All The Pretty Horses

“On the wall opposite above the sideboard was an oilpainting of horses. There were half a dozen of them breaking through a pole corral and their manes were long and blowing and their eyes wild. They’d been copied out of a book. They had the long Andalusian nose and the bones of their faces showed Barb blood. You could see the hindquarters of the foremost few, good hindquarters and heavy enough to make a cuttinghorse. As if maybe they had Steeldust in their blood. But nothing else matched and no such horse ever was that he had seen and he’d once asked his grandfather what kind of horses they were and his grandfather looked up from his plate at the painting as if he’d never seen it before and he said those are picturebook horses and went on eating.”

This passage establishes The Spiritual Significance of Horses for John Grady: he’s fascinated with the animals and has deep expertise of their traits, but he also moves beyond the scientific expertise of his grandfather into a spiritual wonderment. For John Grady, they’re all “picturebook horses” existing both in their animal reality and also as one of the only things worth believing in. This quote also establishes the divide between the fantasy of the American West (as embodied in the imaginary, idealistic breed of horse in the painting) and the reality of the ranching and vaquero lifestyles, which is grounded in practical matters. This division is one John Grady struggles to reconcile throughout the novel.

“He sat leaning forward in the seat with his elbows on the empty seatback in front of him and his chin on his forearms and he watched the play with great intensity. He’d the notion that there would be something in the story itself to tell him about the way the world was or was becoming but there was not. There was nothing in it at all. When the lights came up there was applause and his mother came forward several times and all the cast assembled across the stage and held hands and bowed and then the curtain closed for good and the audience rose and made their way up the aisles. He sat for a long time in the empty theatre and then he stood and put on his hat and went out into the cold.”

John Grady attempts to see what’s valuable about the life his mother is pursuing as an actress in a regional theater. He is unmoved by the performance, reinforcing his idea that his mother is misguided in abandoning the ranching life he has known since birth. In this moment, he sees that there will be no reconciliation between their values.

“Your mother and me never agreed on a whole lot. She liked horses. I thought that was enough. That’s how dumb I was. She was young and I thought she’d outgrow some of the notions she had but she didnt. Maybe they were just notions to me. It wasnt just the war. We were married ten years before the war come along. She left out of here. She was gone from the time you were six months old till you were about three. I know you know somethin about that and it was a mistake not to of told you. We separated. She was in California. Luisa looked after you. Her and Abuela.”

John Grady’s father is a complicated figure in his life: absent like his mother, but haunted by his experience as a prisoner of war. His return for the funeral reveals that their relationship still has tenderness, and they are more alike than John Grady articulates. The fate of his parents’ marriage foreshadows the tragedy that John Grady is headed toward and establishes a rationale for his behavior: In running away to pursue a vaquero lifestyle and in believing that love can conquer the needs of the practical world, he is trying to right what he sees as generational wrongs in his own family

“They reached the Devil’s River by midmorning and watered the horses and stretched out in the shade of a stand of black-willow and looked at the map. It was an oil company roadmap that Rawlins had picked up at the cafe and he looked at it and he looked south toward the gap in the low hills. There were roads and rivers and towns on the American side of the map as far south as the Rio Grande and beyond that all was white.

It dont show nothin down there, does it? said Rawlins.

No.

You reckon it aint never been mapped?

There’s maps. That just aint one of em. I got one in my saddlebag.”

McCarthy strikes a balance between portraying John Grady and Rawlins as they see themselves—grown men on their first adventure—with moments where their naivete and lack of experience in a dangerous world show through. The American teenagers think of Mexico as a blank slate that they’ll map out themselves through their personal experience, unknowledgeable of the rich history and culture they’re about to enter.

“There’s a lot of good riders, said Blevins.

That’s right, said Rawlins. There’s a lot of good riders. But there’s just one that’s the best. And he happens to be settin right yonder.

Leave him alone, said John Grady.

I aint botherin him, said Rawlins. Am I botherin you?”

Beyond revealing what the novel will bear out—that John Grady is indeed one of the best riders around—this quote also shows the dynamic between him and his best friend Rawlins. John Grady doesn’t see himself as special or as the leader, but others do, including his friend, who offers counsel (and frequent sarcasm) throughout the novel but defers to John Grady’s wishes. Though John Grady responds with humility and seriously considers his obligations to others, McCarthy also suggests that the admiration of Rawlins and others contributes to his romantic notion of his own significance and abilities.

