McCarthy can highlight his principal theme of inescapable evil, or as one critic named it, "sacred violence." No matter how peaceful the appearance of a situation or how comfortable characters might make themselves, McCarthy builds violence covertly. In a rare interview with the New York Times in 1992, McCarthy said:

There is no such thing as life without bloodshed. The notion that the species can be improved in some way, that everyone could live in harmony, is really a dangerous idea. Those who are afflicted with this notion are the first ones to give up their souls, their freedom. Your desire that it be that way will enslave you and make your life vacuous.

Indeed, McCarthy's fascination with human affinity for bloodshed recalls Rene Girard's seminal theories of sacrifice. According to Girard, society's must purge latent violence periodically through the destruction of a 'sacrificial' victim. Just as a metal rod attracts lightning, this victim - usually an outsider to the named society - serves as a scapegoat for a community to exorcise its repressed hostilities. John Grady and Rawlins fit all the criteria of Girard's sacrificial victim - outsiders to a community, presumptuous in their desires to become members of the society, free from family attachments that would revenge a crime against them, and invested with the belief - the 'dangerous', 'vacuous' belief as McCarthy puts it - that members of two communities can merge harmoniously. Girard would close All the Pretty Horses at the end of the first chapter knowing that John Grady and Rawlins are targeted for sacrifice from the moment they ride into Mexico.

If the narrative structure evolves towards the impending sacrifice, then the John Grady must also evolve from hero to victim. In the first chapter, Rawlins and John Grady not only control their surroundings, but are also confident in their ability to control it. In the second, they still believe in their ability to control their environment, but slowly we start to see their delusion. In each new conversation or confrontation with a family member, John Grady unwittingly reveals his vulnerability to 'sacrifice'. In his innocuous first exchange with Rocha, he fails to notice how the ranch-owner, sitting like a comic-book villain amidst the shadows of 'sunning cats', is blindly ascribing him a character:

Why are you here? He said...

I just wanted to see the country, I reckon. Or we did.

May I ask how old are you?

Sixteen.

The hacendado raised his eyebrows. Sixteen, he said...

But you are the leader.

We don't have no leaders. We're just buddies.

Of course.

The subject turns to horses, but by the end of the conversation, it is clear that Rocha has been filling in the outlines of John Grady's persona all along. And just when the creepy cats return, so do the creepy questions to remind us that Rocha consciously believes he has the Americans 'figured out' - and perhaps unconsciously has already surmised their fate:

The hacendado leaned back in his chair. One of the cats rose and stretched.

You rode here from Texas.

Yessir.

You and your friend.

Yessir.

Just the two of you.

John Grady looked at the table. The paper cat stepped thin and slant among the shapes of cats thereon. He looked up again. Yessir, he said. Just me and him.

The hacendado nodded and stubbed out his cigarette...

When Alejandra demands to ride Rocha's stallion, John Grady offers token resistance and then acquiesces:

What do you aim to do with your horses?

I want you to take him to the barn for me.

Somebody will see me at the house.

Take him to Armando's.

You're fixin to get me in trouble.

You are in trouble.

The banter seems flirtatious, harmless - the posturing of a cowboy hero and his Mexican dama. But the irony is that when the romantic undertones are stripped away, we are left with explicit foreshadowing of John Grady's fate - Armando will see him at the house, he will get in trouble for having been seen, he already is in trouble for coveting Alejandra. Looking back at this conversation at chapter's end, John Grady loses his hero's sheen. Blissfully unaware of his own vulnerability, he sets himself up for the fall like a meek dinghy riding backwards towards a cascade. Duena Alfonsita reiterates that no matter how noble his intentions, once he attempts to cross the line from a foreigner to a family member, he will have no 'say' in his fate:

This is another country. Here a woman's reputation is all she has...

I guess I'd have to say that that don't seem right.

Right? She said. Oh. Yes. Well.

She turned one hand in the air as if reminded of something she'd misplaced. No, she said. No. It's not a matter of right. You must understand. It is a matter of who must say. In this matter I get to say. I am the one who gets to say.

