All the Pretty Horses – Cormac McCarthy

I first encountered this work with Dr. Olivia Edenfield, Georgia Southern University, College of Graduate Studies, Fall 2023. These are my scratch notes.

Questions

• Does Lacey need to be more mature?
• How much scholarship is dedicated to Lacey?
• What are the other differences between Lacey and John Grady
  • perhaps the way they treat horses.
  • levels of idealism
• How significant is the father how important is the marriage?
• What is the significance of the novel beginning the way it does?
• How can the novel be considered a liminal space
• John Grady goes to Mexico for romance and adventure.

Professor Bennett Parten, Assistant Professor of History, Georgia Southern University Placing Cormac McCarthy in a historical context

• Turner Thesis
  • 3 waves
  • Frontier Myth – Historians have poked holes
    • not democracy
    • not American exceptionalism or individualism
    • It is constant bloodshed, war with indigenous people, corporate takeover,
    • slavery as an institution walks lockstep with Texas expansion
    • complicates the history of the West
    • as he advanced in his career, he backed away from some of these ideas; his book that he didn’t finish calls these ideas into question
  • McCarthy pokes holes into this thesis as well. The myth of manifest destiny.
    • writes Blood Meridian, as a historical conquest.
• Implicit in the frontier thesis is that it is written after the census, and there was no frontier line.
  • The American continent had been conquered, so what happens now, if exceptionalism is defined by the frontier
  • Historically we know what happens next; we keep moving to new lands, Philippines, Hawaii, Puerto Rico Panama
  • always looking to new frontier – Roosevelt, Kennedy, Reagan, and the first Bush all used frontier language
  • What does it do psychologically when there is no Western frontier to move to? If this is always been the source of freedom? This is part of what McCarthy takes up in the border trilogy. Since the West wasn’t available, they moved to Mexico. He reminds us there is no frontier void of violence.
• The Mexico border was becoming firmer in the 1940s (which began during the Mexican Revolution); the program where people could move freely ended in the 1960s
• A lot of people look to religion to explain how America was different. Turner refers to religion so much because people around him were so interested in it. City on the Hill was a Puritan idea, and that kind of falls apart when you move out of the Puritan part of the country. Christian exceptionalism relates to American Exceptionalism.

Dr. Bradley Edwards, Principal Lecturer of English, Georgia Southern University, The Hero’s Journey

• This talk was given in relation to the journey of John Grady Cole as an example of The Hero’s Journey. It may need its own space, but I will leave it here for now.
• Dr. Edwards dissertation was on the American journey novel.
  • He argues that the journey narrative is the oldest framework beginning with Gilgamesh.
  • Not every novel is a journey novel.
  • To begin, he needed to define the journey novel
    • Dr. Edwards defines the journey narrative as a work in which a protagonist or a group of protagonists move through multiple distant settings. When that work moves to the literary or elevated art, the protagonist is psychologically transformed at the end. This can be a popular structure early in an authors career because you can play with it.
    • In some cases characters, experience geolimitation, and are not capable of traveling distance. This is a non-journey, and typically the non-journey is the point.
    • Would it be considered a hero’s journey if the psychological effects at the end are negative? Is this where the antihero comes from? Maybe it’s just enough that they aren’t corrupted. What is an antihero is that the antagonist may be the villain?
    • Dr. Edwards and Dr. Edenfield disagree on Huck Finn’s characterization as either a hero or a picaro.
    • What if there is no refusal of the call how does that change things Dr. Edwards struggles to recall a moment that this happens, but reminds us that this format is not prescriptive.
• Referenced “chapter 3 of”The Hero and the God” from The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell