All The Pretty Horses Literary Analysis

I believe that the novel “All the Pretty Horses” by Cormac McCarthy is a coming of age story about a young man who initially set out to make a life for himself in a land that wasn’t so industrialized and in turn grew up and lost his innocence. John Grady was a young, naïve 16-year-old who was unhappy with the way “his” country was changing, so he set off with his friend Rawlins on a quest to find a place he wanted to call home. John Grady had child-like ideations that, while he couldn’t find the type of life he wanted here in America because the ranch he grew up on and that his family owned would soon be sold, he would be able to find a simpler lifestyle in Mexico. In all reality, there was no amount of life experience that would prepare …show more content…
Unfortunately, I think that John Grady’s naivety shows again when he and Rawlins are hired on to work at the hacienda. The boys needed a job, but John Grady noticed the girl and that may have been the mitigating factor to him choosing that specific ranch to begin to call home. “Did you see that little darlin? he said. John Grady didn’t answer. He was still looking down the road where she’d gone. There was nothing there to see, but he was looking anyway” (McCarthy, 94). How did John Grady know that this was going to be a decent place to work? He didn’t, but he knew that she would be close, so that may have been a big reason as to why they stayed. Luckily for them, John Grady and Rawlins are very hard workers and ended up fitting in well at the hacienda. John Grady even was able to begin to ‘break’ the new horses because they noticed the talent he had. The boys ‘breaking’ the new 3-year-old colts was a symbol for their journey as well. They were making it so the horses were ridable and workable and in turn I think that was making the boys more mature and possibly ‘breaking’ them of their wilder