She is virtually reciting the criteria of a Girardian 'victim' - the outsider with no knowledge of a society's customs, the gallant misconceptions, the failure to realize who ultimately has the power. Still, John Grady continues his pursuit of Alejandra, believing that "right" will win out, that he can reason with those who are irrational. But it is Rocha, long after the sacrifice has been planned, who returns to make his fallacy explicit:

He chalked, he moved. He bent and shot and then stood surveying the new lay of the table.

Beware gentle knight. There is no greater monster than reason.

The action, the character development has all been subterraneous. Rawlins has evolved from loquacious sidekick to the taciturn voice of conscience. Alejandra is a princess in the eyes of her lover, a pawn to her family. And John Grady is no longer a righteous knight, but as Rocha puts it, a "Quixote," a foolhardy tourist trying to reason his way out of a country he knows nothing about. And thus, when on a gray morning, uniformed officers burst in to arrest the Americans, the climax seems natural - as if the story has been silently building up to it. McCarthy has kept the stirrings in both narrative structure and character latent - like a volcano that rumbles so softly that when it explodes, we watch the blood-red lava flow without surprise, as if it has been in our unconscious all along.

Accompanying the dimming tone is a gradual darkening of McCarthy's imagery. The fist chapter is swathed in morning light. The second unfolds under paper lights, starry skies, in pitch blackness. But the 'darkness' is not meant to be literal - indeed, much of the second chapter reads as idyllically as the first one, only with a contrasting set of hues:

She was so pale in the lake she seemed to be burning. Like foxfire in a darkened wood. That burned cold. Like the moon that burned cold. Her black hair floating on the water about her, falling and floating on the water.

McCarthy's darkness is not the darkness of evil, but rather the blindness to evil. In this darkness, John Grady cannot see. He cannot see the subtle warnings, the plots unfolding. And even when it is too late, he still cannot see:

He shaded his eyes. There were men with rifles standing in the bay.

Quien es? He said.

He leaves the ranch still mystified - 'What's this about, pardner?' he asks Rawlins - as if a living testament to McCarthy's warning of ingenuous human trust.

For three days, John Grady and Rawlins ride behind the uniformed officers, cuffed to their horses. On the third day they ride into Encantada, the town where they found and rescued Blevins' horse. They are taken to a small adobe jail and left in a windowless cell. A voice breaks the silence: "Is that you all?" It's Blevins.

Blevins tells them that after they left Encantada and split up, he worked for a German family in Palau for two months. With the money he'd earned, he rode back across the desert, returned to Encantada and shot the man who stole his pistol. He planned to make a quick getaway, but in the course of being pursued, he shot and killed one of the local boys. They threw him in jail, bludgeoned his feet so he couldn't walk, and went looking for his two 'accomplices'.

The next morning, Rawlins is taken to meet the captain. He peppers the American with illogical questions, makes unfounded accusations, even orders him to pull his pants down for an unexplained inspection. On the verge of tears, he returns to his cell and tells John Grady that it doesn't matter what they say - their fate has been written long before. When John Grady is taken to meet the captain, he puts up with the barrage of irrational questions - mostly about their relationship to the "assassin Blevins" - for only a short while before falling silent. "I think they aim to kill Blevins," he says to Rawlins upon returning to his cell.

Three days later, they are loaded into a truckbed and driven to an abandoned estancia near Torreon. After they're taken off the truck, the guards grab Blevins by the arm. He flails desperately and manages to shove a wad of crumpled pesos at John Grady before they grab a hold of him. They drag him off into the trees and Rawlins and John Grady hear two pistol shots come from the distance. The guards return, load the two stunned men back into the truck, and drive them to an old prison in Castelar. The captain enters their cell and makes it clear that they will not be leaving the jail until they pay their way out.

For the next two days, the two Americans are left in la periquera, the prison yard, to defend themselves against their bloodthirsty jailmates. Rawlins' nose is broken, John Grady's eyes are bruised, and still John Grady tells his partner, "They either got to kill us or let us be. There aint no middle ground." On the third day, the fighting intensifies - John Grady is blindsided with a gravel-filled sock that knocks out two teeth and leaves his left eye completely closed. They are invited to meet with a man named Emilio Perez, who offers to help them get out of the prison with the help of his political connections. But when John Grady and Rawlins tell him that they have no money to pay, Perez responds: "Without money you can do nothing." When the Americans restate their inability to buy their way out, Perez makes it clear that they are staying in the prison at their own risk - and implies that those who are not "under his protection" do not survive.

