All the Pretty Horses 741Blevins’s prophecy that he would be struck “sure
as the world” is fulfilled in the novel in the sense that
it is the lightning that causes him to make choices
that lead to his death. Honor, family history, and
a desire for justice confine Blevins’s actions to the
choices that lead to his execution. He even tells us
that he, “aint done nothin that nobody else wouldn’t
of.” In this sense, Blevins’s life seems to have been
controlled by some sort of fate; although he made
decisions, he didn’t seem to have any real options.
However, in a description of the police captain, we
learn that it is he who actually has free will in the
novel: “the captain inhabited another space and
it was a space of his own election and outside the
common world of men.” The space of his election
is the position he holds as a police captain who can
choose who lives and who dies. Cole and Rawlins
come to view the police captain as a man whose life
is outside of the control of fate because he is willing
and able to take the lives of other people according
to his own judgments; thus, he is outside the world
of men, like Blevins, who are obligated to factors like
family honor, justice, and ethics.
From the story of Blevins it seems that the only
person who is really free in the world is the person
who is willing and able to kill others outside of any
governance of justice, ethics, or morality. Blevins
acts in accordance with his sense of justice, pursu-
ing the items that belong to him and killing only in
self-defense. The result of his actions is that his fate
is controlled by others, like the police captain, who
are willing to kill mercilessly. In All the Pretty Horses
humans can have free will, but only if they are will-
ing to take the lives of others into their own hands;
otherwise their fates will be controlled by those who
are willing to kill.
Alan Noble
nature in All the Pretty Horses
Since the novel is set primarily in the desert lands
of Texas and Mexico, nature is central to both the
plot and themes of All the Pretty Horses. When John
Grady Cole and his friend Lacey Rawlins leave
their homes in Texas to recover a more traditional
lifestyle in Mexico, the natural landscape of the
desert becomes the setting of their maturity. Before
leaving, the boys are forced to recognize that a new
era is beginning in Texas, symbolized by the death
of John Grady’s grandfather, owner of the family
ranch where ranching and working closely with
horses and cattle is no longer profitable. The desert
and the people who dwell in it demand a vibrant will
to survive from the boys, unlike the safe and settled
lives they left in Texas. During their journey, they are
forced to carry guns both to shoot game and to pro-
tect themselves, they are forced to ration their food
and water, survive the elements, and they learn to
discern between people who are friendly and those
who might cause them harm. Nature, as symbolized
by the desert, is a place where a person can test his
or her will, a place where the desire to survive is tried
against the powerful forces of the environment and
man. There is a sense that the boys would be unable
to mature into men if they remained in Texas where
their courage would not be challenged. The desert
landscape provides a place of testing that draws an
essential passion to live from John Grady and Raw-
lins. This passion is also symbolized in the horses
that populate the novel.
Early in All the Pretty Horses, we are told that
what John Grady “loved in horses was what he
loved in men, the blood and heat of the blood that
ran them.” Here, as throughout the novel, horses
are used to symbolize unquenchable passion and
natural beauty. The heat of a passionate and ardent
life is reflected in the blood of both the horses and
the men that ride them. John Grady believes that
what defines a horse is its ability to live an untamed
life in the wild. Several times John Grady dreams
of beautiful, wild horses running through fields
and mountains, unrestrained by man, given only
to their own passion to run. This ardent lifestyle,
which is symbolized in the horses, is shown to
have negative effects as well. When John Grady
and Rawlins go to work at Don Hector’s ranch in
Mexico, John Grady’s greatest pleasure comes not
from watching Don Hector’s horses roam wild on
the mountains, but from breaking them so that
they can be ridden. John Grady gains pleasure out
of conforming the will of the horses to his own. At
one point, John Grady whispers into a horse’s ear
that he alone is the commander of the mares. While
he is attracted to the unbridled spirit of nature he
finds in wild horses, he also takes great pleasure in