A Review of the Novel “All the Pretty Horses”
Throughout the novel "All the Pretty Horses", John Grady Cole is trying to escape the dismal reality of his life and the world around him. This is evident even at the very beginning of the novel as he decides to leave Texas as his whole life is falling down around him, and continues to be a main theme throughout the book. A vivid series of dreams that John Grady has also provides an escape from the hardships he endures through his travels, usually by placing him in his romantic view of the west and the life he wishes to live. John Grady Cole is constantly trying to escape his reality, but in the end all of his attempts prove fruitless as he is forced to face reality.
In the opening of "All the Pretty Horses", John Grady's beloved grandfather is dead, his parents have divorced, and his mother is steadfast in her decision to sell the ranch. Everything important to John Grady, especially his notion of being a 'cowboy', is sinking. He comes to the conclusion that there is nothing left for him anymore in San Angelo "If I don't go will you go anyways?...I'm already gone, he said" (27) And he sets off on his journey to Mexico to escape his dismal state of being. By leaving his hometown in Texas, he is not only leaving his family and home, he is leaving his entire life and starting with a clean slate in Mexico. Even though this was more of a psychical attempt at escaping reality, John Grady also uses his mind to escape.
Oft and again, usually in the worst of times, John Grady escapes his reality through dream and self- imposed limited cognition. While being held prisoner in a small dark Mexican holding cell, John Grady one of these dreams. "...horses in a field on a high plain where the spring rains had brought up the grass and the wildflowers out of the ground and the flowers ran all blue and yellow as far as the eye could see and in the dream he was among the horses running and in the dream he himself could run with the horses..." (161) John Grady uses this majestic scene of wild horses, and projects himself in it, as an escape from the reality of being cooped up in a dark, poorly ventilated prison. This basically repeats itself when he is recovering from his knife-fight wounds "He would not think about Alejandra because he didn't know what was coming or how bad it would be....So he thought about horses and they were always the right thing to think abour (204) During the daze following his serious wounds, he also is able to simply pick and choose the reality he wants since he is in such a state of sub- consciousness"...proposing and rejecting various scenarios that might have occurred in the outside world or be occurring. Or were yet to come."
Order custom essay A Review of the Novel “All the Pretty Horses” with free plagiarism report
450+ experts on 30 subjects
Starting from 3 hours delivery
John Grady was able to escape the harshness of reality through dream, albeit only temporarily, for sleep is fleeting, and hard times are anything but. When he wakes up after his picturesque dream of horses, he is still in the same dank prison as he was when he was asleep. The only true escape of reality is through death, and that is something that fate was unwilling to grant John Grady, even in his most reckless of exploits. Grady even ends up returning to his home in Texas, the very place that he had fled from, the source of his unhappiness. We get a bit of foreshadowing for this dark homecoming early in the novel "By early evening all the sky to the north had darkened and the spare terrain they trod had turned a neuter gray as far as the eye could see." This storm coming from the North is like a dark tide that will end up sweeping him back to where he began.
Over the course of his tragic journey, John Grady Cole strives for ways to escape his reality. Initially, this escape comes in the form of simply pulling up the stakes and leaving town for Mexico, but further in his journey he turns to alternate worlds in his head in the form of dreams. However, in the end John Grady doesn't really escape anything, despite his efforts. His reality is still that of pain and loss in Mexico, and returns home with the wounds causing him to leave in the first place still fresh.
Cite this Page
A Review of the Novel “All the Pretty Horses”. (2023, Feb 25). Retrieved from https://phdessay.com/a-review-of-the-novel-all-the-pretty-horses/
Run a free check or have your essay done for you
