After discussing the first chapter in class I have gone back to the text to further analyze some main points that happened. The main character John Cole brings up this idea of wild horses. He describes them as though he is fascinated with their wildness and their freedom. He further goes to relate them to man and their tendencies. Yet later in the book he was brought to this ranch where they tame wild horses. If you connect these too scene you can see that he shows how horses and men are not ‘useful’ until they are tamed and trained, but they are beautiful in their natural wild selves. McCarthy brings these two scenes together 100 pages apart and draws the significance together. He has done this at multiple points in his writing, where one scene plays off another that has proceeded it many pages earlier. It is an interesting way to bring a story and handful emotions together. As I was reading this next section I was waiting to see if there would be conclusions to previous conflicts in the book, drawing me further into the story.
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One reply on “Pretty Horses Reflection”
After reading your response I can only agree with you how the horses are well represented in the book. They truly are an amazing representation of freedom. How the horses can be broken from their wild side into riding horses. This is an a testament to all of the horse riders across the world. They have to break them from their wild side and give them restrictions so they do not follow their own path. They have to be controlled and behaved into a machine. But people want their machine to work hard and efficiently so they cannot completely break the horse form the wild side, so they have to keep some of it’s natural beauty.
I think that when you read further in McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses, as you have done so by now, you will see that there will be conclusions to many of the conflicts in this section. With Blevins wanting his to get his horse back from the town of Encantada, the boys are all brought back together and transferred to a Prison in Saltillo.