Cormac Mccarthy All The Pretty Horses Essay

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The Theme of Initiation in Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses. Introduction Cormac McCarthy is one of the most important writers in contemporary American literature and is known worldwide for his Western novels. One of his Western novels, All the Pretty Horses (1992), tells the story of John Grady Cole, a cowboy from Texas who travels southward to Mexico to pursue his cowboy dream after the Second World War. The novel won the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1992, and attracted a great deal of attention from critics. Many scholars have used myth criticism to interpret the novel and agree that McCarthy subverts the myth of the West that the American nation is so proud of. Allen Berry (2009) argues in her …show more content…

Mentor figures can be good spiritual guides who nourish and inspire the protagonist’s mind, or they can be evil guides who may lead the protagonist to wrong paths and hasten the protagonist’s downfall. In All the Pretty Horses, John Grady is confronted with some characters who are intrinsically evil, such as the corrupt Captain Ral, whom he encounters in prison, or the prison bully Pérez. More accurately, they can be labeled John Grady’s “mentor-antagonists”, because not only are they Grady’s antagonists, who place many obstacles in the way of Grady’s quest, but also do they embrace a completely different set of principles and stances. In other words, their realistic, snobbish and evil notions constitute an antagonistic force to counteract John Grady’s idealism and innocence. After being evicted from Rocha’s estate, John Grady and Rawlins are arrested and imprisoned, where they have an unexpected meeting with Blevins. An old man in the prison tells them that Blevins, while trying to retrieve his horse, shot three men, one of whom was killed. The hidden dangers planted by Grady’s innocence and heroism at their first meeting have finally erupted. At this point, Captain Ral appears and begins his unofficial interrogation. He even tortures Rawlins and John Grady, which is more of a flaunting of his power. He insists that power manipulates the truth, whereas John Grady believes that there is only one truth – “truth is what happened” and thinks “it aint what comes out of somebody’s mouth” (168). Their differing views on truth show Grady’s simple and upright sense of morality and justice. However, in the Captain’s view, truth is an elusive thing which can be created by power, or can disappear with power – it “will be gone”, and “will be in other hands” (168). In the prison, he is the one who creates “truth” at this time. After the interrogation, Grady learns from the old man in

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