Cormac Mccarthy All The Pretty Horses Analysis

In Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses, a 16-year-old boy named John Grady dreams of becoming a cowboy even though stuck in the mid 1900s, long after the frontier period has ended. The book follows John Grady’s quest for his ideal life as a cowboy and can be divided into four distinct parts following the four chapters. During each of these quarters, John Grady gains qualities which form him into a mythic western hero.
In the first chapter, John Grady runs away from home and acts in the way he’d believe a cowboy would. The death of his grandfather and the acts of his mother allow John Grady to realize that his ties to Texas are weak. As John Grady says to Rawlins, “What the hell reason you got for stay in?... I'm already gone” [McCarthy 27]. A cowboy has no place in the city and a cowboy doesn’t stay where he doesn’t have ties. John Grady decides to leave Texas for his lack of ties and goes to chase the setting sun just like his dream cowboy. Later, John Grady picks up Blevins. Despite Rawlins’ continuous questioning of John Grady’s decision to keep Rawlins around, John Grady to not leave him behind. This is the beginning of the formation of John Grady’s code. He is …show more content…
However, along the way he has acquired many different attributes. He sees the world as the harsh reality that it is, developed and strengthened a code that he lives by, recognizes the inevitably of violence, has no ties to ground him anywhere, and forever roams outwards towards the setting sun. These characteristics are those you would find in a John Wayne character such as in The Searchers. Even though John Grady Cole may not have become his dream version of a cowboy, looking at all the qualities he has gained, he has become an archetype of the quintessential mythic western hero. Through lose and hardship, the boy has turned into a man who embodies all the traits that would endow him as a true paragon of the mythic western