All the pretty horses
ALL THE PRETTY HORSES: Rough Draft 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 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.
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 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.