Image by Denise Jans, via Unsplash.
by Aviva Rabinowitz
Imagine a horse that is forging onward at a steady pace. Not once does it slow down or turn its head or even pause for a water break. Now imagine that the whole world is riding atop this horse, unable to gain control of the reins and forever cursed to move forward. The name of this horse is Time, and only through memory, imagination, and dreams can its speed and direction be controlled. In All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy, main character John Grady’s experience of time varies from place to place. When he is in his home of San Angelo, Texas, time seems to gallop by: passages are short, whole weeks pass on a single page, people die without notice, and John Grady is often confused about the time and the date. However, once he and his friend Rawlins ride off to Mexico, leaving their past behind them, there is a shift in time. Days slow down, frequently taking several pages to pass. John Grady tells time naturally, using the sunlight. Slowly, he begins to understand that hay tiempo, there is time. Yet tiempo in Mexico is not without its complications. As the clocks tick faster and John Grady is reminded of events from his past, it becomes clear that the further he is from achieving his dreams, the quicker time moves in the story, ultimately indicating his lost chances in life.
All the Pretty Horses begins with an ending. Sixteen-year-old John Grady’s maternal grandfather has died, thus terminating the traditional passage of the family ranch from father to son. John Grady’s mother, a budding actress, opts to sell the ranch, a choice to which her son is vehemently opposed. John Grady appeals to his father, but he is broke and unable to buy the ranch. From the outset, it is clear that time in San Angelo is moving too fast for John Grady, who is described as “a man come to the end of something” (McCarthy 5). When the sound of “the ticking of the mantel clock [can be heard] in the front room,” John Grady’s response is to “[go] out[side] and shut the door,” indicating his unwillingness to let time slip by (3). Rather than letting go of the past, John Grady endeavours to embrace it; he “[rides his horse] where he [will] always choose to ride, … [a]t the hour [he’ll] always choose when the shadows [are] long and the ancient road [is] shaped before him in the rose and canted light like a dream of the past where the painted ponies and riders of that lost nation [come] down out of the north” (5). It is clear from this passage that John Grady idealizes the “ancient” days, back before colonization, when Texas was wild and free and abundant with horses. Later, in his grandfather’s office, he notices that the “small brass calendar [on the desk] … still [says] September 13th” (10). The fact that the calendar is fixed on a past date reminds the reader that the grandfather has died, leaving his grandson to mourn him, and in turn mourn for the past. Of course, just as John Grady is “[s]ettin” down in his grandfather’s old chair, he hears “[t]he clock [strike] eleven in the front room across the hall,” harshly pulling him back into the present (11). Different writing techniques also imply the rapid movement of time in San Angelo. McCarthy employs short sentences that cover considerable amounts of time, such as “It rained all the following week and cleared” (14) and “After Christmas she was gone all the time” (18), which mercilessly rush the story along. It is no wonder that when John Grady leaves town to watch his mother’s play, he asks, “Is it the same time here as it is in San Angelo?”; for all he knows, time may move differently outside of his hometown (20). Another, final indication of the unusually quick passage of time is the brisk transitioning between ideas or scenes. This technique is particularly notable when John Grady watches his mother’s play: “Then the curtains rose and his mother came through a door onstage and began talking to a woman in a chair. At the intermission he rose and put on his hat and went down to the lobby” (21). In just two lines, McCarthy has skipped over half of the play. John Grady even admits later that “[h]e’d the notion that there would be something in the [play’s] story itself to tell him about the way the world was or was becoming but there was not. There was nothing in it at all” (21). The play’s emptiness and lack of explanation about the future symbolizes how Texas no longer holds what John Grady is looking for. His grandfather is gone; his father is broke; his mother has abandoned the ranch to become an actress. In order to live the life John Grady feels he was born for, the cowboy life, he must venture to a place from out of the past. A place where he can realize his dreams. A place that moves at John Grady’s own pace.
The pace of the novel changes after John Grady and Rawlins leave San Angelo. As they get closer to, and eventually cross, the Mexican border, time shifts from a canter to a trot to a walk. No longer does a week pass with just one page; instead, long, descriptive paragraphs detail the boys’ daily activities and antics. This slower tempo is acknowledged with statements like “the night was a long time passing” or “the sun a long time coming” (81, 93). Above all else, imagery sets the pace in this section of the novel, as is evidenced by the following excerpt:
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 eye could see. … The storm front towered above them and the wind was cool on their sweating faces. … Shrouded in the black thunderheads the distant lightning glowed mutely like welding seen through foundry smoke. As if repairs were under way at some flawed place in the iron dark of the world. (67)
This is a far cry from “It rained all the following week and cleared” (14). In the above passage, the buildup of the storm is expressed in clear, poetic imagery, contrasting with McCarthy’s earlier glossing over of long periods of time. This change in writing style allows for John Grady to live in the moment. Staring up at the dawn sky, he observes that “the Pleiades seemed to be rising up into the darkness above the world and dragging all the stars away, the great diamond of Orion and Cepella and the signature of Cassiopeia all rising up through the phosphorous dark like a sea-net” (60). He stays still and “[lies there] a long time listening to the others breathing in their sleep while he contemplate[s] the wildness about him, the wildness within” (60). The fact that he lies for “a long time,” just stargazing and thinking about his connectedness to nature, illustrates how John Grady has begun to live in the present. The narrative also switches from mentioning exact hours and minutes to using phrases like “the dawn before daylight” and “midmorning,” signalling John Grady’s new reliance on natural signs to tell time (60, 61).