Tellingly, Rawlins is stabbed the next day by one of the convicts. John Grady returns to Perez, hoping to find some way to secure protection for both himself and Rawlins. Though their conversation is civil and turns towards philosophy, nationalism, and ethics, the conclusion is the same - Perez will not help him without money. John Grady realizes that he has no bargaining power and takes leave of Perez. Determined not to be blackmailed - or killed - by one of Perez' cronies, he takes the wad of pesos given to him by Blevins and convinces one of the convicts to sell him a makeshift switchblade.

That night at the evening meal, he sits across from a boy his age who is smoking and drinking alone. The hall suddenly goes silent while John Grady is eating. As he looks around and notices the absence of guards, food servers, and a sound from the rest of the inmates in the hall, he realizes why this boy is by himself. The boy stubs out his cigarette, steps over the table bench, and tries to slash John Grady with the edge of his tray. John Grady pulls out his knife and the two men engage in a protracted, bloody battle. Finally, just as the cuchillero is about to cut his throat, John Grady brings his knife up from the floor and sinks it into his heart. Wounded badly, he pushes himself off the floor and shoves the dead body away. No one follows him as he leaves the hall. When he walks into the yard, a man approaches and tells John Grady to follow him: Perez wants to help him. But John Grady is too weak to respond and collapses. Just as the alarm horn sounds and the yard lights come on, the man picks him up, carries him across the yard into Perez' house and kicks the door shut.

A doctor comes three days later to tend to him. Soon after, both he and Rawlins are released. As they eat at a café, John Grady tells his friend that Duena Alfonsa not only paid their way out but also gave them an envelope full of money to make their journey. He then tells Rawlins that his friend will have to make the journey back home alone, since he plans on returning to Rocha's ranch. After buying new clothes, the two friends part. Rawlins heads back to San Angelo, John Grady towards the ranch at Monclova.

Analysis

At times, the third chapter of All the Pretty Horses seems as if it belongs in a different book. Its plot does not flow from the chapter preceding, the characters stagnate more than develop, the tone sheds abundance for austerity. But thematically, the chapter fulfills McCarthy's plan - a plan characteristic of nearly all his major works. Romantic characters must lose their innocence by encountering violence, bloodshed. As the most fundamental trial of their souls, these characters must cling to their spirit when freedom, serenity, idealism turns to fear, atrocity, evil. This crisis is inevitable. But death is not. And as we watch John Grady and Rawlins crawl from terror and darkness, we see McCarthy's most valued theme illuminated: The heart of a person, indeed the life of a person, is revealed not only in their search for peace and fulfillment, but also in their realization that both are fleeting - and the understanding that neither are innate.

The second chapter unfolds as a tentative, languid love story that slowly unravels. But the third ignores all these loose threads left to reprise a subplot from the first chapter. By the end of it, the Monclova ranch and all its suspended mysteries - Was Rocha involved in their capture? Did Alejandra go to France? - are not only forgotten, but suddenly insignificant as well. In addition to the theme, this narrative structure also bolsters McCarthy's manipulation of genre. In a classic Western, the third act is usually synonymous with the climactic showdown between good and evil. Motivated by a tangible prize (the girl, the ranch, the town), this culminating battle ends with the hero displaying his wit, brawn, and tenacity and either destroying or banishing the forces of evil. None of these familiar elements come into view as John Grady and Rawlins take on the prison at Castelar.

First, there is no 'prize' to be won - when the two Americans are released, they've gained nothing but their freedom. Their emotions upon leaving the prison - uncertain, dispirited, slightly stunned - reflect this:

What? He said.

Nothin.

You ought to be happier about bein out of that place.

I was thinking the same thing about you.

Rawlins nodded. Yeah, he said.

What do you want to do?

Go home.

All right.

They ate.

You're goin back down there, aint you? Said Rawlins.

Yeah. I guess I am.

On account of the girl?

Yeah.

What about the horses?

The girl and the horses.

