All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
1. After John Grady Cole's grandfather passes, his mother inherits everything because she was an only child. She becomes the sole owner of their Texas ranch. As an aspiring actress, always gone, she decides the ranch doesn't make any money. John confronts his family and a lawyer for help, but it is made clear that his mother will determine the fate on the ranch. After watching one of his mothers plays he finds no meaning and decides to leave San Antonio with his friend Rawlins. Along the way they notice a thirteen year old boy on a stolen horse following them. It was Jimmy Blevins and they allow him to tag along as they continue to ride towards Mexico. They ride into Encantada where they see a man with Jimmy's pistol in his back pocket and his horse in a mud house, they soon recapture the horse. John and Rawlins get jobs as cowboys at the hacienda de nuestra, ran by Don Hector Rocha. they are dared to tame sixteen wild horses. Not only do they succeed but John begins to fall in love with Rocha's daughter Alejandra. They began to have a secret love affair, with sneaky meetings. But unexpectedly they are arrested, and Rocha is nowhere to be found. It turns out Blevins had shot the man who stole his pistol while Grady and Rawlins were gone being cowboys on the new ranch, and they were assumed to be his accomplices. After being stabbed in prison Rawlins finds his way home back to Texas and Grady back to Rocha's ranch. Rocha found out about their secret affair and they spend one last night together. John is detirmined to get his horses back from being impounded. in a wrestling match with the captain he gets shot in the back. once he meets back up with Rawlins he is informed that his father has died. he sticks around for a while until later vanishing into "the darkening land".
2.The theme is sacred violence, which has two components - human's innate affinity for bloodshed and the futility of denying this affinity. We see examples of this human instinct once John Grady and Rawlins arrive at the La Purisima ranch. The two Americans serve as scapegoats for a community to exercise its repressed hostilities. Alejandra uses John Grady as a pawn in her own adolescent rebellion, Rocha allows the arrest of the two men as virtual whipping boys for his daughter, Alfonsa wars against John Grady to purge the rage of her own past. Innocent in their youth, both Rawlins and John Grady never question their assumption that members of two communities can merge harmoniously. But after being expelled from the ranch, thrown into prison and unjustly accused of a crime, witnesses to the execution of a friend, beaten into submission by convicts, and stripped of their dignity, the two Americans learn that their souls are not only defined by their search of serenity and fulfillment, but also their ability to survive in the face of primal aggression. Rawlins ultimately cannot handle this duality of human nature and returns home. John Grady learns to embrace it, after being released from prison, he appropriates the violence inflicted onto him and seeks vengeance as the last step in his rite of passage. He returns to San Angelo with all the possessions with which he began his journey.
3. Cormac McCarthy's tone is shadowing coming of age. Through his words you can see how strongly he feels about it through the negative and positives.
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