Image by Eduardo Balderas, via Unsplash.
by Sofia Alvarado Roa
When one knows the miracle that is the sun’s warmth in contrast to the biting loneliness of the dark, how can one resist the promises and hopefulness that light brings when bound by the unrelenting darkness of reality? Sometimes, when the darkness of reality is too much to bear, one becomes desperate to grasp the light that fantasy provides. In this desperation, one’s stubbornness in forcing fantasy into reality can blind us to the darkness we might bring to our surroundings in the process, as seen in John Grady’s journey from his bleak reality towards his dreams of the cowboy way of life. Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses illuminates the path of a young cowboy’s realization of the sacrifices that must be made and the pain that comes with the journey to happiness as he searches for and poisons the promised land where he believes his dreams of “pastoral frontier life” (Gebreen 90) are attainable. Driven by his desire for the light of his fantasies of the Old West amid the darkening reality of the New Age of America, he stubbornly struggles to accept the vast difference between his fantasies and the world’s realities, specifically the gap between his idealized image of the world and its actuality. In doing so, he becomes blind to the damage he brings to the world around him, as seen in the effects of his ignorant pursuit of his ideals with Alejandra. While searching for paradise, John Grady is willing to forcefully create his desired reality from fantasy even if it means “the blood of multitudes might ultimately be exacted for the vision of a single flower” (McCarthy 282).
Early in the novel, John Grady Cole welcomes the dark that overwhelmingly envelops him. He is clouded by darkness as early as the first page when he visits his grandfather’s corpse in a “black suit” and stands “in the dark glass” (McCarthy 1). His surroundings are all “dimly lit” (McCarthy 1), and he is further wrapped in the “dark and cold” (McCarthy 1) of the outside world. It is apparent that he willfully remains in the shadows as he himself chose to ride “[i]n the evening […] when the shadows were long” (McCarthy 5), and if anyone reached out to pull him out of these shadows, they would be refused, as seen when he sits in his late grandfather’s office:
He leaned and turned off the little brass lamp and sat in the dark […] She came down the stairs and stood in the office doorway and turned on the wall switch light […]
What are you doing? she said.
Settin.
She stood there in her robe for a long time. Then she turned and went back down the hall and up the stairs again. When he heard her door close he got up and turned off the light. (McCarthy 10-11).
John Grady embraces the darkness, or has grown accustomed to it, so much so that even when his mother stands at the doorway, reaching out to him and turning the light on, he shuts it down. His mother seems to notice something is wrong as she “stood there […] for a long time” (11); given his grandfather’s recent passing, she could be inviting him to talk about it, to drag his feelings from the depths of his soul. John Grady blocks any kind of connection that would pull and unravel him from the coils of darkness, answering a simple “Settin.” (11) when she asks what he is doing. John deliberately turns “off the light” (11), thus willfully condemning himself to the emptiness of darkness.
However, it is essential to note that John Grady’s idea of light and dark, good and bad, is the opposite of what the changing world around him deems these to be. The world “that was rushing away and seemed to care [for] nothing” (Morrison 179) embraces the light that modernity brings, while he embraces the darkness of the Old West. When embracing the darkness of the fading reality of the Old West, which becomes his ideal, he is really pursuing the light of this dream rather than accepting the light of modernity. We see the duality of light and dark in the opposing meanings they have for John Grady and others. While his mother sees the sale of the ranch as a new opportunity, he sees it as a loss. Going back to the scene where he sits in the office, John Grady embraces darkness, but it is rather that he is clinging to the light of his distant fantasy. He “sat in the dark” (McCarthy 11) much like his ancestors would have, refusing to keep the artificial light of the “little brass lamp” (McCarthy 11) on. Furthermore, John Grady blocks any kind of connection that would pull him from his stubborn fantasies in his curt answers and by deliberately turning “off the light” (McCarthy 11) his mother offers him both by attempting to connect with him but also by literally turning on the switch light he switches off. Not only are his hopes clouded by the death of his grandfather, but during this time, “the oil industry had a strong position in the cowboy’s land and their way of life was quietly fading.” (Gebreen 97). His maternal grandfather’s death marks not only his “disinheritance” from the “family ranch” but also “his disinheritance from the ancestral ranching dream” (Gebreen 90) as his mother sells the ranch to an oil company. McCarthy “signals the grandfather’s death as the gradual end of the American plains where ranchers sell their lands for oil companies” (Gebreen 98). Modernity and progress that have begun to sweep across “the Old West […] interrupts John Grady’s dream to live the cowboy life of [this] Old West” (Gebreen 91-92). This modernization of San Angelo and the loss of his pastoral dreams through his grandfather’s death bring about a darkness that coils all around him. The possibility of his cowboy fantasy slipping away from his grasp becomes more evident. This despair is symbolized through the imagery like when “he stood in the dark” (McCarthy 3) and then, escaping the candlelight, “walked out on the prairie and stood holding his hat like some supplicant to the darkness […] and he stood there for a long time” (McCarthy 3). John Grady is followed by his dark reality everywhere he goes, and the light of modernity, wherever it is found, does not last long, as he does not desire this light brought to him by others. John Grady rejects modernity and its light again and again. He rose and rode when “it was still dark” (McCarthy 21) and further pulled away from the light brought by symbols of modernity like the headlights of a truck offering him a ride, whose light vanished as it left him in the night, and rode off, taking the light with it. John Grady does this because this light that is offered to him does not shine on the future he dreams of, but rather represents a future that will take him farther away from the cowboy life, ironically darkening his view on his situation. Therefore, he has no interest in accepting or remaining in this particular “light,” which to him is simply more darkness. Refusing to cave in to the wave of unrelenting change storming his life, he too becomes unrelenting in his search for a promised land where his dreams might come true. He does not look for light in the New Age of the oil industry, but instead seeks it out in the ancient light of the “starlit prairie falling away” (McCarthy 11). Ultimately, this disconnect between John Grady and the new world casts a shadow upon his life. It is from this feeling of hopelessness that he decides to seek the answers he is looking for in Mexico. In the US, he has no ranch and no future. So, in blissful ignorance, he chases after this dream with his best friend Rawlins, “ten thousand worlds for the choosing” (30).