When they comment on each other's lack of joy upon being released, the irony both tragic and darkly comment. Wounded early in the battle, the sidekick never had a chance to defend his best friend. Now, clearly disillusioned, exhausted, he wants only to go home. The hero, meanwhile, has lost his girl, his horses, and inexplicably suffered the murder of his friend, the indignity of bargaining for his freedom, the wounds of useless fighting. After all this, he still has to go and settle scores. Reading this passage again with attention to the irony, we can almost sense John Grady's frustration that the story must go on. Indeed, when Rawlins points out the folly of going after Alejandra, John Grady does not become defensive or irrational. He himself rejects the prospect of an impending showdown, agreeing to return home if she refuses him. 'I still want the horses,' he adds, as if to make it fully clear that he will not return home until he has, at the very least, what he started with: his freedom and his horse.

Second, John Grady does not muscle or outwit his way out of prison. Instead, his freedom is bought - bought by a woman, bought by his nemesis who had warned him that only she 'had the right to say.' Adding to the sinister irony is the fact that John Grady does indeed have to fight for his survival, but this fight has no purpose, no upshot. His brutal battle against the cuchillero is simply a literal portrayal of the 'inescapable evil,' the inevitable bloodshed, which McCarthy believes is so central to human nature. The tone of the imagery during this fight - passionless, sequential, almost journalistic - mimics this viewpoint:

The boy came opposite him. He passed. John Grady watched him with a lowered gaze. When the boy reached the end of the table he suddenly turned and sliced the tray at his head....He was trying to block John Grady's view with his tray. John Grady stepped back. He was against the wall.

McCarthy uses his prose to empty the fight of 'showdown' connotations. The violence isn't dramatic or glamorous - in reality, it's almost boring. Moreover, there is no logical reason for it, no guiding context, nothing at stake. His interruption of his customary tone, style, prose rhythms to offer what is essentially a tedious eyewitness account of a brawl plainly reflects his philosophy - that the trappings of life can and will be interrupted at any time by instinctive violence. Though this might appear a sensible theory, it subverts not only the Western genre, but the experience of reading a hero-driven novel as well. When John Grady emerges bloodied and broken into the peliquera after killing the assassin, bloodied and broken, we unconsciously wait for his courage to be rewarded. Thus when Perez' man immediately appears to tell him that el padrote will help him, we naturally assume that this flows out of the preceding battle:

He was halfway to the first steel ladder when a tall man overtook him and spoke to him. He turned, crouching. In the dying light perhaps they would not see he had no knife. Not see how he stood so bloody in his clothes.

Ven conmigo, said the man. Esta bien.

No me moleste.

The dark tiers of the prison walls ran forever down the deep cyanic sky. A dog had begun to bark.

El padrote quiere ayudarle.

The hyperbolic imagery of the bloody, entrapped hero still willing to battle on only serves to confirm our assumptions. John Grady's valor, his staunch righteousness, has convinced Perez that his freedom should not be bought, but is justly deserved. McCarthy, however, finds such beliefs vapid, even dangerous: surviving violence is not an act of courage, simply an act of survival. John Grady's battle against the cuchillero is not a hardship, an iniquity, a climax, but rather something ordinary, something natural in the 'balanced expenditure' and 'equal exchange of life and death' (Tatum 48). What ultimately sets him free, then, is the only thing that can set him free - money. And because he rejects this notion of paying for freedom so thoroughly, the money must come from an outsider, and it must come from his enemy.

John Grady hitches a ride with some farm workers to Monclova. Seven weeks after being captured, after being separated from Alejandra, he finds his way back to the La Purisima ranch. The family is at dinner, but no one invites him in. Antonio comes to the door and tells him that Rocha took Alejandra to Mexico City - and never said when he would return. Antonio brings John Grady the things he had left at the ranch - his pistol, his shaving tools, his hunting knife - and lets him sleep in the barn.

The next day Maria, one of the house attendants, tells him that the mistress of the ranch - Duena Alfonsa - will see him later that night. John Grady asks to use a horse for the day. After checking with la senorita, she tells him he may take one of them and rushes him out. He rides through the country all afternoon, thinking of Alejandra. He returns at night to meet Alfonsa.

