Literature Analysis #1

Literature Analysis #1

1)     In the story “All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy, it begins with John Grady Cole’s, the main character, at his grandfather’s funeral. John Grady wants to live and run his own ranch so he decides to horseback to Mexico with his best friend Rawlins. In Mexico they find a perfect ranch to work and live at. Sadly Grady and Rawlins were dragged away from the ranch and thrown in jail for a crime they technically didn’t commit. In this jail Rawlins was severely cut and injured and Grady was almost killed by the men in the prison. Luckily the grandmother of Grady’s secret girlfriend when he was at the ranch, Alejandra, bailed them out of the jail. Unfortunately since the grandmother paid to get them out the deal was that Grady and Alejandra couldn’t see each other anymore. Grady tells Rawlins to go back home to Texas and then Grady tries to negotiate with Alejandra to stay with him, but she ends up following her grandmother’s rules and leaves him. Grady makes his way back to Texas, but he doesn’t stay there, he just keeps on riding on until he finds what he is looking for.

 

2)    The theme of the story would be that to follow your passions and life and see where they take you. They might not always be good, but the knowledge that comes with experience whether it be heartbreak or happiness, it is worth the risk every time.

 

3)    The tone of the story would be adventurous. In mostly every town that Grady and Rawlins pass through in Mexico there is something exciting or new happening. Like in the beginning of the story Grady makes a 3 hour trip to a city in Texas just to see a play. Grady is just adventurous by heart. Then when Grady doesn’t have what he wants in Texas, he is willing to travel to Mexico to find what he wants. Grady doesn’t care that it is a long ride; he embraces the journey with high spirits. And also when the boy Blevins that rode along with Grady and Rawlins lost his horse and needed to get it back. The boys had to come up with a plan to get the horse back from the stable that the townspeople were holding it at. Blevins got his horse back, but had to bust his way through the stable doors and continue riding while men shot at him.

 

4)    Structure- helped me understand the story better in which the author wanted the time period to be in.

P. (7) “The waitress called everyone doll. She took their order and flirted with him. His father took out his cigarettes and lit one and put the pack on the table and put his Third Infantry Zippo lighter on top of it and leaned back and smoked and looked at him.”

Zeitgeist- It was clear from the first few pages that this wasn’t from this time period and helped me the get into that mindset of the older western cowboy times.

P. (1) “The candleflame and the image of the candleflame caught in the pierglass twisted and righted when he entered the hall and again when he shut the door.”

Non vernacular- the usage of not everyday language and using the old western slang helped improve the mood and tone of the story for me. Also the use of Spanish made it even more believable because that was how that period of time was like in Texas and Mexico.

P. (9) “He aint been rode.” P. (10) “There aint nothing to him. Never was.” P. (75) “Es mucho trabajo.”

Style- the certain way that McCarthy wrote the story gave it authenticity and made me believe I was with Grady during that time.

P. (48) “You want to throw something up I’ll hit it, the kid said. Bullshit. The kid shrugged and put the pistol back in the bib of his overalls. Throw what up? said Rawlins. Anything you want. Anything I throw you can hit. Yeah. Bullshit. You throw your pocketbook up in the air and I’ll put a hole in it, he said.”

Setting- McCarthy often used imagery and the setting to give the story a real feeling to it and to make the reader feel as though they were there in the story with Grady and his adventures.

P. (59) “Days to come they rode through the mountains and they crossed at a barren windgap and sat the horses among the rocks and looked out over the country to the south where the last shadows were running over the land before the wind and the sun to the west lay blood red among the shelving clouds and the distant cordilleras ranged down the terminals of the sky to fade from pale to pale of blue and then to nothing at all.”

Foreshadowing- led me to believe something was about to happen so I could be ready for the situation the author would write next.  It helped me to understand the moral of the story when I understand what is going and making predictions throughout the story.

P. (41) “You aint ridin with us, You’ll get us thrown in the jailhouse.”

Simile- constantly used throughout the story. Helped with the imagery and creating a picture inside my head.

P. (68) “It fried em like bacon.”

Non-stereotypical- this story was not a usual cowboy/Western story. The new twist and different takes on things helped me understand the theme more clearly.

P. (254) “The train came huffing in from the south and stood steaming and shuddering with the coach windows curving away down the track like great dominoes smoldering in the dark and he could not but compare this arrival to that one twenty-four hours ago and she touched the silver chain at her throat and turned away and bent to pick up the suitcase and then leaned and kissed him one last time her face all wet and then she was gone. He watched her go as if himself were in some dream.”

Personification- the horses play a huge part in the story and they always seem to have human qualities.

P. (125) “He thought the horse had handled itself well and as he rode he told it so.”

Metaphor- helped to create a better mood and tone for the story.

P. (122) “The mouths of the cans were lensed with tinted cellophane and they cast upon the sheeting a shadowplay in the lights and smoke of antic demon players and a pair of goathawks arced chittering through the partial darkness overhead.”

Pathos- McCarthy did a great job in his diction to make me feel pity, sadness, and disappointment when I needed too.

P. (189) “The next morning crossing the yard Rawlins was set upon by a man with a knife. When John Grady got to him he was sitting with his back to the wall holding his arms crossed over his stomach and rocking back and forth as if he were cold.”

Imagery- plays a huge role throughout the story in helping me picture what is around Grady. Without the constant imagery and setting images, this story would be a totally different one.

P. (5) “The wind was much abated and it was very cold and the sun sat blood red and elliptic under the reefs of bloodred cloud before him.”

CHARACTERIZATION:
1) Two examples of indirect characterization for John Grady would be when Rawlins brags to Blevins about him being one of the best riders he has ever seen and Grady tells him to quit it, but Grady knows that he is a pretty good rider. The other one would be when Alejandra’s grandmothers judges Grady before he even had a chance to explain who he is or his situation.                                                                                                                                                             Two examples of direct characterization for Grady when we see that he is good with horses. We don’t need to hear about him being a horse whisperer, we already know this. Another one is that he is an honest person. Through his actions and dialogue readers can see that he never once told a lie and he acted like an honorable person when dealing with hard situations.                                                                                                                                                    -The author uses both these approaches to show the outside of a character and also the inside. A person may act a certain way around others to impress people, but only a person can see the real side them. By seeing both sides readers can infer which personalities best fit the characters correctly and which traits don’t.

2) Yes the diction changes from when the author is talking about the setting or displaying the imagery from the characters dialogue. It goes from neat and proper in the narrative part, to a type of western drawl when the characters are speaking.

“A single mud street rutted from the recent rains. A squalid alameda where there stood a rotting brushwood gazebo and a few old iron benches.”  To  “When he reached her she lay in her own blood in the grass and he knelt with the rifle and put his hand on her neck and she looked at him and her eyes were warm and wet and there was no fear in them and then she dies.”

3) John Grady is definitely a static character. I thought Grady always had great qualities like being smart and a hard worker. There was no need for him to change. Although John Grady is a static character, he does change in a sense in how he sees the world. In the beginning of the story Grady knows what his goals are, but by the end of the story he’s not too sure of what he wants in life anymore. I wouldn’t want to call Grady a flat character because he has so much depth to him that it has to make him round. His mind works in such a mysterious way that it always appealed to me as a reader.

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