As a result of the impending darkness of a modern America due to the gradual erasure of the cowboy, “the solution is to search for a landscape that is […] connected with [John Grady’s] deep desire for a stable, recognizable [cowboy] identity” (Gebreen 92). A displaced John Grady is only bound to be lured by the “south of the border” as it is “the only place remaining of the ranching culture” (Gebreen 93). As opposed to America, Mexico seems to exist in a distant past where the effects of industrialization have not fully seeped into the culture, and they “frequently appear to go back in time as soon as they [reach] the border” (Gebreen 93). This regression is evident not only in the “increasingly more primitive” means of food: “first purchased restaurant food, then canned goods, followed by food offered and prepared by others, to food hunted and cooked by themselves, first a rabbit, then a buck” (Morrison 183), but also in the “vaquero” culture that still lingers. Thus, John Grady successfully finds his promised land and can “bring back [his] vanished heaven […] when [he and Rawlins] get jobs as vaqueros (cowboys)” (Gebreen 94) at Don Hector’s ranch. Yet, there is another factor, in particular, that promises all the light he seeks: that being the heir of John Grady’s own dream, Don Hector’s daughter. Alejandra whose “eyes had altered the world forever in the space of a heartbeat” (109), is the ultimate representation of light in John Grady’s mind considering that to win her would mean possibly acquiring the ranch and with it, the “ancestral ranching dream” he was “disinherited” (Gebreen 90) of. This is pointed out by Rawlin’s when he asks John Grady if he has “eyes for the spread” (McCarthy 138), meaning the ranch, when they talk about him having “eyes for the daughter”, (McCarthy 137,) meaning Alejandra. This is supported by the multiple times Alejandra acts as a beacon of light in the darkness through imagery, as seen when in the moonlight Alejandra herself was a “pale” vision “like a chrysalis” (141) against the dark depths of the water, “a pool of black” (141). Her symbolism as light is also seen when Rawlins and John Grady lay in the dark and “in [this] darkness” (McCarthy 119), Alejandra’s name is evoked, and she lights his path towards conquering this world “taut and trembling and moving enormous and alive under his hands” against the “dark vault overhead” (McCarthy 119). The importance of her role as hope in the despair of reality is further cemented when in John Grady’s darkest time after having killed a man for the first time, he “would not think about Alejandra because he didn’t know what was coming or how bad it would be” (McCarthy 204), instead saving the memory of her in the event of a more dire reality. He knew that there might be something worse to come, so in preparation for that darkness, he saves the brightest light, the memory of Alejandra, so he can have hope to hold onto it if the time comes. Her presence illuminates the darkness of the reality haunting him in both San Angelo and Mexico. Thus, Alejandra and her inheritance of “pastoral frontier life” (Gebreen 90) seduces John Grady as her status would allow him to fulfill his cowboy dreams, she provides him with “a sense of what it means to keep on living and to look forward to being in the world” (Gebreen 96).
Just as “he was the seduced,” he also was “the seducer” (Morisson 179). Stubbornness born out of desperation is represented in the quest for light, as John Grady hurts the people around him due to the forceful way he pursues his dreams of a pastoral life. He does so as “he possesses both a capacity for self-deception, believing that he can achieve the impossible, as well as the charisma of […] to persuade others” in order to “achieve the impossible” (Morrison 189). As is the nature of the duality of light and dark, by bringing others into his fantasy, he himself brings darkness to the people surrounding him. We see this when he corrupts Alejandra, putting her reputation at risk and poisoning her own relationships with her father and Dueña Alfonsa. John Grady seems to be blinded to the glaring differences between his fantasy of Mexico and its reality, and how his unrelenting efforts to turn one into the other are hurtful to others. He often dismisses the hints given through Alejandra’s words, whose deeper meaning highlights his romantic views on the world are not its reality just because he deems it to be, as seen in the following passage, where he claims her to be more beautiful than her friend:
She is very pretty. You will see.