She puts him on the defensive immediately, telling him that she knew he would make the foolish decision to return. When John Grady tries to blame Rocha for his arrest, she lets him know that the officers had come long before they arrested him - Rocha had sent them away until he could investigate the matter himself. When he learned about the 'stolen' horse in Encantada, he realized the facts could not be disputed and let the commandante return. Alfonsa only bought his way out of prison because of Alejandra's promise never to see him again if she did so. "You took advantage of her," retorts John Grady, who heatedly adds that the disappointments in her own life should have made her more sympathetic. Duena Alfonsa responds by telling him that he knows nothing of the circumstances of her own life - and then by revealing her secrets.

As a girl, she was a freethinking idealist, disturbed by the poverty in her country, against the idea of a God who could permit such injustices. She fell in with the family of Francisco Madero, whose two oldest boys, Francisco and Gustavo, not only shared Alfonsa's ideas, but searched for ways to implement them - schools for the poor, communal kitchens, medicine distribution. Then one autumn, when she was seventeen, she suffered a shooting accident that left her hand without two of its fingers. Devastated, she withdrew from public view and 'awaited old age and death.' After a few months, Gustavo came to visit her. Handicapped himself by an artificial eye, Gustavo convinced her that she could live without bitterness, without despair. She had found her soulmate - from that day on, she was deeply in love with him.

Tragedy, however, soon returned. In the months that followed, Francisco became a political activist. After spurring a coup against the dictator Diaz, he gained a substantial following - enough to be popularly elected as president. Surrounded by plotters and schemers, however, Francisco, soon turned corrupt. Eventually, his entire cabinet fell victim to an armed uprising - Gustavo was tortured and killed by a mob, Francisco summarily executed. 'What is constant in history is greed and foolishness and a love of blood,' says Alfonsa, ending her story.

She concludes by telling John Grady that her disappointments have made her more involved in Alejandra's fate. She does not object to John Grady as a suitor because he is a foreigner or because he is young, but only because Alejandra desires him too much - she believes a 'certain extravagance in the female blood' of the family makes their choices dubious. 'Something willful,' she adds. 'Improvident.' John Grady won't let Alfonsa have the last word. He says he still fully intends to see Alejandra. Alfonsa says she isn't surprised and rises to leave. 'I don't hate you,' says John Grady. 'You shall,' she replies.

Analysis

Chapter Four resembles the third chapter in its renunciation of a 'showdown' climax and its juxtaposition of lush description with stark violence. McCarthy continues to subvert reader expectations in order to underscore his theme of 'sacred violence and the effect of this violence on his characters' psyche. To understand how this subversion takes place, we can look to three main episodes in this section.

First, the opening of the chapter detailing John Grady's return to La Purisima recalls Odysseus' ordeal to return home. He hitchhikes from city to city, talks to every passerby as he walks to Cuatro Cienagas in the hot sun, hitchhikes again to La Vega, and then, like a soldier returning from war, walks alone in the dark up the mud street to the ranch. The imagery might seem deliberately cliché - children bathing, picnics with smiling families, friendly truck drivers - but McCarthy wants to leave John Grady's path to La Purisima uncluttered. Indeed, since since calm and lightness often precedes sudden spurts of violence in All the Pretty Horses, the reader knows that the idyllic description opening the chapter is implicit foreshadowing: the real test, the real enemy awaits. He arrives at the ranch, sees the family eating at dinner through the window, waits for someone to come out, and then:

Quien esta en la casa? said John Grady.

La dama.

Y el senor Rocha?

En Mexico.

Imagine if Odysseus returned to Ithaca and found no one at home. Even worse, John Grady cannot find out when Rocha will return:

Cuando regresa?

Quien sabe?

The answer to John Grady's question - 'Who knows?' - is painfully ironic. Not only does our main character fail to ascertain when his nemesis will return, but the reader is also left without resolution - we never see Rocha again. The last image we have of Don Hector Rocha is the one Alejandra gives us: gun in hand, dogs in tow, ready to kill his daughter's lover. John Grady never gets revenge, never has a chance to explain himself, never 'wins.' McCarthy not only leaves his hero without a battle, but he also aborts the war.

He might not be able to meet Rocha, but John Grady is still intent on finding his daughter. In the second episode reflecting McCarthy's subversion, John Grady takes a horse from La Purisima and rides it through the rolling country, dreaming of his beloved, dreaming of Blevins, praying for "luck" when he meets with Duena Alfonsa later that night. After temporarily losing control, John Grady does the only thing he can to regain it - ride without destination:

He rode among the horses on the mesa and he walked them up out of the swales and cedar brakes where they'd gone to hide and he trotted the stallion along the grassy rims for the wind to cool him.

