The Library Annex

What he loved in horses was what he loved in men, the blood and the heal of the blood that ran them. All his reverence and all his fondness and all the leanings of his life were for the ardenhearted and they would always be so and never be otherwise.

McCarthy blends pageantry with action, soul with cynicism as well as love with duty in the same way he blends terse dialogue and run-on sentences. The essence of his prose mirrors the simple nature of John Grady Cole against the vast world into which he adventures. McCarthy’s style embodies the technique of a valedictorian from the Hemingway School but, moreso, embraces the core element of truth conflicting with the representation of it. His first words in the novel are, “The candleflame and the image of the candleflame…” Don’t let this idea stray far from your processing of this story.

A sixteen-year-old John Grady Cole ventures out into his own story with a poise and fortitude not common among those of his age. His limited experience in life thus far does not mean he does not have an idea of what life is and what it ought to be. By the end, after his suffering, perhaps he begins to learn the difference between the truth and the representation he clings to of it. In a way, McCarthy explores a theme of dualistic co-existence. He compares the past living in the present with imagery of John Grady and Rawlins riding their horses over highways and Native American tribes roaming the land as “nations and ghost nations” simultaneously. He frames John Grady’s coming-of-age story almost as journey of catching up with the world. Surely, every young person feels this way.

The journey itself consists of five stages. The first, his setting out with Rawlins amidst a backdrop of family splits and death. They conenct with another traveler who serves to ignite John Grady’s wrestling match with truth and the innocent morality to which he holds. In the second stage he finds his paradise; a ranch where he not only practices his love and expert handling of horses but receives rewards from the owner and hands. However, his association with the strange traveller and his love for the ranchers daughter catches up with him and brings him to the third stage; a dramatically contrasted prison hell. The peak of paradise and the valley of death then blend into a kind of redemption in which the life-hardened aunt of his love interest, the ranch owners daughter, pays for his release but also expels him from the ranch and from relations with her neice. The journey concludes with his return home after a climactic rescue of his party’s horses from unjust law enforcement who got the better of their newly met associate for attempting the same rescue of his horse. During the scene, worthy of the silver screen in Western film lore, John Grady finds strength and courage internally based on learnings and experiences during his journey.

Ultimately, true to the buildingsroman form, John Grady begins to realize the truth about the world, or undersatnd other people’s representations of the world, and therefore must wrestle with the transforming representation of it he had held in his mind. Do the horses symbolize that representation? His dwindling innocence? He risks so much for them as they represent his sense of love, justice and morality. As the world begins leaving cowboy culture behind, should John Grady follow suit in order to “grow up”? To come of age, will he have to leave all the pretty horses behind?