I bet she aint as pretty as you.
Oh my. You must be careful what you say. Besides it is not true. She is prettier.
(McCarthy 125).
John Grady is warned to be “very careful” of not acknowledging reality as “true” ignorantly, simply because the reality of someone else does not align with what he wishes were reality. His naive ideas are also challenged and rejected by Alejandra’s great aunt, Dueña Alfonsa. She herself has witnessed how “the irrationality and senselessness […] of the world are perfectly capable of triumphing over […] idealism.” (Morrison 182), having lived through the violence and bloodshed brought by the revolutionaries of Mexico. She, too, offers her own words of wisdom, stating that: “the world is quite ruthless in selecting between the dream and the reality, even where we will not. Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting.” (McCarthy 238). Even though John Grady attempts to get on her good side and allow him to keep being with Alejandra, “ultimately [Dueña Alfonsa’s] sympathies do not lie with […] revolutionaries who [subvert] […] [dreams] into a bloody reality” (Morrison 190). Thus, John Grady does not get Dueña Alfonsa’s blessing to carry on his romance with Alejandra, consequently casting a shadow over the light he had found in her. Still, Dueña Alfonsa’s attempted enlightenment meets John Grady’s blind eyes as even after learning of Alejandra’s deal to never see him again in exchange for his freedom, he pursues her once more. By this point, he has “seriously compromised her by alienating her from her father” (Morrison 178-179) and her great aunt. Furthermore, he risks her reputation should the community find out what Don Hector’s daughter has been up to. However, John Grady cares more about his chance at his dream life than Alejandra’s real one. So, he attempts to grasp her once more. Even though John Grady clutches to Alejandra’s light as tightly as he does, in the end he “loses her,” leaving him with the feeling of “abandonment in the world with no place to go” (Gebreen 96). Finally beaten down by reality, he is forced to face the “the chaos and anarchy, the irrationality and senselessness, of the world” (Morrison 182). His Mexican promised land “of false enchantment has been stripped […] of its magic” (Morisson 190) after learning how dark the world can really get, but also from Dueña Alfonsa’s push back against his attempts to remain with Alejandra, which hinder his attempts to replace reality with dreams. Ironically, this stubborn clinging to Alejandra is ultimately what results in him losing her. The desperate attempts to secure his fantasies end up further asserting the darkness of his reality. Now having “experienced the duality of […] nature […]” (Morrison 182), John Grady finally sees his idealized Mexico as a “thin veneer” and “its moral code exposed as distorted and subverted” (Morrison 185). Now that he understands that the reality is that he cannot have Alejandra nor her inheritance of the ancestral dream, as the society in which she lives does not allow her to wed him, the magic of “that land of false enchantment” (185) fades away.
Early on, John Grady seems to carry darkness wherever he goes, and any peek of light, from trains, lamps, or his mother, would vanish as soon as it had come. He chooses to live in the shadows and always “turned off the light” (11). This is because while the world around him sees the modernization of the West as good, to him it represents the erasure of cowboy culture– one that he dreams of living himself. The good light of modernity to others is hopeless darkness to John Grady. As a result, he embarks on a “journey to Mexico is to struggle for a cowboy culture that he wants to preserve […] from fading away” (Gebreen 94). He chooses to follow his light and ultimately “finds what he […] [lost] in America […] [:] his dream of pastoral life at the hacienda working with horses and riding them through the landscape with his friend and falling in love with Alejandra.” (Gebreen 95). Motivated by his longing for the light of his fantasies and their preservation, he refuses to differentiate between his dreams and the world’s realities. This is particularly evident through his obliviousness to the harm his pursuit of ideals causes those around him, as seen in the impact his naive ambitions have on Alejandra. While seeking paradise, John Grady strives to forcefully mould his desired reality from fantasy, even if it entails that “the blood of multitudes might ultimately be exacted for the vision of a single flower” (McCarthy 282)—a vision ultimately beyond his reach.
Works Cited
McCarthy, Cormac. All the Pretty Horses. Vintage Books, 1993.
Gebreen, Hayder A.K. “Identity Crisis in Cormac McCarthy’s All The Pretty Horses.” Advances in Language and Literary Studies, vol. 7, no. 2, Apr. 2016, pp. 90–99, https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.alls.v.7n.2p.90.
Morrison, Gail Moore. “John Grady Cole’s Expulsion from Paradise.” Perspectives on Cormac McCarthy, Revised Edition ed., University Press of Mississippi, 1999, pp. 175–191.