Indeed, it is as if he makes a pilgrimage to reset the narrative. If Rocha will not face him, then Duena Alfonsa will be his replacement. Someone will listen to him. In all this, we see the planted clichés once again: the hero knows his appeal will be rebuffed, looks for his strength as he wanders the wilderness, returns to make his righteous claim. The drama is only heightened when he sits with the vaqueros hours before his meeting with Alfonsa:

They spoke of cattle and the horses and the young wild mares in their season and of a wedding in La Vega and a death of Vibora. No one spoke of the patron or of the duena. No one spoke of the girl.

We can sense the breathless frustration of John Grady's consciousness, waiting as the conversation switches from subject to subject, never one veering in the direction that he wants. Then he is made to wait for Maria to answer the door, wait while he eats dinner, wait while Maria washes the dishes - and only then, is he invited to meet Alfonsa in the living room.

But John Grady never gets to make his claim on Alejandra. Alfonsa controls the conversation so thoroughly that we finally understand her earlier warning: love is not a matter of 'right', it is only a matter of who gets to 'say.' John Grady tries a variety of approaches to soften the old woman. First, he tries to acts offended:

I think I'm owed an explanation.

I think the accounts have been settled quite in your favor. You have been a great disappointment to my nephew and a considerable expense to me.

No offense, mam, but I've been some inconvenienced myself.

The officers were here once before you know. My nephew sent them away until he was able to have an investigation performed. He was quite confident that the facts were otherwise. Quite confident.

Then, John Grady can only manage wounded indignation before Alfonsa begins piling on the reasons why he not only should never have come back to the ranch, but why he should feel guilty for doing so. The suppressed rage infiltrates both of their words, but Alfonsa quickly gains the upper hand, becomes a mother chastising a son. Indeed, in her eyes, Rocha becomes the 'disappointed' father who refused to believe the evidence until he found his own proof. John Grady does not deserve to see Alejandra, should not have returned to the ranch, is lucky to be in his position at all. Like a cowboy who pulled out an empty revolver in a duel, John Grady never recovers. Duena Alfonsa goes on to call him a liar, a thief, an expensive nuisance, and he can only manage muted protest. Finally, he lashes out:

I'd of thought the disappointments in your own life might of made you more sympathetic to other people.

You would have thought wrongly.

Alfonsa then goes on to tell her protracted, tragic history to justify her involvement with Alejandra's marriage, her denial of John Grady's right to be her suitor. The story itself is not overly significant, but the length of it is. John Grady is silent the entire time. The tables have turned completely. It is not John Grady who gets to purge his soul, to claim his beloved, but rather his nemesis. When she's finished, he tries to take his turn - to tell of his own suffering, but Alfonsa won't hear it:

You wont make let me make my case.

I know your case. Your case is that certain things happened over which you had no control.

It's true.

I'm sure it is. But it's no case.

Just as she predicted, just as she warned, Duena Alfonsa is the only one who 'gets to say.'

In the morning, John Grade leaves La Purisima. He rides on to Torreon where he stays the night at a hotel. The next morning, he calls Alejandra. She tells him that she is returning to La Purisima in two days and can't see him. John Grady tells her that he will not leave until he sees her, even if it is the last time they ever meet. Alejandra relents and says she will meet him in Zacatecas the next day.

He takes a train to Zacatecas, checks into a hotel, and meets Alejandra in the evening. They walk through the streets back to the hotel where, over dinner, John Grady tells her everything that has happened. She cries, then suddenly seems anxious. Finally, she confesses that she is responsible for everything: she told her father that they were lovers. John Grady is shocked, betrayed, but Alejandra responds that her aunt knew of their affair and threatened to tell him - and even if she kept it to herself, she could not stand for her Alfonsa 'to have that power.' Indeed, the only reason Rocha didn't kill John Grady himself was because he was afraid his daughter might take her own life. The lovers spend the night and the next day in each other's arms. At night, he takes her to the station and can barely watch as the train pulls away.