“I’m goin to tell you somethin, cousin.

John Grady leaned and spat. All right.

Ever dumb thing I ever done in my life there was a decision I made before that got me into it. It was never the dumb thing. It was always some choice I’d made before it. You understand what I’m sayin?

Yeah. I think so. Meanin what?

Meanin this is it. This is our last chance. Right now. This is the time and there wont be another time and I guarantee it.”

John Grady and Rawlins weigh what role they’ll take to help Blevins recover his horse. For John Grady, it’s a foregone conclusion—he pities Blevins and thinks helping him is the right thing to do. Rawlins takes a more pragmatic tack, as he’s unwilling to overlook the warning signs and Blevins’s irrational nature. Rawlins has been the doomsayer throughout Part 1, and he will be proven correct: This is their last chance to walk away. The consequences of helping Blevins in this moment will eventually land them in prison and disrupt the life they nearly establish at La Purísima.

“She wore english riding boots and jodhpurs and a blue twill hacking jacket and she carried a ridingcrop and the horse she rode was a black Arabian saddlehorse. She’d been riding the horse in the river or in the ciénagas because the horse was wet to its belly and the leather fenders of the saddle were dark at their lower edges and her boots as well. She wore a flatcrowned hat of black felt with a wide brim and her black hair was loose under it and fell halfway to her waist and as she rode past she turned and smiled and touched the brim of the hat with her crop and the vaqueros touched their hatbrims one by one down to the last of those who’d pretended not even to see her as she passed.”

McCarthy introduces Alejandra with long sentences that are a departure from the way other characters are described throughout the novel, helping to ground the reader in John Grady’s instant fascination with her. This description is syntactically similar to the way McCarthy describes nature, horses, and other features of the natural world that John Grady has a connection with. Her appearance changes the tenor of the novel throughout Part 2 as John Grady balances his love of working with horses with his desire to be with her.

“The old man shaped his mouth how to answer. Finally he said that among men there was no such communion as among horses and the notion that men can be understood at all was probably an illusion. Rawlins asked him in his bad Spanish if there was a heaven for horses but he shook his head and said that a horse had no need of heaven.”

In Part 2, John Grady and Rawlins find their purpose and their people: The vaqueros at La Purísima take a spiritual view of the animals they work with, stressing the natural perfection of the animal’s spirit, particularly in contrast to humans. This quote develops the theme of The Spiritual Significance of Horses and grounds the reader for the tragedy to come: Horses live in the moment and have no need for belief, but humanity lives in the complex sweep of history, meaning-making, and conflict.

“He claimed that cowsense could be bred for. The hacendado was less sure. But there were two things they agreed upon wholly and that were never spoken and that was that God had put horses on earth to work cattle and that other than cattle there was no wealth proper to a man.”

Don Héctor and John Grady are kindred spirits, and it goes beyond their encyclopedic understanding of horse breeding and training: Their value systems are aligned. This is part of why John Grady’s affair with Alejandra is such a betrayal. Don Héctor sees a man of purpose and value in John Grady, and provides him allowances and mutual respect as a result, but he still expects to be the powerful patriarch whose word is law, and for John Grady to respect the differences in their social positions.

“There is no forgiveness. For women. A man may lose his honor and regain it again. But a woman cannot. She cannot.

They sat. She watched him. He tapped the crown of his seated hat with the tips of his four fingers and looked up.

I guess I’d have to say that that dont seem right.

Right? she said. Oh. Yes. Well.”

Dueña Alfonsa lays out a key problem that John Grady is unwilling to accept: In Mexico in particular and the world in general, women have far less power than men, and therefore mistakes that affect their social reputations have far graver consequences. John Grady falls back on his Belief in Virtue in a Compromised World, which Dueña Alfonsa sees as naïve and irrelevant.

“You have the opportunity to tell the truth here. Here. In three days you will go to Saltillo and then you will no have this opportunity. It will be gone. Then the truth will be in other hands. You see. We can make the truth here. Or we can lose it. But when you leave here it will be too late. Too late for truth. Then you will be in the hands of other parties. Who can say what the truth will be then? At that time? Then you will blame yourself. You will see.”

The captain tries unsuccessfully to explain the situation to John Grady, who is unwilling to accept the idea that the truth is defined by the teller—in this case, the authorities who have him in custody. The captain’s view of the truth is a mix of nihilism—there is no truth—and pragmatic opportunism—John Grady should cooperate for his own good. John Grady, ever the idealist, thinks the captain’s proposal isn’t worth considering, even though he isn’t sure what the proposal even is.