It may appear that the change in country has brought about the change in John Grady’s approach to time; after all, the latter alteration only comes into effect after the boys have left San Angelo. However, this assumption is proven incorrect when the boys move onto a hacienda, where John Grady falls in love with Alejandra, his boss’s daughter. It is not long before Alejandra’s great-aunt, Alfonsa, arranges a meeting with John Grady. Alfonsa is described as having “oldworld ties” (132). The most up-to-date photograph in the room is from her quinceañera when she was fifteen, a callback to the outdated calendar in John Grady’s grandfather’s office. John Grady and Alfonsa play chess until “two hours past his bedtime,” which introduces a rushed feeling to the scene not unlike the tempo in San Angelo (133). Alfonsa also frequently speaks of the past, both her own and John Grady’s, in an effort to stop him from seeing Alejandra. The señorita tells him, “I’m going to guess that scar on your cheek was put there by a horse. … Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real. The events that cause them can never be forgotten” (135). This is a jarring statement to make. John Grady may be dreaming of the past, but it is not his own past he mourns for. He wants to live in a time when “the painted ponies and riders of that lost nation [come] down out of the north” (5); he does not wish to be “remind[ed] that [his] past is real.” When Alfonsa “lean[s] back,” John Grady can “hear the clock ticking in the hall,” yet another reminder that time is constantly pressing onwards (136). If not location, then what is causing the novel’s tiempo to speed up and slow down? The answer, it appears, is John Grady’s distance from achieving his dreams. Throughout the novel, John Grady has many aspirations: to save the ranch, to leave home, to find work, to love Alejandra. Whenever there is a roadblock in the way of his dreams, such as Alejandra’s aunt telling him to give up, he is reminded of the brevity of life. He only has one chance to live, and yet his dreams are being shut down before they can even be realized. This is echoed a few pages later, when Alejandra visits John Grady at his room at night for the first time. One of the first things he says to her is, “What time is it?” (139). Alejandra responds that she does not know. Much later in the novel, again when he is trying to win Alejandra from her family, John Grady is described as “[having] no way to tell the time” (227). Reminiscent of John Grady’s earlier confusion about time zones in Texas, this uncertainty surrounding time indicates the distance John Grady must cross in order to achieve his dream of marrying Alejandra. This technique is reversed later on in the novel, when John Grady is travelling back to meet Alejandra, against Alfonsa’s wishes. A group of children asks him to tell his story, to which he responds doubtfully, “Es una historia larga” (it is a long story) (243). Undeterred, the children respond that there is time: “Hay tiempo, they said” (243). This passage is more hopeful, as it entertains the possibility that John Grady and Alejandra could end up together. Unfortunately, there is not enough tiempo for the young lovers, and their historia larga does not conclude happily. Having failed at achieving his dreams, John Grady returns home to San Angelo, looking like “some apparition out of the vanished past” (287). When he comes across two men in the road, he asks them, “I wonder if you all could tell me what day this is?” (287). This further exemplifies the connection between time and dreams, and the harsh reality that there is not always enough tiempo in life for all wishes come true.
Time in All the Pretty Horses does not move at a single, steady pace. In San Angelo, where John Grady is far from his goals, time passes relentlessly fast: short sentences gloss over several weeks, and moments are short and fleeting. Faced with ticking clocks at every turn, John Grady turns to idealizing the past—not his own, but that of others. In particular, he dreams of being a true cowboy, a “rider of that lost nation.” Once he leaves town, however, he becomes more comfortable living in the present. This change in approach is due to his proximity to achieving his dreams, rather than simply the change in scenery: in Mexico, he is closer to his dream of running a horse ranch than he ever was in Texas. As time progresses, so do John Grady’s goals, but as his likeliness of achieving what he wants lessens, the briskness of life begins creeping up on him once more. No matter how hard John Grady tries to dig his heels into the horse of time, it keeps galloping on, passing by his current dreams but steering him towards new hopes and ambitions.
Works Cited
McCarthy, Cormac. All the Pretty Horses. Vintage International, 1992.