All the Pretty Horses

The inevitable outcomes of fate in our lives are like a boundless chain of dominos falling successively. Every action is calculated and deliberate; our lives are a predetermined path that only someone as powerful as God could change. Cormac McCarthy demonstrates both the good and evil that the power of fate brings for his character John Grady in All the Pretty Horses. John Grady’s journey starts in Texas, where he realizes after his grandfather’s death that there isn’t much left for him there. He idealizes a cowboy way of life not found in Texas. He journeys with his buddy Rawlins across the border to Mexico, a lawless desert land where trouble never seems too far away. Fate leads him to a capricious kid named Blevins, whose erratic behavior and rare, expensive, and thought to be stolen horse creates a series of dilemmas for John Grady when he arrives at La Purísima, a Mexican ranch. He finds more than just the cowboy way of life he longs for at the ranch; he also finds Alejandra, the owner’s attractive daughter. As fate would have it, he falls in love with her, but fate would also have it that their love is forbidden. Matters only get worse when John Grady falls in trouble with law insuring only more chaos. The series of events that Cormac McCarthy writes in All the Pretty Horses are meant to unfold as if the hands of fate put John Grady through all the pain, and suffering to be reborn, matured, and find salvation at the end of journey.

The mysterious ways of predestination and fate first occur to push John Grady away from home and towards Mexico. The first “push” comes when John Grady loses his grandfather: “He looked at the face so caved and drawn among the fold of the funeral cloth, the yellow mustache, the eyelids paper ...

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... and cured of his childish fantasy of a cowboy life. The road to his new found salvation was paved with suffering, but worth all the pain. The author uses fate to unfurl the events in the book so that each builds upon one another, to lead to John Grady’s purpose for suffering: his rebirth. Throughout the book, fate tempts him away from perhaps his morals or the logical decision, because consciously he wouldn’t have made those decisions himself. It’s also through this journey that John Grady finds God- the controller of fate. Despite suffering, John Grady doesn’t develop a bitter relationship, but a closer one with God as God bring him closer to salvation. Still struggling internally with the crimes and events of Mexico, John Grady hasn’t lost his adventurous nature back home in Texas. The book is left with the possibility that yet another adventure awaits him.