He rides for days until he reaches a crossroads. Several arrows point towards the northern border - one towards La Encantada in the west. 'The hell with it,' John Grady says out loud. 'I aint leavin my horse down here.' When he reaches the town early the next morning, he ties up the horse, loads his pistol, and goes back to the old school building to wait the arrival of the captain. When the captain enters, John Grady demands his horse and leads him at gunpoint to the home of the charro, or town cowboy. The two men take him to Rawlins' horse. Increasingly agitated, John Grady demands to know the whereabouts of the other horses. When the captain takes too long in answering, John Grady finally explodes, telling the captain that Blevins was his brother and that he vowed to avenge his death.

All three men ride on Rawlins' horse to the house of Don Rafael, where the charro says the other horses are being kept. In the corral, he finds both his and Blevins' horse. But just as he's preparing to leave, he's shot in the leg from behind. Unable to pursue the shooter, he asks the charro to help him wrangle the horses. After a protracted struggle, he manages to lead the captain and four horses - his own, Rocha's, Blevins', Rawlins' - from the hacienda. Four riders from Encantada pursue them as they head out into the open country. With no place to hide, John Grady unhitches the captain and tells him to follow on Rocha's horse - and warns him that to attempt an escape is sure death. They soon lose the riders and find a place to stop as darkness falls. John Grady tends to his wound at a shallow basis and then rides on, the captain in tow.

They ride and stop intermittently. The captain begins to lose his verve, begging John Grady to let him go or at least stop and rest. Eventually John Grady takes pity on him, cuffs him to the saddle of one of the horses, and tells him he can go as far as he can carry the saddle. When he wakes up the next morning, he finds the captain still sitting beside his fire - and three men standing over him with pistols. They turn out to be genial riders, however, who say only that they are 'men of the country.' They take the captain and mysteriously vanish, leaving John Grady to take his riderless horses alone to the border.

Days later, after braving snow, storms, icy wind, he rides into Langtry, Texas. For weeks, he rides through the border country seeking the owner of Blevins' horse. When multiple claims are made, the county constable impounds the horse and John Grady is ordered to appear in court. He tells the judge of his ordeal, answers his questions dutifully, and shows him the bullet wound in his leg. The judge awards John Grady custody of the horse. Later that night John Grady goes to the home of the judge and as if driven to purge his soul, tells him that he killed a man in jail and nearly killed another (the captain). The judge offers him comfort, but it is clear that John Grady still struggles to accept the violence he had to commit in order to survive.

He searches for the owner of Blevins' horse, but never finds him. Later in the month, he drifts north back to San Angelo. He rides to Rawlins' house and tells friend everything that has happened. He finds out that his father has died. He remains in San Angelo for a short time and attends the funeral of Abuela, the woman who had worked for his family for fifty years. But then, just as before, he leaves without a destination or compelling motivation. He crosses the Pecos River, rides through the desert, and vanishes "into the darkening land, the world to come."

Analysis

All the Pretty Horses simmers to a boil as it reaches its conclusion, exploding into unexpected bursts of violence, settling into lulls just as we expect climaxes. Ultimately, it ends as it begins - with the main character restless at home, contemplative at a funeral, resolved in his decision to leave without a destination.

Before John Grady leaves Duena Alfonsa, he accepts that she has the right to 'say' but challenges her powers over fate:

JG: I intend to see her.

DA: ...She will not break her word to me. You will see.

JG: Yes mam. We will.

She rose...

JG: I don't hate you.

DA: You shall.

JG: We'll see.

DA: Yes. We'll see what fate has in store for us, wont we.

What is unclear from this exchange, however, is how each of them expect Alejandra to react. When Duena Alfonsa insists that her grandniece will not 'break her word', does she believe that Alejandra will resist his advances entirely and refuse to meet him? Or does she know that they will see each other and realize the futility of their love? And why is John Grady so quietly confident about meeting Alejandra? Does he truly believe that they have a future together? The build-up is laden with so much rage and resentment that Alejandra merely becomes a pawn in a war of philosophies. But we know what the outcome will be the moment John Grady finishes telling her everything that has happened since he left. She looks at him, tears in her eyes, and confesses not her love for him, but her own self-doubt:

How do I know who you are? Do I know what sort of man you are? What sort my father is? Do you drink whiskey? Do you go with whores? Does he? What are men?