“They caint just walk him out there and shoot him, he said. Hell fire. Just walk him out there and shoot him.

John Grady looked at him. As he did so the pistol shot came from beyond the ebony trees. Not loud. Just a flat sort of pop. Then another.”

Blevins’s fate has a profound effect on Rawlins and John Grady, and they’re powerless to stop it. Up to this point, the novel has been lighter in tone, an adventure/romance about two boys sowing their oats; here, the teenagers enter the bleak world of consequence in a corrupt state ruled by powerful men.

“What does a man do? You see. I can no go back because they will all see that I dont go with this woman. Because the truth is always plain. You see. A man cannot go out to do some thing and then he go back. Why he go back? Because he change his mind? A man does not change his mind.”

That “A man does not change his mind” is a complex problem with masculinity that McCarthy explores throughout the book. It is implied the captain would rather sexually assault a woman than be seen as weak, highlighting the toxic nature of Mexico’s patriarchal values. John Grady is hardly one to change his mind, either, but his values are rooted in doing what’s right, not doing what makes one appear strong. Still, being surrounded by men like this will cost John Grady—even if they’re morally in the wrong, they set the rules of the world, and there’s no other, better reality coming.

“This is a serious business, he said. You dont understand the life here. You think this struggle is for these things. Some shoelaces or some cigarettes or something like that. The lucha. This is a naive view. You know what is naive? A naive view. The real facts are always otherwise. You cannot stay in this place and be independent peoples. You dont know what is the situation here. You dont speak the language.”

Pérez is a difficult figure to read, in part because he takes a neutral stance toward the events of the novel: Either the boys give him money for his protection, or they’re left to their fate. It’s unclear if Pérez sanctions the attacks on John Grady and Rawlins, but he does try to warn them that their naivete will get them killed. Throughout the novel, the two boys have gotten by on their skill and their confidence in themselves, and here, they find themselves in a place that they fundamentally don’t understand.

“Pérez nodded thoughtfully. Even in a place like this where we are concerned with fundamental things the mind of the anglo is closed in this rare way. At one time I thought it was only his life of privilege. But it is not that. It is his mind.

He sat back easily. He tapped his temple. It is not that he is stupid. It is that his picture of the world is incomplete. In this rare way. He looks only where he wishes to see. You understand me?”

In their second encounter, Pérez further clarifies why John Grady likely will not survive in Saltillo: He has a sense of justice and moral virtue that, to Pérez, simply does not correlate to the real world. For him, John Grady’s Belief in Virtue in a Compromised World is a failure to reckon with reality, and he pins it on a uniquely American idea of what justice looks like or how it works in the world, namely that Americans disregard what does not confirm their existing worldview. The “fundamental things” that Pérez speaks of are money, power, and what men are willing to do to one another for these.

“I knew when I bought the knife what I’d bought it for.

I dont see where you were wrong.

The cigarette glowed, it faded. I know, he said. But you didnt do it.”

John Grady feels profound guilt over murdering the boy in prison even though he knows it was in self-defense. This belief that there was another way will haunt him throughout the novel and is a driving force behind his growing disillusion with the world around him. He cannot reconcile his actions with his idea of himself or with how the world works; despite his belief otherwise, Pérez and the captain’s views of the world are more in line with the reality John Grady keeps encountering.

“For me the world has always been more of a puppet show. But when one looks behind the curtain and traces the strings upward he finds they terminate in the hands of yet other puppets, themselves with their own strings which trace upward in turn, and so on. In my own life I saw these strings whose origins were endless enact the deaths of great men in violence and madness. Enact the ruin of a nation. I will tell you how Mexico was. How it was and how it will be again. You will see that those things which disposed me in your favor were the very things which led me to decide against you in the end.”

Dueña Alfonsa’s story is one of a young idealist growing into pragmatic nihilism and regretting that she hadn’t come to it sooner. Her personal connection to the Madero family during their rise to power and the coup that followed led her to her present position that, while John Grady’s love for Alejandra is worth honoring, pursuing it will only bring about ruin. Dueña Alfonsa’s Mexico is cruel and has no place for romantics. It’s a tragedy to her, but it’s also reality.

