A few questions on _All the Pretty Horses_ (don’t feel obligated to speak to all of them at once–pick and choose as you like, as we work our way through the book):
- What are John Grady Cole’s values? Are those values consistent with anything discussed in Huntington as part of the original American cultural value system? Are they still consistent with American culture today?
- What do you make of the changes in the world JGC inhabits? Is it inevitable that the cultural world JGC represents would be completely swept away and replaced? And replaced by what? Are there any grounds for trying to preserve anything of that cultural world JGC represents?
- What does the encounter between JGC and Mary Catherine tell us about relations between men and women? What other evidence is there in the first section of the novel regarding JGC’s view of relationships between men and women? Is the contemporary American male view of women consistent or inconsistent with JGC’s view?
- Why do you think McCarthy put the Blevins character into the novel? What does he represent in the American character/identity?
- After Blevins panics in the storm and loses his horse and clothing, John Grady goes looking for him after Rawlins suggests they leave him. He tells Blevins: “You’ve wore Rawlins completely out. I reckon you know that.” Blevins responds: “You never know when you’ll be in need of them you’ve despised” (p. 72). A few pages further along (p. 79), when Blevins again disappears, Rawlins tells John Grady: “Ever dumb thing I ever done in my life there was a decision I made before that got me into it. It was never the dumb thing. It was always some choice I’d made before it…This is our last chance…This is the time and there wont be another time.” John Grady asks: “Meanin just leave him?” and Rawlins says “Yessir.” John Grady then says “You realize the fix he’s in?…I can’t do it.” What do you make of all this in terms of the character and values of John Grady?
- What do you make of the long passage from 99 to 107, in which John Grady and Rawlins are breaking the wild horses from the mesa? What do the horses symbolize? Why is the relationship with horses such an important part of the novel and of the characters of John Grady, Rawlins, and Blevins? Have a look too at the passage in which John Grady’s ‘conversations’ with the stallion are recounted (“I am the commander of the mares, I and I alone. Without the charity of these hands you have nothing. Neither food nor water nor children. I am the one who brings the mares from the mountains…” p. 128) What does all this tell us about American frontier culture and values?
- Have a look at the exchange between John Grady Cole (JGC) and Don Hector on “these ideas” that influenced Alfonsa and the Madero brothers and others who supported the Mexican Revolution. (pp. 144-146). What side do you think JGC is on in this opposition of “French ideas” and “the Spanish idea…[that t]here is no greater monster than reason”? What do you think McCarthy is trying to say here about the American character and culture?
- What is Blevins’ role in the novel? What in American character and culture does Blevins and his relationship with JGC represent?
- What do you make of Perez’s remarks about Americans? See pp. 191-195. Is he correct? What is Perez’s worldview? How is it incompatible with the American culture described by Huntington?
- How does McCarthy show complexity in the Mexican people and culture?
- On p. 226, the vaqueros at La Purisima tell John Grady that “a man leaves much when he leaves his own country…[and] it was no accident of circumstance that a man be born in a certain country and not some other and they said that the weathers and seasons that form a land form also the inner fortunes of men in their generations and are passed on to their children and are not so easily come by otherwise.” What do they mean here? How does this view of country compare to Huntington’s description of American identity?
- What does Alfonsa think of fate and responsibility? Is her view fundamentally compatible with the view of the American settlers described in Huntington? Why or why not?
- Alejandra asks John Grady “Do I know what sort of man you are? What sort my father is?…What are men?” What is she getting at here?
- What do you make of the long passage on p. 301 that I read part of in class Wednesday? What does it say about the change in American society that is taking place during John Grady’s lifetime?
- Look at the long paragraph on p. 282 that describes John Grady’s thoughts after he’s killed a doe for food. What does this say about John Grady’s worldview? Is this an American worldview? Why or why not?