In the war of philosophies, Duena Alfonsa gets to Alejandra first. Her grandniece not only told her father because she could not stand for her grandaunt 'to have that power' over her, but now unknowingly speaks her words, believes her truths. Though they continue their conversation over dinner and Alejandra tries to justify why they cannot every see each other again, it is clear that it is Alfonsa who has ultimately decided her fate and tamed her spirit.

He watches her train leave, the fury quietly building inside him. But there is no enemy to pursue, no revenge to be taken. Characteristically, he rides on, seeking strength and seeking a purpose, but the agony in his heart "was like a stake." The simile reflects how his ordeal has weighed down his soul, left him without purpose. He is alone and he has nowhere to go. He wanders near the border, but when he reaches the crossroads, his heart, laden with pain, cannot point him in a direction. If he left San Angelo reveling in the electric lightness of dark, the beauty of possibility, now all he sees is faintness:

He rode at night that its hooves might benefit from the damp or from what damp there was and as he rode he saw small villages distant on the plain that glowed a faint yellow in that incoordinate dark and he knew that the life there was unimaginable to him.

In the void, he sees neither light, nor dark, nor life. If his heart will not give him a path, his anger, however will. He will not return home until he, at the very least, has the things with which he came to Mexico - his horse and his pride. He returns to Encantada not as a hopeful drifter, but a hopeless avenger.

The violent recapture of the horses and humiliation of the craven captain restores the vigor of our hero, but we sense his desperation, the emptiness of the revenge. The explosion of violence detonates in the narrative suddenly and impassively, much like John Grady's encounter with the cuchillero:

He saw the man who'd shot him standing in the bed of a truck a hundred feet away across the lot with the barrel of the rifle resting on top of the cab. He pointed the pistol at him and the man crouched down and watched him through the rear window of the cab and out through the windshield. He cocked and leveled the pistol and shot a hole in the windshield and cocked the pistol again and spun and pointed it at the man kneeling behind him.

McCarthy reinhabits the guise of a journalist, dispensing with figurative language and narrative license for a cold reenactment of the encounter. Only after John Grady sets the captain free does he restore the languid imagery of his hero's consciousness:

In his sleep he could hear the horses stepping among the rocks and he could hear them drink from the shallow pools in the dark where the rocks lay smooth and rectilinear as the stones of ancient ruins and the water from their muzzles dripped and rang like water dripping in a well...

Just as the similes and metaphors return, so does the lightness of John Grady's heart. He returns to San Angelo with the understanding that the soul

Beat[s] at some terrible cost and that the world's pain and its beauty moved in a relationship of diverging equity and that in this headlong deficit the blood of multitudes might ultimately be exacted for the vision of a single flower.

Indeed, he has learned the same lesson as the reader - that no matter how beautiful an image, no matter how serene a view, life will always interrupt it with the cruelty of pain, blood, carnage. The search for beauty and peace is not a linear quest, but a cycle of gain and loss. Thus, when John Grady finally does return home, it is fitting that the cycle resets. The story begins once more, only this time our battle-hardened hero is armed with the lessons of his own experience. He attends a funeral, searches for meaning in the landscape of his hometown, and finds nothing - "nothing for the living or the dead." This time, he leaves alone, not into the glowing void between light and dark, but into a 'bloodred sunset like an animal in sacrificial torment.'

Indeed, the sacrifice may be over, but the torment is not. This time he ventures into "the world to come" not in search of a story, but in search of an end to the cycle, in search of a resolution.

• Biography of Cormac McCarthy
• About All the Pretty Horses
• Character List
• Major Themes
• Glossary of Terms
• Short Summary
• Full Summary and Analysis
• Summary and Analysis of Chapter 1 - Section 1 (pp. 1-31)
• Summary and Analysis of Chapter 1 - Section 2 (pp. 32-96)
• Summary and Analysis of Chapter 2
• Summary and Analysis of Chapter 3
• Summary and Analysis of Chapter 4 - Section 1 (pp. 217 - 241)
• Summary and Analysis of Chapter 4 - Section 2 (pp. 241-302)
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• Author of ClassicNote and Sources
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• Test Yourself! Quiz 1
• Test Yourself! Quiz 2
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