All the Pretty Horses 739poor immigrants in a hostile white world. Suggie’s
passion-filled Saturday nights “nullify” her week
of alienating housework; Deighton turns to his
“concubine” to prove his manhood and forget his
humiliations; even Selina’s young lover Clive seeks
“to rid himself of his pain in her,” and Selina herself
finds life “tolerable” because of him. The gloomy
brownstones, and the racist society they embody,
contain and inhibit a fully joyous, positive, free
expression of eroticism. Thus at the conclusion of
the novel, Selina turns her back on Brooklyn and
is headed toward the sunlit landscape of Barbados,
toward “love, a clearer vision,” and “the center of
life,” choosing a sexuality that will not be so much
an escape as a full embrace of life.
Joyce Zonana
mcCarTHy, CormaC All the Pretty
Horses (1992)
The first novel in his Border trilogy, All the Pretty
Horses is Cormac McCarthy’s tale of two Texan
boys and their journey into Mexico. A National
Book Award winner, the novel introduces readers to
John Grady Cole, one of the main characters of the
Border trilogy, and his quest to live a life of ardent-
heartedness in an age of increasing modernization
and urban communities. Accompanying him on
this quest is his friend Lacey Rawlins and a young
boy they meet in Mexico named Jimmy Blevins.
Primarily a coming of age story, All the Pretty Horses
explores the experience of facing the world as it is
rather than what you would have it to be.
When John Grady’s mother inherits the family
ranch and decides to sell it, John Grady leaves the
Texas ranch with Rawlins to head to Mexico in
search of a more rustic lifestyle and work as ranch
hands. During their time in Mexico they witness the
execution of a friend, spend time in prison, nearly
die from prison fights, flee from Mexican authori-
ties, fall in love, and abandon love. At its conclusion,
the novel leaves John Grady disillusioned about
his journey and the actions he took, and Rawlins
content to live a new life in Texas. Cole’s story is
completed in the final book of the trilogy, Cities of
the Plain (1998). All the Pretty Horses explores the
roles of nature, coming of age, and the power of
fate through the journey of John Grady Cole and
Lacey Rawlins into a wilderness.
Alan NoblecominG oF aGe in All the Pretty Horses
When John Grady Cole and Lacey Rawlins head
out to Mexico as young men, they leave to fulfill
their desire for adventure and for a lifestyle generally
forgotten in the United States. Their ideal life would
be spent roaming the countryside and raising horses.
As they pursue this romantic longing for a bygone
era, they are confronted with forces that challenge
their view of the world and people; through adapt-
ing to these challenges they mature. John Grady’s
love for and inability to be with Alejandra, the mur-
der of Blevins, and his own killing of the Mexican
prisoner while in the penitentiary contribute to his
maturing into manhood.
Throughout the first hundred pages of All the
Pretty Horses John Grady’s preoccupation is with
horses, male companionship, and a rustic lifestyle.
When Alejandra rides by him on her black horse,
we are told that his world is altered forever in the
space of a heartbeat. His world is altered in three
senses. First, Alejandra becomes the first woman
he truly loves. While John Grady had experienced
infatuation before, it is not until he sees this beauti-
ful young girl in Mexico that his desire for romance
drives his actions. No longer can he be content
merely with roaming through empty deserts or
raising and training horses; he has experienced
sexual attraction and his priorities must be changed.
Second, his world is altered because until that point
he had desired only things that could be obtained.
Before this, his world was filled with things that
were fundamentally controllable and uncompli-
cated: horses, cattle, and young men. But his love
for Alejandra forces him to confront a world of
pride, tradition, and culture, personified in Alejan-
dra’s grand-aunt the Duena Alfonsa. In this world,
his wishes are not enough to secure his desires.
Although John Grady tries desperately to remain
with Alejandra, he is ultimately unable to overcome
her grand-aunt and father. When he is forced to
acknowledge that he cannot be with her, he under-
stands that “all his life led only to this moment and
all after led nowhere at all.” Just as his idealistic