“If one were to be a person of value that value could not be a condition subject to the hazards of fortune. It had to be a quality that could not change. No matter what.”

Ironically, Dueña Alfonsa’s assertion here is one that she learns from Gustavo Madero and values greatly, but it could also describe John Grady, who has remained constant in his ideals throughout his struggle. While her belief has not changed, what has changed is what she thinks a person of value is: not an idealist, like Madero, but someone who can thrive within the cruel systems of humanity and patriarchy, someone who has power. A person of value is not someone, as she mockingly says of John Grady at the end of her speech, “to whom things happen” (240).

“I’m sorry I shant see you again. I’ve been at some pains to tell you about myself because among other reasons I think we should know who our enemies are. I’ve known people to spend their lives nursing a hatred of phantoms and they were not happy people.

I dont hate you.

You shall.

We’ll see.”

Dueña Alfonsa closes her argument with the same cognitive dissonance that she’s displayed throughout her relationship with John Grady: She has tenderness toward him and wants to treat him fairly, but she views him as a threat to her family and Alejandra, and she is confident that she has the upper hand. John Grady’s refusal to see her as a villain is grounded in his belief that his and Alejandra’s love is more powerful than the ties of family. This positions John Grady to suffer The Tragic Consequences of Flaunting Cultural Mores—a subject that Dueña Alfonsa knows well.

“I didnt know that he would stop loving me. I didnt know he could. Now I know.”

Alejandra’s pain at losing the love of her father is another tragic consequence of their romance. Just as Dueña Alfonsa warned John Grady, women suffer for social rebellion in a patriarchal culture. Not only does their affair have devastating effects on her standing in her family, but its discovery dooms her love for John Grady: She must try to repair her life by the same terms that restrict her and that she desired to refute. Where consequences have been unable to shift John Grady’s notion of morality in the world, Alejandra’s sense of security and family has been permanently altered by encountering the limits of her father’s love.

“He saw very clearly how all his life led only to this moment and all after led nowhere at all. He felt something cold and soulless enter him like another being and he imagined that it smiled malignly and he had no reason to believe that it would ever leave.”

John Grady has moved through the novel believing that doing something with his whole heart was enough, whether it was working with horses, watching over Blevins, or loving Alejandra. At this point in the novel, his worldview is shattered. The novel carefully balances the idea that this is a naïve teenager’s disillusionment and first real heartbreak with the seriousness with which John Grady would feel these feelings. After this, he has nothing to lose and is ready to do whatever it takes to restore some sense of balance, hence his mission to recover the horses.

“He remembered Alejandra and the sadness he’d first seen in the slope of her shoulders which he’d presumed to understand and of which he knew nothing and he felt a loneliness he’d not known since he was a child and he felt wholly alien to the world although he loved it still. He thought that in the beauty of the world were hid a secret. He thought the world’s heart beat at some terrible cost and the world’s pain and its beauty moved in a relationship of diverging equity and that in this headlong deficit the blood of multitudes might ultimately be exacted for the vision of a single flower.

In the morning the sky was clear and it was very cold and there was snow on the mountains to the north. When he woke he realized he knew his father was dead.”

After recovering his horses and turning the captain over to the men of the country, John Grady is able to stop and take stock of what life will look like for him next. This poetic, elusive passage is typical of McCarthy’s style at its most heightened and is meant to convey the intensity of John Grady’s feeling: He still loves the world, but he knows that the beauty in it is diminishing rapidly, both due to his own disillusionment and due to the proclivity of humanity toward cruelty. That this leads into his premonition of his father’s death further suggests that the way of life he cared about and his connection to the world are receding further away from him.

“I guess what I wanted to say first of all was that it kindly bothered me in the court what you said. It was like I was in the right about everthing and I dont feel that way.

What way do you feel?

He sat looking at his hat. He sat for a long time. Finally he looked up. I dont feel justified, he said.”

John Grady tells the judge he doesn’t feel justified for several reasons: His disrespect of Don Héctor and Alejandra, his inability to stop Blevins’s execution, his murder of the boy in the knife fight, and his desire to kill the captain. Each of his failings is one in which his actions didn’t match his intentions or his better nature, and he’s visiting the judge in the first place looking for absolution. The judge grants it to him freely, acknowledging that John Grady acted as best as he knew how in each situation, but John Grady’s belief in the possibility of justice remains shaken. John Grady’s ability to forgive himself requires him to accept the reality of a morally compromised world.