Literature Analysis Questions on All the Pretty Horses
1. This novel consists of three guys' journeys from the United States into through the Mexican border. The novel has three main characters John Grady Cole, who runs away with his friend Rawlins on horse back, at the age of sixteen after his grandfather passes away. Another character is Jimmy Belvins whom the other two boys meet along the way. The novels goes on to talk about the boys struggles in Mexico along with a twist of a love story in it. In the end all the boys split up through out all their difficulties and John Grady finds himself with out a home or any sort of family.
2. The theme of the novel is the strive for independence and freedom in ones' own mind. Another theme could be coming of age because these were young boys who didn't know what the world held for them and they were rudely awakened in Mexico.
3. The author's tone is sort of hopeless. An example of this tone from McCarthy is, "The wind was much abated and it was very cold and the sun sat blood red and elliptic under the reefs of bloodred cloud before him." Another example of the hopeless tone shown in the novel is, "The closest bonds we will ever know are bonds of grief." I thought this was an example of this tone because not many people think that they have a bond with grief, that's sort of a depressing statement. The last example from the text that i found was, "Those whom life does not cure death will."
4. Literary elements that i found in the novel that helped me better understand it were diction, imagery, description, tone, and the use of metaphors. In the novel the description McCarthy used really put me right there with John Grady especially when he says, "They rode out along the fenceline and across the open pasture-land. The leather creaked in the morning cold. They pushed the horses into a lope. The light fell away behind them. They rode out on the high prairie where they slowed the horses to a walk and the stars swarmed around them out of the blackness. They heard somewhere in that tenantless night a bell that tolled and ceased where no bell was and they rode out on the round dais of the earth which alone was dark and no light to it and which carried their figures and bore them up into the swarming stars so that they rode not under but among them and they rode at once jaunty and circumspect, like thieves newly loosed in that dark electric, like young thieves in a glowing orchard, loosely jacketed against the cold and ten thousand worlds for the choosing." This whole passage let me grasp the way the author writes in a completely different way than usual. The way he wrote allowed me to stay focused on the novel. The tone especially helped understand the theme in the end. With in the novel if the author would have written in a joyful tone I would never have grasped the true struggle that the three boys; John Grady, Jimmy Belvins, and Rawlins, had gone through in Mexico. When they are abused in jail the way McCarthy tells the torture being done really sets the tone perfectly for the reader to interpret the theme accurately.
