All the Pretty Horses-Structure Essay

The book All the Pretty Horses is a western drama about teenage cowboys as they transition from adolescence into manhood. The author, Cormac McCarthy, structures the book using echo words and parallel structure that links dialogue exchanges and makes the scenes flow smoothly. McCarthy is a master of this sort of repetition and uses this structure throughout the entire book. There are many examples of this used throughout the book, but the author primarily focuses on the interpersonal relationships, diversity, and change. There are many different types of relationships based on a very vast scale. John Grady Cole has many complicated and some not-so-complicated relationships with his friends and family members. In book 1, McCarthy informs the audience that John Grady’s parents are divorced and in book 4, John Grady’s wife, Alejandra, leaves him. When John Grady flees Texas in book 1, he has the expectations that any sixteen year old cowboy might have. It is ironic that he ends up experiencing events and overcoming obstacles he never thought would occur, including falling in love and then getting his heart broken by his wife. John Grady Cole’s relationships with the leading women in the novel are also peculiar in the way that the women discipline him. In book 1 it was his mother and the servants in the house, and in book 4 Duena Alfonsa definitely gets her way with him. Alfonsa warns John Grady when he is about to cross the line with Alejandra, and then later in the book when she bails him out of jail. In a way, John Grady has to rely on the women which is comforting since he is on a journey of growing up, yet he still falls back on others to guide him. Another parallel relationship occurs in book 1 when John Grady meets with his father who tells him to forgive his mother. In book 4, John Grady seeks the judge for advice and to confess a crime he committed; the judge tells him he should forgive himself. John Grady has a good heart, tries to do the right thing, and